Associates for Professional Development's Latest Articles:

Getting the right people on the bus.  This is a phrase we often hear from executives concerned about staffing strength.  Making sure that you have the right people in your organization is critical to efficiency and growth.

But getting the right people on the bus doesn’t solve your problems if they aren’t in the right seats.
The right person in the wrong place is just as unproductive as the wrong person in the right place.

Putting the right person properly placed requires a combination of knowledge and insight.  Knowledge means getting to know your staff.  Not just how well they do their jobs, but how well they communicate.  How effectively they work as part of a team.   How well they manage conflict.

Management Skills. Promoting an individual because of strong technical skills is a frequently used strategy.  But management requires a completely different set of skills—people skills necessary to effectively move others to higher levels of performance.

Hidden Gems. So be on the lookout for the hidden gems.  These are often the individuals who handle conflict effectively.  Those who can inspire others to do more.  Those who can reduce problems instead of creating them.  And those who can get more work done through other people instead of doing it themselves.

These are the people who will be most effective as they move up the management ladder, because they are the ones who will be most likely to shine.

There are times in our work that we encounter a highly successful professional who has a history of keeping things very close to the vest.  Their trust of outsiders who don’t “know our business” is low, making a coaching engagement with them a very uncertain endeavor.

What is this lack of trust all about?  Often it is a belief that being a “self-made man (or woman)” means that I did it myself, without anyone else’s help.  Especially outsiders.

There are some dangers in this belief, not the least of which is that it cuts off valuable information that comes from hearing a different perspective.

Benefits of Outsiders. Outsiders don’t know, can’t know, all of what goes on inside the organization.  But then, we don’t need to because an effective coach is able to:

• look past the technical business issues to find the larger performance issues that may endanger future growth,
• ask probing questions that are designed to challenge current thinking,
• create healthy discomfort; because without discomfort there is no growth.

Introduce new perspectives. Coaching is designed to introduce new perspectives.  Without new perspectives, organizations organize themselves only around what they know to be true.  They prevent themselves from discovering more effective solutions to their problems.

Developing trust with an outsider can be hard. But it is well worth the risk.  Who knows, it might mark the beginning of a valuable new friendship.

One of my more challenging coaching experiences occurred when I found myself face-to-face with an extremely confident individual.  He was not just confident; he was convinced that he knew the answers to practically everything.  He spoke loudly and rapidly, as if he couldn’t get the words out fast enough.  It was exhausting.

During the first 20 minutes I spent with this gentleman I realized what his co-workers experienced every day.  They did not know how to slow him down or how to get him to listen to their suggestions or solutions.  He already had them, so why should he listen to anyone else.

Listen first. I learned years ago from one of my mentors that the real work with extreme personalities is twofold:

1.  Listen long enough to let them know that you value what they have to say.

2.  Once you have heard them, have the courage to point out the short-term effectiveness of this behavior, but how ineffective it is in the long term.  What they gain in short term solutions actually inhibits the growth of their team.

Benevolent Intent. At AFPD we believe in the concept of benevolent intent– most people in most situations are trying to do the best they can.  Extreme personalities want to get problems solved and they want to demonstrate their worth to their teams, to their bosses, to their companies.

When extreme personalities see that their method of communication is self-defeating, it becomes much easier to help them move to a middle ground that works better for everyone.

Growing businesses often face issues that are left un-addressed for long periods of time.  Issues like succession planning, developing bench strength, and encouraging internal leadership development are often difficult to put in the priority list for time and valuable resources.

Family-owned businesses have exactly the same issues, but with the complicating twist of employing family members throughout the organization.  It is not unusual for these family members to have some confusion around some very important issues related to their progress in the company.

Here are 3 Key issues that family-owned businesses must address if they are to remain vibrant and alive into the 3^rd and 4^th generations:

Provide a Path.  Spell out with all family members who enter the business how they can utilize their skills to create a growth path within the company.  The path must be clear enough to provide them with a roadmap to the future, but flexible enough to enable them to change directions as they mature.

Develop Them. Without opportunities for professional development, even the most talented family member employees falter.  Providing a clear, effectively designed set of developmental tools is essential to help them grow into the next generation of family executives.

Be Honest. This is often the hardest to do, because it means addressing head-on, the hidden (or not-so-hidden) desires of a host of other employee family members.  Leveling with them about their long-term potential is crucial in avoiding family disagreements down the road.

The time spent actively addressing these three issues can help prevent a host of more complicated problems and add significantly to family harmony.