How Leaders Coach for eXtraordinary Results

The process of coaching for eXtraordinary results has six steps. They are illustrated in the eXpansive Leadership Method (XLM) seen below. Let’s see how you can use these steps to coach your direct reports.

1. Know thyself & others.

The first step to a productive conversation with a high performer, especially if they want to be promoted, is to prepare for the meeting. Answer these questions to understand the person prior to your meeting:

a. What does this individual’s past performance appraisals teach you?

b. What are the performance standards for new positions that might become open?

c. Who can give you an accurate assessment of their people, organizational, and technical skills?

d. What are this person's behavioral strengths and weaknesses?

During my coaching assignments, I require the leader (i.e., coachee) complete the XLM 360 assessment ( http://xlmassessment.com/ ). I also conduct one-on-one interviews with the person’s boss, direct reports, and peers. All of this is designed to provide an accurate assessment of the coachee’s current skills and developmental needs.

2. Engage others.

Begin your conversation by pointing out the value they bring to the organization. Identify specific scenarios when they exceeded expectations. Then, transition to questions about their hopes and dreams for their future. Engage them by asking what they want to achieve over the next few years, why they want to achieve these goals, and what skills they believe they need to achieve these goals?

The intent here is to enter into a dialogue about their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and aspirations. They should do 80% of the talking during this phase of the discussion.

3. Clarify expectations.

Explain that you are very interested in their growth and development. Let them know that you want to see them advance in the organization. Clarify the different career paths available in your organization, as well as the behavioral skills needed in the various positions. Contrast their present skills with those needed to fill positions they aspire to. Discuss the amount of time and effort necessary to develop those skills.

4. Inspire creativity & change.

Invite them to create a development plan designed to fill the gap between where they are today and the skills they need for tomorrow. Ask them to take a few days to brainstorm a number of possible actions that will serve as the beginning of a career development plan. Volunteer to help them with their plan and to mentor them. In addition, encourage them to get input from those who completed their 360 assessment.

5. Manage operations & plans.

Gain agreement from them to implement a step-by-step plan to develop the skills needed for advancement. The nature and extent of the plan depends on the goals and the difficulty of the skills to be developed.

In their book The Leadership Machine, Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichinger summarize the data they have collected on 53,000 people from more than 140 companies worldwide. (1) They point out that there are four types of experiences that contribute to development. In order of importance, these include:

a. Key jobs. 75 to 90% of what is learned in the work environment is learned on the job. Therefore, the best way to develop key skills is to take a job that requires the coachee to use these skills. The jobs that tend to matter most are those that include starting something from nothing, fixing an area that is broken, moving from line (e.g., branch manager) to staff (e.g., headquarters human resources), managing a major change in scope or scale of the job, and taking on a major projects.

b. Important people. Those individuals who have a variety of people to learn from, learn the most. People who challenge one's thinking provide the best development. Good bosses can serve as great models, while bad bosses teach what not to do.

c. Hardships. Although you may not want to plan for hardship, you and the people you coach are guaranteed to experience it. The research tells us that the most successful leaders not only experience tough times, they learn from them.

d. Courses. Being able to take a class that is directly linked to performance on the job is critical. It provides the self-efficacy that people need in order to perform.

The coachee’s development plan should be put together with these four types of experiences in mind. The eight elements of an effective plan should include the following:

• S.M.A.R.T. goals and objectives
• List of benefits of achieving the goal to the coachee and organization
• Possible obstacles that must be overcome and their solutions
• Action steps to improve performance
• How to measure the actions step
• Partner to work with on that specific action step
• Dates to review specific milestones and progress
• Signature line for each coach and direct report

6. Execute with passion and courage.

Unlike a counseling session, you probably will not need to access your commanding style to “encourage" them to be involved in creating and executing an improvement plan. That's because you should be coaching a motivated, high achiever.

How surprised will you be when your direct reports achieve eXtraordinary results because of your eXceptional coaching? Let me know which steps you use and how they work for you.

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

http://www.DaveJensenOnLeadership.com

1. Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichinger; The Leadership Machine, Lominger Ltd., Inc. Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2002.

Five Coaching Questions Leaders Must Answer

To coach effectively, the five questions leaders must answer are: What is coaching? Why bother doing it? Is coaching effective? Whom should you coach? How do you coach? This blog answers these questions.

What is coaching?

Coaching is not a one-time event; it is the process of engaging your employees in their ongoing development. The process usually falls into one of the three categories:

Skills Coaching – which is of short duration and focuses on specific behaviors;

Performance Coaching – a longer process that involves setting goals, overcoming obstacles, and monitoring performance;

Developmental Coaching – takes a broader more holistic perspective, often addressing personal and professional growth.

Most mid-level managers require either skills or performance coaching, while higher-level executives frequently choose developmental coaching. In reality, there is considerable overlap among the three.

Why bother doing it?

In a previous blog on the empowering leadership style, I stressed the importance of developing employees as part of a strategy to engage and retain them. Professor F. Leigh Branham confirmed this when he analyzed the data on more than 19,700 employee exit interviews. (1) He found that 60% of employees felt they had received inadequate coaching, thereby contributing to their decision to leave. The Lominger group surveyed 47,592 employees worldwide, asking them to rate their managers on 67 leadership competencies. (2) The employees scored their managers on the competency “develops direct reports" dead last at 67. You should only "bother" coaching your employees if you want them to stay at their job and be fully engaged on the job.

Is coaching effective?

Annette Fillery-Travis and David Lane found only one published ROI studies when they reviewed the coaching literature. (3) The study, conducted by Right Management Consultants, found that external executive coaching delivered a 5.7 ROI. (That’s right, 570%) The 100 executives in the study reported tangible business results that included improved productivity (53 percent), better quality work product (48 percent) and greater organizational strength (48 percent). From an intangible business standpoint, executives described enhanced relationships with their direct reports (77 percent), supervisors (71 percent), and peers (63 percent); as well as greater teamwork (67 percent) and job satisfaction (61 percent).

Teaching sales mangers to coach can make a difference also. (4) Researchers at the University of Maryland studied the sales force of a multinational manufacturer whose managers had undergone a two-day coaching workshop. Coaching represented 36% of the differences in improved performance among surveyed salespeople. A 29% improvement was also seen in sales managers who were coached by executives. These executives had attended separate workshops designed to teach them how to coach sales managers.

Finally, The American Management Association studied the successful coaching practices of more than 1,000 global executives and managers. (5) Overall, they found that coaching correlated with increased productivity, revenue growth, profitability, market share, engagement, retention, customer satisfaction and overall employee performance. A few of their other key findings:

• Coaching is used in 55% of international companies.
• Most companies that don't have coaching programs yet, plan to implement them.
• Using methods to measure coaching effectiveness (e.g., 360 assessments) increased the likelihood of success.
• Externally based training was more highly correlated with overall coaching success than internal training.

My own experience as an external coach validates these findings. Most of my clients have experienced significant growth. However, not everyone has benefited. I find that unless you select the right individuals, you might find yourself "putting makeup on a corpse."

Whom should you coach?

Early in my coaching career, I received a phone call from a desperate executive in Silicon Valley. She had recently promoted a manager, Bill who was now struggling. She wanted to know if I could coach him through his transition to management. Being an optimistic, energetic new coach, I agreed to interview Bill. During our initial conversation, Bill’s answer to one of my questions should have given me a clue that he was not a candidate for successful coaching. When I asked him if he was willing to commit to the work necessary to make the changes, in order to succeed as a new manager, he commented that he would try even though he was already very busy.

You can probably guess the rest of this story. Bill refused to work on some of his core issues and seldom completed his homework assignments. After three months, I called Bill’s supervisor and her boss (i.e., the executive who had originally called me) and told them that I didn't think the process was working. They turned up the pressure on him and asked me to continue. But it didn't work. As Samuel Butler wrote, “He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.” At the end of six months, Bill went back to his old position.

Whom should you coach? Bill's story gives us part of the answer -- only those who fully commit to doing the work required to grow. Do not mistake compliance for commitment. The other criteria you might use is level of competence. Since you probably don’t have time to coach all your direct reports to the same extent, I suggest you begin with your high performers. That doesn’t mean you ignore the others. It does mean you spend more time with those who are doing well. If you don’t work with them, they’ll soon work for someone else.

How do you coach?

The process of coaching is quiet similar to the counseling process described in a previous blog. The difference lies in the amount of emphasis and questions asked in each of the six steps. Employ the eXpansive Leadership Method (XLM), seen below, as a guide to your coaching. We’ll step through the entire process in a subsequent blog.

Now you know the five coaching questions leaders must answer to be effective coaches. Let me know how the answers work for you.

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

http://www.DaveJensenOnLeadership.com

1. Leigh Branham; The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave: How to Recognize the Subtle Signs and Act Before It's Too Late, AMACOM Books, NY, NY, 2005.

2. The LEADERSHIP ARCHITECT® Norms and Validity Report, Minneapolis, MN, 2006, page 499.

3. Annette Fillery-Travis and David Lane; Does Coaching Work or Are We Asking the Wrong Question?, International Coaching Psychology Review, April 2006, 23 - 36.

4. Larry Yu; The Benefits of a Coaching Culture, MIT Sloan Management Review, Winter 2007, page 6.

5. Edward T. Reilly; Coaching - A Global Study of Successful Practices, MWorld, Fall 2008, 15 – 18.

Seven Mistakes Leaders Make During Feedback Sessions

In a previous blog, I pointed out that the desired outcome of any performance feedback session is to produce better performance after the conversation. They should be called “feed forward” sessions. While this may sound obvious, leaders often tell me that their goal is to "Get the person to understand..." or "Have the employee do their job..." WRONG! The entire focus of these sessions should be improving performance after the sessions.

So why do many feedback sessions, especially those criticizing performance, fail to accomplish their primary objective? Usually it’s because the leader commits one or more of the common mistakes made when giving feedback. These include:

1. Providing vague feedback. Telling someone they are "Not performing well" or "You need to improve your presentations" does not identify the specific behaviors that need improvement.

2. Judging the individual instead of the behaviors. Saying "You were too harsh" or "You need to be a better communicator" is a judgment of the individual that puts them on the defensive.

3. Talking too much. Because many leaders are uncomfortable during a counseling session, they tend to talk too much. Don’t give advice, talk about your own experience, and spend too much time problem solving. Criticism is difficult to hear and you need to give your employees time to digest it.

4. Misusing the sandwich technique. Providing criticism between two complements sounds like a good idea, but it is seldom executed properly. The employee often perceives the approach as manipulative.

5. Exaggerating. Using terms such as "never" or "always" are loaded with the emotional baggage. As soon as the employee hears them, they imagine all the times when they did not do what you claim that he did.

6. Using passive-aggressive humor. Saying "Glad you could make it" when someone comes five minutes late to your meeting is both indirect and ineffective.

7. Concluding without a plan. Ending a counseling session without a follow-up plan is like driving to a new restaurant in a strange city without a map. You'll end up somewhere, but it probably won't be fulfilling.

So, which of these are you guilty of? How do you avoid them?

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

http://www.DaveJesenOnLeadership.com

How Leaders Improve Employee Performance in Six Steps

I did not like having difficult conversations when I was the Chief Administrative Officer of an Institute at UCLA. I struggled every time I needed to fire someone, deal with conflict, or hold someone accountable who was underperforming. I often knew what to say, but not how to say it to produce the outcome desired. The desired outcome of these counseling sessions was to produce better results after the conversations.

The question for you is, how much improvement do you see after you have had a counseling session? Research tells us that there is good news and bad news.

The good news is that a meta-analysis, encompassing 23,663 observations, by professors Kluger and DeNisi demonstrated that there is an overall average gain in performance following feedback interventions. (1) The bad news is that over one-third of the feedback sessions actually decreased performance. If you conduct your sessions as I did at UCLA, some of your counseling sessions may in fact, hurt performance.

The eXpansive Leadership Method (XLM) can help you achieve desired results when you must counsel an employee. This systematic approach to managing these conversations is illustrated below:

1. Monitor closely

Have you ever had an employee challenge your "facts" early in a conversation? If so, you know how difficult it is to get them back on track. This is why the first key to having a successful difficult conversation is to prepare for that meeting. Employees often challenge our facts when they feel we didn't do our homework prior to the meeting.

2. Engage others

Begin your conversation by pointing out the value they bring to the organization. Identify specific instances when they met or exceeded the expectations of the job. Then, transition to the performance issue by asking them to help you understand the contrast between past acceptable performance and the recent drop in performance. Even if they start blaming others or presenting bogus excuses, continue building trust using excellent communication skills such as reflective and active listening.

3. Clarify expectations

After they agree that your summary of their explanation for their poor performance is accurate, show them their job description. Explain that all the employees in their position are required to perform up to a specific standard explained in their job description. As you talk, point to the specific performance standard in their job description that they have not met.

4. Inspire creativity and change

Invite them to help you. Increasing their involvement in the process increases their commitment the goal of the process. Tell them that together, "we must come up with several action steps to help you reach this specific performance standard." Ask them to brainstorm a number of possible actions that will serve as the beginning of a performance improvement plan. Remind them of the positive impact they have on the big picture.

5. Execute with passion and courage

You may need to access your courage as you tell them that they must be involved in creating an improvement plan. How firm you need to be at this point depends on how much responsibility they accept for their poor performance and your skill in applying the first four steps of this process. If they resist, let them know that you would rather have them follow a plan that you both created than one you dictated. Be firm and fair as you access your commanding skills. One executive calls it “the iron fist in a velvet glove."

6. Manage operations

Gain agreement to implement the detailed, step-by-step plan to improve their performance. This is a lot easier if they have participated in the creation of this plan. The seven elements of an effective plan include the following:

• S.M.A.R.T. goals and objectives
• Possible obstacles that must be overcome
• Description of the value of achieving these goals and objectives
• Method of instruction to improve specific performance, such as coaches, classes, educational material...
• Dates to review specific milestones and progress
• Signature line for you and your employee to agree to the plan

Finally, use your entire XLM to help the individual implement his or her performance improvement plan. Let me know which steps you use and how they work for you.

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

1. Kluger, Avraham and DeNisi, Angelo; Effects of feedback intervention on performance: A historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory. Psychological Bulletin, 119 (2), 1996, 254-284.

How Leaders Use a Setback as Feedback

Every leader experiences obstacles and setbacks. Yet few know how to manage them well. In fact, leaders rarely speak about difficulties. We are taught to have a positive mental attitude, be upbeat, wipe off the dust and grit of the journey and move on. It’s fine to put a positive spin on a negative event. Yet too much spin makes us dizzy, especially if there are lessons to be learned from the obstacle. A setback is often a teacher dressed in pain if you have a method of learning from it. The most effective leaders think of a setback as feedback waiting for meaning.

I encourage you to adapt the following four-step approach to extract your lessons when you and your team encounter “negative” feedback while pursuing your goal.

1. Don't just do something, sit there.

In his book, The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton writes about the agonizing experience of watching his father die of cancer. (1) He says he learned the most powerful lesson about pain - the only way through the pain is through the pain. Having lost my mother to the same disease, I think Merton is right - the first step in dealing with a setback is to step back and let the pain have its way with you. In time, you will be ready to move on. But first, you must mourn. Your soul needs to be with the pain of loss before you can get over that loss. The amount of recovery time should be proportional to the value you placed on the loss or setback. I often took a day to sulk after losing sales orders that meant a lot to me. It doesn’t really matter what you do with your recovery time, only that you take it.

The Christian religion teaches that Christ rose from the dead after being crucified. However, he only ascended after he spent three days in a sealed cave. Whether you believe in the teaching or not, think of his three days in the darkness as a metaphor for what we all need to do when we experience loss. We need time in the darkness, time to be still, time to reflect. It’s easier to see our light at night because contrast is how we see. Your cave is the start of your re-birth, your “resurrection.”

2. Write for insight.

Intuition isn’t easily heard amid the clamoring noise of work. Your still, small voice may have something to whisper in the silence. I encourage you to write to gain insight about your setback. First thing in the morning, write three pages of nonstop, brain dump. Don’t think, don’t process, and don’t force anything. Just write three pages of fast, flash, first thoughts. Let your inner voice have a voice. Don’t worry about what spills out. You need an outlet for what may be seething below the surface. Have faith you will hear what you need to hear. Here are a few incomplete sentences to jump-start your writing:

• This hurts...
• In my darkest hour...
• The pain of birth teaches...
• I have grown through adversity by...
• Lessons I have learned the hard way...

3. Lessons learned report

After grieving and reflecting on a setback, it’s time to concentrate on what you learned and will do differently. Obstacles and setbacks can be learning experiences if you choose to look for meaning. The attribution theory in psychology teaches us that making meaning out of what happened in the past influences the future. Therefore, within a week of your setback write a brief report on the lessons learned. A quick way to do this is to take a blank sheet of paper and draw a line right down the middle. Title the left column, Went Well. Title the right column, Do Differently. Next, brainstorm a list of all the things you feel went well as you pursued your goal (on the left side). Then write a list of all the things that you will do differently on the right side. What will you do more or less of? What could you do better next time? Just brainstorm and let your ideas flow. The whole purpose of this step is to direct your attention on how to use the lessons of this experience to help in the future. We don’t learn from experience; we learn from reflecting on experience. Feedback is only feed forward when we learn.

4. Choose happiness.

People behave in ways they believe will increase their happiness. The formula below, fully explained in a previous blog, is a simple equation that predicts how happy leaders are after any setback.

Happiness = Experience - Expectations

This formula says that your level of happiness with any event or situation is equal to how you choose to perceive that experience minus your attachment to the expectations you had prior to the event. For example, think about the last time you were disappointed after seeing a movie. On a scale of 1 to 10, what score would you assign to the expectation you had prior to that experience? (Go ahead; pick a high number if you had high expectations.) Next, on a scale of 1 to 10, what score would you assign to the experience immediately after you had the experience? (Pick a low number if you thought the movie was lousy.) If you do the math (experience - expectations), you have your “happiness score.” If expectations were very high (a 9 on our scale) and your experience was low (a 3 on our scale), the number is negative. (3-9 = -6) If your subtraction gives you the number zero, the formula says you are satisfied. Your expectations were met. Whatever number you come up with, it represents how happy or satisfied you feel, overall, after any experience, event or situation.

If we want to be happy, this happiness formula teaches us to:

• Choose to have high expectations prior to any situation.
• Choose to see the good or positive lesson in every experience (or situation).
• Choose to let go of our expectations after the experience (or situation).

So, keep your expectations high as your pursue your goal. However, let go of these expectations when you encounter an obstacle or setback. Remember, a “negative” experience doesn’t make you miserable, your attachment to it does.

Use this four-step system described here to help you see any setback as feedback waiting for meaning. Take time off, lick your wounds, and learn your lessons from the pain. Then stop complaining, refocus on your goals, and get back in the saddle again. Let me know how this approach, or your own, works for you.

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

1. Merton T: The Seven Storey Mountain. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: New York, 82, 1948.

Commanding Leaders Choose Happiness

Aristotle said, “All things we do, we do to increase our happiness.” People behave in ways they believe will increase their happiness. The figure below is a simple formula that predicts how happy you are after any setback.

Happiness = Experience - Expectations

This formula says that your level of happiness with any event or situation is equal to how you perceive that experience minus your expectations prior to the event. For example, think about the last time you were disappointed after seeing a movie or dining out at a restaurant. On a scale of 1 to 10, what score would you assign to the expectation you had prior to that experience? (Go ahead; pick a high number if you had high expectations.) Next, on a scale of 1 to 10, what score would you assign to the experience immediately after you had the experience? (Pick a low number if you had a lousy experience.) If you do the math (experience - expectations), you have your “happiness score.” If expectations were very high (9 on our scale) and your experience was low (3 on our scale), the number is negative. (3-9 = -6) If your subtraction gives you the number zero, the formula says you are satisfied. Your expectations were met. Whatever number you come up with, it represents how happy or satisfied you feel, overall, after any event or situation.

Think of all the ways this formula plays out, subconsciously, every day: The sports team or athlete that is “expected” to win, but falls short. Or the underdog that delights the home crowd by far exceeding expectations by merely reaching the playoffs. How about freeway traffic? You’re breezing along at 65MPH, when all of a sudden, traffic comes to a complete stop. The radio informs you about the accident up ahead. You groan, Oh no! I am going to be late if we don’t start moving. So, you start praying for any movement. And your prayer works! You start moving, slowly at first. How do you feel when you start clicking along at 20, 30, then 40 MPH? Pretty good, right? Why? Because your expectations became so low when you were stuck in the logjam.

The happiness formula also reminds you to choose happiness even if you fall short of a goal. For example, I once collaborated on a very large sale with a sales colleague, Tina. If we booked it, we both would earn a big commission check. We lost it. Ouch! We were devastated. I mourned the loss by taking a couple days off and biking in the mountains. I then re-focused on my sales goals, and had a good year. But Tina never recovered. Whenever I saw her, she talked about the “big one that got away.” After two years of missing her quotas, she was fired.

Tina’s inability to choose responsibly (the fourth level of the commanding style) can explain by the happiness equation. Do you see how it predicts Tina’s misery? Prior to the sale, she had high expectations. (Let’s give her a score of 9 out of 10.) She then had the very negative experience of losing the sale. (A score of -9.) You do the math. (-9 - 9 = -18) No wonder she was miserable! I was too! However, she stayed miserable because of her inability to let go of high expectations and her ineffectiveness in learning from the experience. While she subconsciously stayed a minus 18 after the sale, I chose to let go of my expectations and learn my lessons.

Don’t let what happened Tina happen to you. Follow the system outlined here to put the happiness equation to work for you. Keep your expectations high as your pursue your goal. However, let go of these expectations when you encounter an obstacle or setback. Remember that a “negative” experience doesn’t make you miserable, your attachment to it does. Perhaps this is why Peter Drucker says we often fail because of what we hold onto. Best-selling author and lecturer Dr. Wayne Dyer observes that one of the traits he sees in highly functioning people is their uncanny ability to shut out the negative past. (1)

Try using the system described here to help you see any setback as feedback waiting for meaning. Take time off, lick your wounds, and learn your lessons from the pain. Then stop complaining, refocus on your goals, and get back in the saddle again.

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

1. Dyer W: Wisdom of the Ages. HarperCollins: New York, 242, 1998.

Effective Leaders Use Feedback to Stay On Track

The first three steps needed to achieve a worthy goal (and discussed in previous blogs) are set a SMART goal, gain commitment, and build belief with a plan. The fourth step is to use feedback to stay on track.

Webster’s Dictionary defines feedback as “the return to the point of origin of evaluative or corrective information.” Feedback surrounds us. A market-based economy works because consumers give continuous feedback to producers. (To buy or not to buy is the feedback question of capitalism.) Feedback is also a critical factor in the theory of evolution. Survival of the fittest is really the ability of a species to adapt to its changing environment (i.e., responding to the feedback from its surroundings). That's how they survive. Without feedback, we too would die. The human body incorporates thousands of feedback mechanisms that keep us alive. And using feedback to stay on track is also how extraordinary leaders thrive as they pursue their goals.

Feedback comes in many flavors. Obstacles, setbacks, and difficulties are forms of feedback. (If it was easy to achieve worthy goals, everyone would do it and the goal by definition, would be less valuable.) In addition, corrective information (from customers, bosses, peers…) is feedback used to monitor progress.

Think about the last time you received praise for a job well done. How did it affect the job you just completed? It didn’t, did it? Of course not. However, it may have influenced your next task. That’s because feedback is really feed forward. It affects future performance.

Of the 18 studies Professors Locke and Latham reviewed in their book, 17 reported that when feedback was combined with goal setting, it improved performance more than goal setting alone. (1)

Professors John Ivancevich and Timothy McMahon, from the University of Houston, studied 209 engineers over a nine-month period and found that goal setting plus feedback significantly improve performance measures related to costs, quality, and overall productivity. (2)

When Alan Dubinsky (College of Management at the Metropolitan State University) studied 174 medical salespeople, he and his co-researchers found that salespeople who were supervised by actively involved managers (i.e., they gave more feedback), performed better than those under a “hands-off” or “call-me-if-there’s-trouble” manager. (3) Not only was the performance better under the “hands-on” managers, the salespeople in this group also had greater job satisfaction, supervisor satisfaction, and higher levels of commitment.

These researchers are not saying that leaders need to be in the employee’s face all the time. In fact, there’s evidence that says the amount of feedback managers dispense should be adjusted to the individual needs of each person. (4) Star performers need less input than the struggling employees do, for example. The research is telling us is to use regular feedback, adjusted for the individual, to stay on track.

How surprised will you be when you and your team achieve your goal because you used feedback to stay on track? Let me know how you currently use feedback.

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

1. Locke E and Latham G: A Theory of Goal Setting & Task Performance. Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs, 192, 1990.

2. John Ivancevich and Timothy McMahon; is The Effects of Goal setting, External Feedback, and Self Generated Feedback on Outcome Variables: A Field Experiment, Academy of Management Journal, June, 1982, page 359 - 372.

3. Dubinsky A, Yammarino F, Jolson M, et al: Closeness of Supervision and Salesperson Work Outcomes: An Alternative Perspective. Journal of Business Research 29: 225-237, 1994.

4. DelVecchio S: Predicting Sales Manager Control: A Comparison of Control Systems and Leadership Approaches. Journal of Applied Business Research 12 (4): 100-114, 1996.