Posts Tagged ‘leadership’

Coaching – A Sacred Trust

One of the greatest coaches of all times, John Wooden, (lead UCLA men’s basketball team to 7 consecutive championships) knew how important it was to be trusted as a Coach.  Here’s what he said “I considered it a sacred trust: helping to mold character, instill productive principles and values, and provide a positive example for those under my supervision”.  He obviously knew something about Coaching!

We incorporate many of the all-time great Coach’s philosophies into our CEO Coaching, Leadership Coaching and Family Business Coaching.

Top 5 ways to be a trusted Coach and achieve peak performance:

#1.  Model the way (right actions, attitude, determination)

#2.  Listen – the only way to understand what motivates your followers

#3.  Show you care – pay attention and ask about the details of their lives

#4.  Be consistent – reliability is the center of trust

#5.  Expect greatness from your followers before they even believe in it

Tiger Woods Modifies His Swing Again

Many of you know a golf addict who, needless to say, was watching Tiger Woods in route to another victory at the Memorial tournament two weeks ago.  The commentator said “that swing change that Tiger made is why he’s hit every fairway this weekend.” In fact they went on to show viewers the video of the slight but high impact change Tiger made.

So once again — here’s the lesson.  The great ones never stop learning and modifying their approach!  Here is a guy once again who is arguably the best on the planet AND he pushes himself to find new ways to be even more effective.

I see two kinds of leaders in my executive coaching practice.  There are leaders who have an unwavering commitment to learning and developing new ways of leading in this challenging time, and also leaders who think they know leadership and are spending energy begrudging the changing world and workforce.

Which are you?  Maybe you should think about changing your swing.

  • Posted by Coach Pete
  • Monday, June 28th, 2010
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Make a shift – build leadership muscle!

If employees were as motivated, smart, self disciplined, and hard-working as you’d want them to be they would be working for themselves! 

I’m amazed how many times the CEOs and Leaders that I’m working with are so discouraged and disappointed that they have to be the one setting the tone and setting the bar for great performance.  Don’t get me wrong.  What we’re going for is to have employees who are self correcting, self motivating, and inspired to be on the team.

On some level the reality is as a Leader your going to be the biggest pacesetter and cheerleader of them all.

Get over it!

A business coach can help you learn or refine the skills essential to being a great leader these days.  New leadership muscle can be acquired with a little hard work and stretching with your business coach.  If you are ready for the challenge, contact pete@peakcoach.com.

  • Posted by Coach Pete
  • Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010
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CEO Coaching Highlight Reel – Great Leadership Practices

In my role as a CEO coach I have the opportunity to work with some great leaders and see some of the best and quite honestly, some of the worst practices of leadership.  In this particular case my client Park Howell, President of Park&Co Advertising Agency, understands the importance of story telling in leadership.  Story telling is a great way to teach your team about the nuances of your culture.  In this particular case Park uses an email to the entire staff and his favorite proverb to underscore the important of attention to detail.  I’ll let you read the proverb and the email from Park below.  This particular email and message did have an important impact on a client project two weeks after the email went out.  One of Park’s staff members was getting ready to submit a proposal and Park’s email came to mind and they stopped and took even greater attention to detail before they turned in the proposal.

The email:

For Want of a Nail

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Thank you for sweating the small stuff every day around here. This includes your exceptional work on proofreading, timely follow-up with clients, accuracy in billing, making printed materials perfect during press checks, insuring that each video edit is the right cut, that colors are pure, emails are concise, conference reports are clear, the kitchen is clean. 

It will always be the small stuff that leads to our greatest challenges.  Thanks for sweating them.

Park Howell
President

Congratulations Park!  We could all learn something from this CEO highlight.

  • Posted by Coach Pete
  • Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010
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