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Advice from a headhunter and executive coach

Tim BrightSeptember 2017

www.oneworldconsulting.com

Who am I?

• Retained Executive Search

• Leadership & Development

o Executive Coaching

o Mentoring Programs

o Leadership Team Development & Facilitation

o Coaching Skills Programmes

• Career Transition

o Onboarding Coaching

o Career Coaching

o Outplacement

• People Consulting

o Salary Benchmark Surveys, Talent Surveys

o Management Audits / Assessments

o Cross-cultural Coaching / Training

OneWorld Consulting Services

Some of our clients

Overview

• What I’ve learned from 22 years of headhunting and coaching

• Three things that the most successful executives do well

• Different mindsets – engineering vs organic

• How important is talent?

• Vodafone leadership competencies

What have l learnt from 22 years of headhunting?

Favourite interview questions

What was your most recent mistake?

What did you learn from this role?

How do you develop yourself?

What feedback have you got in recent appraisals?

How do other people describe you?

Specifically, how did you achieve this success?

What’s meaningful for you in your job?

Weak candidates -

Lack of self-awareness and reflection

Lack of maturity & emotional intelligence

Too much focus on the individual

Not investing in their own learning

Not getting new experiences, staying in comfort zone

Narrow range of experience

Strongest candidates -

Mix of humility and confidence

Aware of their own strengths and

weaknesses and those of others

Get results through working

with other people

Expose themselves to new

experiences and challenges

Present themselves and ideas effectively

Read a lot and actively learn

At what stage in your career did you develop or learn the most?

What have l learnt from 22 years of executive

coaching?

The most successful executives-

Demonstrate Managed

Authenticity

Are skilled in high integrity politics

Develop themselves constantly and focus on their strengths &

others’ strengths

Authentic Leadership

“Why should anyone be led by you?” (Goffee & Jones, HBR, 2000)

Leaders who inspire. 4 qualities in these leaders -

• Selectively show weaknesses

• Use intuition to guide actions

• Demonstrate ‘tough empathy’

• Reveal their differences.

“Be yourself, more, with skill.”

Managed Authenticity

See authenticity as a continuum, not black and white

Over-managed Over-authentic

Managed Authenticity

“One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”

Plato

High integrity organisational politics

• Politics - the ‘informal use of power’

• To get things done, you need power, and have to understand where power comes from and how sources of power can be developed.

• Understand the strategies to develop and use power – structures, alliances, influence, timing, building and managing relationships.

• If you use informal power for the good of the organisation, in line with your own values and not to harm others, this is high integrity politics.

Organisational politics continuum

Under political Over-political

Appropriately

Political

Get out of your comfort zone, but use your strengths more

(and others’ strengths)

Classic ‘engineering’ approach

Identify what is not working –

weaknesses and

problems (root cause)

What is the least

efficient part of the

process?

What’s the bottleneck?

What’s the weakest

link?

Remove it, and you will

improve performance

Engineering Works, Brilliantly…

And products have become massively better, safer and cheaper.

Classic ‘engineering’

approach

• So this approach works brilliantly for machines, production lines, supply chains.

• What about when trying to improve people and organisations?

It’s helpful to think about mechanical systems and organic/biological systems. We need to work with both.

Is this a mechanical or organic system?

Focus on your Strengths

Why also focus on strengths?

It is all about top performance-

• It doesn’t work to try to become something you’re not.

• Instead do more of what you do best-naturally.

• Move from focusing on deficits, gap analysis, to looking at our strengths.

What is a strength?

“the ability to provide consistent near perfect performance in a given activity”

- Marcus Buckingham

Rath, Strengthsfinder, 2007

Talent: a natural way of thinking,

feeling or behaving

Investment: time spent practising, developing your

skills, and building knowledge

Strength: the ability to consistently provide near

perfect performance

Evidence supports strengths focus

Many pieces of research suggest focusing on strengths improves

engagement, retention and performance.

Gallup research results -

• Focus on strengths raises engagement by up to 33%

• Feedback on strengths increased sales 10%-19%

• Profits increased 14%-29%

Deliberate Practice – Anders Ericsson

• 10,000 hours or 10 year rule

• Deliberate practice is purposeful and systematic

• Deliberate practice involves effort, feedback and repeating specific parts of performance

• Deliberate practice usually needs a teacher/coach/mentor/manager to help design it and follow up

Can I win Olympic Gold?

“You cannot be anything you want to be- but you can be a lot more of who you already are.”

- Tom Rath

Reflection

In the past 6 months to 1 year, when were the times that you had a superior performance?

Which of your strengths played a part in these instances?

How far back can you trace these strengths?

Currently, where and how do you use these strengths?

Is there a risk that you overplay any of your strengths?

How does this relate to the Vodafone

competencies?

etki yaratma

Build relationships, be authentically yourself, understand politics.

koçluk yaklaşımı sergileme

Listen, ask good questions, focus on development rather than task completion. Hold the other person responsible for their own development. Focus on strengths.

ekibi geliştirme

Focus on learning and development. Build authentic relationships.

Look for success through others, not individual success. Help team members build on their strengths.

stratejik düşünme

Think about how your department and business will flourish in the market.

Practice reflection and thinking skills alone and with colleagues. Remember people think in different ways.

Carry out effective risk and data analysis.

ilişki yönetimi

Be yourself, more, with skill.

Use high integrity political awareness and skills

Assume the positive about people until proven otherwise.

Develop your own EQ and self awareness.

In summary

• Stretch yourself to develop, raise your awareness, get feedback.

• Be yourself more, with skill.

• Manage politics with integrity

• Be a constant learner and build on your own and others’ strengths.

• Decide when you need to use a mechanical or an organic mindset.

• For organic systems, look for what’s working and build on it.

• To develop you must put in effort and focused deliberate practice.

Be bold,

get started

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”

- W.H. Murray

For more info and contact:

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