Posts Tagged ‘Paul Dillenburg’

3 Simple Guidelines for Your Organizational Talent

Author: Paul Dillenburg, Date: 7/25/2013

1. Invest more development dollars and time where you will get the highest return. Do not spend your development dollars equally; high potentials, critical positions, and key leaders (current or future) demand differential attention. Likewise, while all employees should be receiving regular feedback regarding their performance and development, leaders need to be steadfast in providing timely, specific feedback and appreciation to their top talent.

2. Provide opportunities for accelerated development to help current and prospective leaders grow in their jobs and their careers—keep the pipeline filled. Potential opportunities may include individual coaching, mentoring relationships, involvement in key projects or initiatives, internal training, stretch assignments, networking, delegated tasks, participating in organizational meetings or industry conferences.

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Teachable Moment

Author: Paul Dillenburg, Date: 6/27/2013

One of the current buzzwords in leadership development seems to be the idea of “teachable moments.” That is, helping a direct report learn from a practical, job related experience as it occurs. An example of a teachable moment that I was able to highlight for an individual I was coaching may shed some light on how to capture these valuable moments. This excerpt is from a previous blog post.

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Why Did You Become a Manager?

Author: Paul Dillenburg, Date: 5/1/2013

Many employees become managers out of necessity. They were great individual contributors so their organizations’ promote them into a position that requires them to manage others. For the employee, one day you’re responsible for your individual results, the next you’re responsible for the results of others.

Through our coaching interactions we often ask, “why did you become a manager?” or “why should your direct reports follow you?” Seemingly easy questions, but difficult to answer the more you reflect on them.

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On-the-Job Skill Development

Author: Paul Dillenburg, Date: 3/20/2013

In a recent client interaction I received a question regarding how to provide direct reports with on-the-job skill development. This reminded me of a previous blog I had written on the subject, so I thought I would re-post:

A couple of months ago, I was involved in a group discussion focusing on building capabilities in young managers. One of the points of emphasis within the group was that new managers (and some senior leaders) thought of development as a formal program designed and delivered by the organization (e.g., mentor programs, training). Given the budget cuts many organizations are facing, group participants wanted to know what they could do to develop young talent.

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How to Measure Results in Coaching

Author: Paul Dillenburg, Date: 2/14/2013

Executive and leadership coaching has become increasingly popular for companies interested in developing and keeping key organizational talent. While the number of coaches in the market has increased, we have noticed that few provide potential clients with a model for measuring success. This isn’t surprising because much of what a coach works with a client on are some of the more intangible aspects of work (e.g., leading others, team effectiveness, communication style, etc.). Though intangibles may be difficult to quantify, our background and experience as evaluation and assessment practitioners, led us to develop a model for measuring success based on 5 key factors:

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The Struggle to Define Work

Author: Paul Dillenburg, Date: 1/17/2013

How do you define work?  If you are like many individuals, your responsibilities have expanded since you first joined the workforce.  As you have progressed through your career, you most likely have gone from an individual, task-based definition of work (i.e., completing x number of tasks, producing x number of widgets) to a more team-based approach to work, meaning, transitioning from producing results as an individual contributor to producing results through others. For many of us, the transfer from task-oriented to team-oriented work occurs suddenly with a promotion to supervisor or manager.

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5 Tips for Selecting an Executive Coach

Author: Paul Dillenburg, Date: 1/9/2013

Whereas coaching was once viewed as a remedy for an organization’s “problem employees,” today organizations are using coaching to hold onto and improve their very best leaders.  But if you are looking for a coach, how do you go about finding the right one?  Below are 5 tips to help you select the coach that is right for you:

1.    Look for good fit. One of the key ingredients to a successful coaching relationship is the chemistry/fit between the coach and client – ask for a “complimentary session” to help determine the coaches style.

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Succession Planning in Small Companies

Author: Paul Dillenburg, Date: 11/6/2012

In our talent management work with clients, a question we often hear following a talent review process is, “What happens if we don’t have any successors for a given position in our company?

In small to mid-size companies, it is quite common to have several key positions without successors who are ready to step into a role. There are few layers in the company so having stretch assignments to develop into the “next level” can be difficult. If you have some positions without successors, ask various questions:

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Lack of Communication?

Author: Paul Dillenburg, Date: 10/11/2012

Over the last 16 years, we’ve conducted a myriad of assessments for our clients. Whether 360 degree feedback, culture studies, team assessments, or employee opinion surveys, we often hear about a “lack of communication” within the organizations we work with. My guess is within the organization you work you hear that there is a lack of communication as well. But what does this actually mean? Does anyone in your organization know?

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Courses and Employee Development

Author: Paul Dillenburg, Date: 9/19/2012

For the last couple of weeks I have been doing some training for one of our clients on goal setting and employee development. The training has primarily focused on helping employees write SMART goals and develop action plans and helping managers enhance their coaching skills. One of the handouts I like to use as part of the training is the 70/20/10 rule of development planning. Studies on how adults learn suggest that a good development plan should have 70% related to on-the-job tasks and assignments; 20% people interaction (coaching, mentoring, others to work with); and 10% courses, workshops and readings (see graphic). For those of us that have reviewed action plans, you know that most employees build development plans around courses and formal training and few concentrate on opportunities for on-the-job learning. My message to the managers in the audience was, “courses are a tool for employees to collect knowledge, but they need to use that knowledge back on the job.”
70_20_10
As several managers nodded in agreement, a manager spoke up with some reservations. He was concerned that “using the knowledge back on the job,” was creating nothing but busy work for his employees. Apparently, within his department, when an employee completes an external course that others in the department may need to learn about, it is the responsibility of the course-taker to create a presentation for the department. I have heard similar stories from other clients that they too encourage course-takers to create presentation for their departments and teams. The manager’s challenge was that the hours spent on a presentation to an audience that may or may not have an interest was indeed busy work and did not help the organization overall.

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