Vol. 4.4 || OCTOBER 2019
APAC WavesUnleashing Collaborative Creativity
APAC WavesUnleashing Collaborative Creativity
Conference SpecialThree Days at the
APAC2019 Coaching Conference
Conference SpecialThree Days at the
APAC2019 Coaching Conference
Vol. 4.4 || OCTOBER 2019
THE OFFICIAL NEWSLETTER OF THE ASIA PACIFIC ALLIANCE OF COACHES
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ContentsPresident Speaks
Conference Special
Three Days at the APAC2019 Coaching Conference
APAC Waves
The End of Team Building?
Understanding the Potential of Systemic Team Coaching
Unleashing Collaborative Creativity
APAC Cover View
Rebel Talent
Food 4 Thought
The Tunnel
Delight Stop
Riddles
APAC Family
In Memoriam
Welcome
The Final Say
APAC Voice is a digital publication of APAC, published quarterly and distributed through email. It is also available on the APAC Website.
CHIEF EDITOR: Michelle Woo
DESIGN AND LAYOUT: Lyanna Cruz [email protected]
For advertising with us, please contact: Michelle Woo
Dear APAC Colleagues,
Team coaching, once only associated with sports, is becoming increasingly popular in the world of work, too. There is a growing realization that coaching is more valuable when it addresses not only the individual but also the systems that the individual belongs to. Individual performance is also dependent on the team environment, and sustainable change often requires the systems around the individual to support and reinforce new behaviours.
Whilst coaching teams, it is imperative that the coach spends quality time appreciating the complex organisational dynamics in which the team operates. Every team has its own dynamics, and the coach should understand it and be in tune with the many relationships within the team. Deep listening, authentic feedback, and artful questions from the coach will keep the team present to its ways of functioning. The coach’s maturity and courage will help the team confront shadows and look at issues buried under the carpet.
Coaches need to have a clear understanding of when the time is and is not propitious to coach a team, as team coaching may not always lead to transformation. If the team consists of a group of individuals who are not inspired by collective improvement or is led by a leader who is unable to accept the fact that he or she is part of the change, the impact of the coaching will be restricted.
In today’s VUCA world, team effectiveness is an important variable for success, emphasizing the need for team coaching interventions. Therefore, the need of the hour is for coaching organisations to focus on designing courses that will provide coaches with a better understanding of what team coaching is and the complex competencies that is required.
Cheers,
DR. ANNE DOLLY KUZHIMADATHIL APAC President
“The need of the hour is for coaching
or ganisations to focus on designing courses that will
provide coaches with a better
understanding of what team coaching is and the complex competencies that is
r equired.”
President Speaks
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CONFERENCE SPECIAL
APAC2019 Coaching in the Age of
Disruption and Innovation
Three Days at the APAC2019 Coaching Conference
When we started co-creating the design of the APAC2019 Coaching Conference more than a year ago, we wanted to bring in knowledge, wisdom, and coaching technologies from around the world. We are grateful to all of our 40 speakers that made this happen. With five keynote addresses over three days, six provocateur sessions, 26 immersive sessions, one panel discussion, one fireside chat, and world café sessions to engage the delegates on all days, this was surely a power packed event with world class content. Live music, dance, drumming, and live telecast surely made this a multimedia and multisensory experience.
Keynote Sessions:
The Conference Theme 'Coaching in the Age of Disruption & Innovation' was relevant in today’s times and our keynote speakers were experts in the area. Dr. David Peterson made the opening keynote through live telecast on 'The Future of Work and Role of Coaching; Where are we headed? How technology has disrupted the world and its impact on business, social and cultural milieu of the organizations and society.’
Dr. David Goldsmith in his keynote session spoke about the future of AI and its relevance & implications to us as coaches and consumers of coaching, while Dr. Lise Lewis brought some unique nuances about the likely impact of AI & automation for coaching & clients. Peter J. Reding spoke on 'A Coach’s Role in a World of Innovation and Disruption'. He laid emphasis on what remains
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vs Western paradigm in Coaching'. This brought out the paradigm of 'Knowing (more western thought) and being (more Eastern perspective)'.
Provocateur Sessions:
While Ben Croft brought ethical coach stories from Ethiopia, Dr. CJ Meadows talked about the phenomena of disruption and fusion in coaching. Dr. Siraya Kongsompong talked about Mindset shift for self-disruption, and Taruna Aggarwal shared the Fifth Benchmark Coaching Survey highlights. Srinivas Venkatram talked about coaching at scale, and Damian Goldvarg presented myths of coaching.
unchanged and how to nurture that. Magdalena Nowicka Mook shared her perspective as head of ICF on Coaching trends and challenges. Her lessons from around the world provided valuable insights to delegates, and it was much appreciated.
Panel Discussions and Fireside Chat:
The conference brought together a panel of experts representing business leaders from the world of business - Sanjeev Aggarwal, Viren Rasquinha, and Ben Croft. They deliberated on the role of coaching in the business world. This session was meant to present the client’s view on coaching and bring about the nuances of impact of business on coaching and what it achieved. They also shared stories of disruption and innovation from their respective worlds.
Some of the questions that the panel deliberated on were:
• How has the world of business changed in the last 10 years? In what way it has impacted the lives of executives and entrepreneurs?
• How has the world of sports changed in the last 10 years? How is technology disrupting the world of sports? How has it affected the lives of Sportsmen/women?
• Can we say that stress in the lives of an executive/sportsman has increased?
• In what way can HR support the agenda of business today? How does coaching support HR’s agenda?
• What can we learn as coaches from the world of sports?
• What can we learn about business to support the business through coaching interventions?
• Emergence of new learnings and trends
The Fireside Chat was one of the most invigorating experience as the theme of the discussion was 'East
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World Café:
This was a collective space to personalize the conference experience for delegates to explore their relationship with some of the topics relevant to them. This space was meant for each person to participate and contribute around a few compelling questions and thus co-creating new insights. This was the time to dive into their experiences and weave the fabric with richness of diverse voices. There was flow, movement, music, and a pinch of imagination. Cross-pollination of ideas led to surprising creativity and oneness in the group.
Feedback:
Some of the feedback received about the conference was:
• The personal connects and learnings that touched my heart. The structure and flow was well planned and organised. Adequate time for networking made it a bonus.
• Leon Vanderpol, Raghu Ramanathan, Srinivas, and Peter Reding’s work moved me ‐ The Sameness in the Diversity was beautiful to witness. Also enjoyed the World Café.
• Hearing from David Peterson and David Goldsmith (and chatting with David Goldsmith over lunch); team coaching case study session with Francis from Malaysia was great (experiential); Research report session with Tunde was also eye opening; hearing about WBECS Ethical Coaching work ‐ great example of innovation.
• Venue, Diversity of Participants, Presentations, World Café
• Meeting colleagues from around the world. Being able to participate as a speaker and hold a workshop that was well received. The hospitality and warmth of the organizing committee. The quality of the conference, venue, speakers, and participants.
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Immersive Sessions:
These were really the backbone of the conference. In an intimate setting with 30-45 people in the room, the speakers delved deep into their chosen subjects with insightful exchanges with the audience. An amazing range of topics got covered in immersive sessions, each session better than the other.
Tuende Erdoes’ session focused on coaching presence. Jo Birch’s, Damian Goldvarg’s, and Kimcee Mcanally’s sessions focused on group supervision. Rajat Garg’s session focused on disrupting yourself. Elena Espinal’s session focused on building skills. Leon Vanderpol’s session focused on awakening and transformation. Ashok Malhotra’s EUM framework, Kartik Vyas’s Yoga psychology model, and Raghu Anantanarayan’s Awakening Arjuna gave a completely new perspective about the paradigm of coaching. Catherine Ng and Gary Wang brought lessons from China that were informative.
Team Coaching was highlighted by Douglas Gerber. While Shiri Ben Arzi talked about medical coaching, Frances Penafort, Himashu Saxena, Pamela Siliato, Janaki Venkat, and Ashu Khanna talked about a diverse range of coaching areas through their sessions.
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People became mor e curious Lear ning and unlear nings
Clusters o f conversat ions Immersi ve sess ions
Adding to our awar eness I t was s lowly coming to the end o f the day Beaut i fu l transforming
dance per formance saw al l putt ing on the ir dancing shoes
the songs o f happy bir thday r everberated in the hal l di verse cul tur es and languages
co-cr eated cheer for Shir i t i r ed f ee t and body
but r enewed sense o f a l i veness and awar eness Fol lowed
Revolut ionize The coaching space
Br eak rules Burst a l l myths We coach doing and being o f the
Coaches Holding the polar i t i es
Between thinking and f ee l ing Discover ing se l f Who am I
What’s my pur pose Lif e i s at
At an edge o f chaos Its not just hardwar e and so f twar e But i t s hear twar e al l the way
As dance our way into endings New beginnings ar e be ing bor n
Never say good bye Ti l l we meet again
Sushma Sharma, OD consultant facilitator for the World Café, summed up the conference beautifully in a poem:
We came together People f r om far and wide Only one dr eam
To shar e and lear n To unrave l futur e
What’s needed for tomor r ow In a VUCA world Paying at tent ion to gurus
And guru within me How do we suppor t each other
Curios i ty, humil i ty and chaos To admit I don’t know What I don’t know
Standing at the edge Of new emer gent r eal i ty
Unpr edic table ye t se l f or ganiz ing We l i s t ened Wer e moved yet he ld on
Rooted to the essence o f our being Exchanging ideas and ins ights
Gr eat laughter at br eak t ime Meet ing glances with o ld fr i ends The day ended with f i r es ide chat
What a day i t was… APAC… FIRST day
Second day Recogni t ion and appr ec iat ion
Vague he l lo Changed to connect ion
Eyes met eyes Thr ough drumming The community came al i ve
Thr ough stor ies o f valour
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The conference ended with a powerful and emotional closing with the music and dance, goodbyes and warm hugs, swaying and flowing to the tune of 'Dhanyavad Ananda' (meaning thank you and totally blissful).
We hope, and it is our sincere and innate desire, that this is the beginning of an ongoing dialogue, an ongoing space for collaboration, innovation, and learning opportunities.
By Uma Arora. She is a leadership Coach and behavioral Scientist who specializes in helping individuals and enterprises build leadership capacity, enabling transformation and enhance performance of individuals & groups. She is the founder of Idam Learning, an India based firm focused on coaching, change and leader development and contributes to Research function for Asia Pacific Alliance of Coaches as Chair Research.
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APAC WAVES
“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress,
and working together is success.” - Henry Ford
It's fun. It's (often) expensive. It tends to achieve something.
But is it worth it? Is it the best investment for what you want to or need to achieve?
Team building had developed over the past decades into a sizable industry. There tends to be typically two general types of team building: indoor and more adventure-oriented outdoor programs. The formats, contents and delivery vary from provider to provider and so does the quality of these programs.
Typically, the most common expected outcomes from team building include:
• Stronger bonding of team members
• Energized and motivated team members, resulting to better cooperation
• Better buy-in and understanding of the idea of team work
While most team building programs tend to achieve these objectives at least to some extent, the question is if this is the most effective approach to achieve it? And how does team building fare when it comes to dysfunctional teams?
What is the alternative?
The End of Team
Building?
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In Asia, team coaching started to gain traction around 2010. Increasingly, progressive organizations realize the high impact of team coaching, especially with their top management teams.
How does it work?
Unlike in 1:1 or group coaching, very specific and innovative team coaching tools are deployed to achieve pre-defined outcomes with the ultimate purpose of increasing team productivity and/or team positivity.
For example, the top management team of the Asia headquarters of a larger European kitchenware company was experiencing a lot of conflicts, especially between three of their nine team members. They went for a team building activity and things seemed to improve at first, but within less than a month from that event, things were back to square one.
John, the leader of the team decided to give it another try, this time with team coaching. As a first step, the team coach had 1:1 meetings with each of the team members including its leaders to gain everyone’s perspective but also to prepare them for the team coaching day.
On team coaching day, one of the first activities was for the team members to work out the team purpose. Then, the team coach applied the team coaching tool ‘The 4 Poisons of a Team’ (Defensiveness, Blaming, Stonewalling, Putting Others Down). Each team member had to position himself close to a marker representing the poison she/he felt was most apparent in this team. Then every team member had to explain why they chose that poison and what made them say it is happening in the team, without pointing fingers to anyone or naming anyone. Then every team member had to walk around the four poisons again and stand close to the poison that they feel, if eradicated, would be most beneficial for the team. Each team member including the team leader had to make a specific commitment on what they will do to prevent this poison from affecting the team. These commitments were journaled and followed up about four to five weeks after the team coaching day. Team members journaled their commitments and followed up after four to five weeks. Some other team coaching tools were applied to further improve productivity and positivity of the team.
During the follow-up session, all team members, especially the team leader agreed that conflicts significantly reduced and that ever since the team coaching day, they have enjoyed working with each
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By Charlie Lang, Managing Partner of Progress-U Asia and CXO Coach. [email protected]
dysfunctions in a team. Team coaching has proven to be able to address such issues and to achieve lasting change.
other much more. Not everything was perfect, of course, but the change was significant.
For team coaching to work effectively, it requires
• A very capable and courageous team coach• A solid assessment of what’s happening• A systematic process (a one-off 1-day event
usually doesn’t cut it)• Effective team coaching tools that make it more
likely for everyone to speak up in a respectfulmanner
Team coaching well done has a very high return on investment, something that can’t always be said for team building. More importantly, while team building might work well as a ‘wellness program’ for any team (and there is nothing wrong with wellness), it tends to not really resolve deeper lying issues or
Understanding the Potential of Systemic Team Coaching
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High performing teams make around 20% more money for their organisations and recent International Coaching Federation (ICF) research shows that although the strong team cohesion needed to deliver high performance can be an issue at all levels, it is least likely to be found right at the top of organisations.
More specifically, the ICF research showed that teams in more directly customer facing roles are less likely to be coasting and most likely to be moving upwards in their performance. 37% of teams in customer facing roles were moving in an upwards direction, compared with 25% in non customer
facing roles, 33% of whom were classified as coasting.
That is worrying. People in customer facing roles tend not to be the ones setting the organisational strategy. They tend to be lower down in an organisation. Whatever happened to leading from the top and setting a good example?
If these senior teams are not high performing but coasting along, how can the rest of the organisation expect high performance and the success it brings?
Collaboration is key to performance
Corporate life is now more collaborative, faster paced and riskier than ever before, plus the idea of a ‘high-performance team’ has never been more relevant. Every senior team needs to consider a multitude of stakeholders and this is key to their effectiveness in the wider organisation.
Without a c lear mission and sense of common goals, a team is s imply a gr oup of people who work together.
As Patrick Lencioni famously said, “if you can get everyone in the organisation going in the same direction, you can potentially dominate any industry and market, against any company and at any time.”
This is even more true for the C-suite. Although individual leadership remains as important as ever, it prioritises working in a ‘vertical’, hierarchical way,
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whereas organisations today are horizontal. Senior management and C-suite teams need the skills to lead not just from the top, but across their organisations.
Traditional hero leaders, with an answer for everything and ability to solve any issue, are no longer as prevalent. Top teams now have to collaborate to achieve their corporate objectives.
Team coaching growth outperforms the rest
According to ICF research, team coaching is currently the fastest growing area within coaching as a whole. 70% of leading organisations say they intend to invest in team coaching over the next two years and at all levels.
Dr Peter Hawkins, professor of leadership at Henley Business School, writes that one factor behind this rise is due to what he describes as the ‘unholy trinity of challenges’ that companies now face. These are: increasing demands from stakeholders as a whole, greater expectations of quality and the diminishing availability of resources.
Customers, whether they are B2B or B2C, want the best possible value wherever they chose to invest their money into goods and services. And if they don’t get it, they won’t remain loyal. Clearly, team coaching is becoming an essential complement to existing one-to-one coaching for top executives.
Why take a systemic approach?
However, when talking working within a team, it is important to appreciate the difference between traditional and systemic team coaching. Most of the team coaching taking place within organisations focuses exclusively on a given team’s internal ways of working and their inter-relationships as a distinct unit.
Systemic team coaching does this too, but it also looks more broadly at the influences outside of the team group that may be impacting and should be influencing performance. The result of this approach is development of the skills and self-awareness to work at depth across the whole organisation, with a more collaborative, stakeholder-orientated focus.
By bringing the whole organisation into the framework when coaching systemically, teams also develop a much greater understanding of their overriding purpose. What is their goal in being a team? Who do they need to serve? Who are their stakeholders?
The more teams can be encouraged to broaden their immediate vision, the more effective they can be in delivering whatever it is they are expected to achieve.
Reflective performance
This ability to map out stakeholders and accurately articulate what these groups – employees, customers, investors, community groups, etc. - actually want is an important aspect of coaching systemically. It involves looking from the outside in and not navel gazing as a team, but understanding how effectively they are connecting with important stakeholders to serve a collective purpose.
The systemic approach also enables the team to understand why certain behaviours manifest inside their group and to interpret them as a sign of things happening in the wider organisational system, which is a microcosm of what is happening externally outside.
By thinking systemically and gaining a deeper understanding of how the wider organisational system may be influencing team attitudes and behaviours, coaching interventions are felt more widely and deeply, resulting in a much greater return on investment.
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By Helen Battersby, executive team coach at Aziz Corporate.
https://www.trainingjournal.com/articles/features/understanding-potential-systemic-team-coaching
The systemic approach will highlight impacts and stakeholders that team members may not have acknowledged to be significant previously. Described by Peter Hawkins as the ‘13th fairy’, these are stakeholder groups that may turn up late to a project and potentially make a lot of trouble – because they were forgotten in the first place.
When these important connections are not made, the ensuing situations are magnified. In some instances, the 13th fairy may also be an organisational team that is itself in need of coaching. Taking a systemic approach with teams elsewhere in the organisation will highlight this too.
Above all, a systemic approach reinforces the team’s primary purpose and clarifies what they are together to achieve. This is ultimately what defines a team, but it can too easily be lost, as pressures and deadlines mount.
Without a clear mission and sense of common goals, a team is simply a group of people who work together. The role of the coach is to help the team build their connectedness between each other and within the wider system, and learn how to work effectively together to deliver their purpose.
Participants enjoy focused learning support from dedicated tutors and a highly experienced delivery team throughout this deep, challenging and transformative 12month programme.
Not sure? Join our FREE introductory webinars.
For information and to join webinars contact Sam Fremantle CSA AP Programme Manager:
E: [email protected]:https://coachingsupervisionacademy.com/csa-diploma/csa-diploma-asia-pacific
ASIA PACIFIC
BOOKING NOW!
Diploma in Coaching SupervisionSingapore - starts February 2020
• 7 workshop days (February 2020 and October 2020);• 9 webinars;• tutorials;• 8 practice groups;• 5 supervisees (25 hours);• own supervision;• Pre-course book club.
CSA is a world leader in providing supervision training for coaches, OD/HR consultants and senior managers.
7th Asia Pacific Programme
Unleashing Collaborative
Creativity
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We are in a time of structural unemployment. Competition emerges from the constant disruptions of a VUCA world. According to McKinsey Global Institute, "Robot automation will take 800m jobs by 2030”. Human beings will have to constantly reinvent ourselves to survive through agility and resilience.
The only security lies within individuals and teams who align strengths and passions in a world demanding collaborating and co-creating futures. We will have to perceive relationships to be strategic and pro-active. Much will depend on our integrating sensing and intuition skills. We will learn to exercise critical values based on creative thinking, emotional empathy, and managing paradoxes.
As coach and mentor, what resonates with you about the challenges you and your clients face in respect of:
• How to compete and collaborate? • How to overcome mental blocks / self-limiting
beliefs to unleash creative potential?
• How to recognize unconscious biases and negative self-fulfilling prophecies, replacing them with belief in human potential and creating virtuous cycles?
• How to balance accuracy, perfectionism with need for agility, speed of response?
• For introverts, how to ‘spit it out’ when competing with extroverts for air time?
• How to live and breathe diversity and inclusion?
• How to optimize dissenting views for innovative thinking?
• How to enable individuals and teams to engage in functional versus dysfunctional conflicts?
• How to embrace and practice “failing fast, early and cheaply”?
• How to overcome risk averseness and fear of ‘loss of face’ which stand in the way of experimentation, failure, and learning?
• How to enhance strategic, political skills to navigate obstacles while still preserving values and authenticity?
• How to create climate and micro–cultures to promote and support innovation?
• How to sensibly disrupt one’s own enterprise before others do?
• How to keep up with rapid technological change and not be left behind?
• How to glide like a swan while paddling furiously below water?
Innovation requires collaborating with others to evolve products, services, processes that meet the sweet spot of DDR criteria: Desirable (will ingness to pay for i t), Doable (technological ly f easible), and Relevant (value add solution).
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• The 5Es of Experience Design (Entice, Enter, Engage, Exit, Extend)
• 6Ps to track seamless experiences (Pluses and Deltas, People, Props, Processes, Place, Partners)
The same methodology would work when coaching leaders on defining Personal and Leadership Brand and their impact on others. Leaders can either bring out the ‘best’ or ‘worst’ in people and design thinking methodology enables them to strategically and consciously provide positive, stakeholder experience.
Depending on the issues confronting clients at stages of organization development, the prospects for coaches and mentors in the age of disruptive innovation are tremendous.
We live in exciting times where 1000 flowers bloom. Rejoice!
Encouraging teams to ‘test’ their ideas against the DDR criteria enables them to differentiate ideas which are ahead of their time from those which can yield near-term benefits. Team members need not discard audacious ideas (OKR goal sett ing methods encourage these ) but can put them on the back burner until technological challenges are resolved. Prioritization provides focus for start-ups to generate disruptive solutions and respond to the clarion call for intra and entrepreneurship.
Design thinking ensures customer centricity in innovation. There are many tools that coaches use to stimulate and facilitate creative thinking. Encouraging design teams to pose high impact questions throughout the innovation process enables high quality customer research; extracting design principles, testing beliefs and assumptions, challenging perceptions of risks and what it takes to pitch to decision makers who vary in risk appetite and tolerance.
APAC can profitably apply Daniel Stillman’s 5Es and 6Ps Experience Inventory (https://gumroad.com/l/exp-inventory) to attract, engage, utilize members’ talents, retain and provide word of mouth promotion of value add, differentiated and compelling experience.
By Eliza Quek, First VP, APAC. Director, Terrific Mentors International® Pte Ltd.
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APAC COVER VIEW
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
- Dr. Seuss
Next up, we have a very interesting expansion of a book review by Bob Wrighton.
Introduction
The author, Francesca Gino, is a Harvard professor. She is a behavioral scientist which means she studies people and their behavior. This is an important field of study related to business, because as she points out in her Introduction, businesses the world over share one thing in common – they are made up of people. It is also an important field for coaches because most of their clients are people too.
Another thing that businesses the world over share is that they tend to be rules-based. While there is a need for rules wherever groups of people are expected to work together, she makes the point that rules can become stultifying, and can also become outdated [At the beginning of World War II, an artillery battery had one spare man, who seemed to do nothing during the actual firing of the artillery piece. It turned out that in the previous war, he had been the person who held the horses who pulled the guns from place to place, in case they got nervous during firing and ran off. When the penny dropped, this extra man was deployed elsewhere – Reader].
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Rebel Talent: Why it Pays to Break the Rules
at Work and in LifeFrancesca Gino, Macmillan, 2018
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The author sees rebels as those who question the status quo, asking why these rules are in place, or why things are done in a certain way. Or they even develop new ways of doing things which increase efficiency and productivity in the workplace. The rebels that Francesca Gino explores are positive rebels – they work to improve, they are not negative rebels who work simply to disrupt.
The research that she undertook for this book took her all round the world, and her experiences during the research are fascinating in themselves – a Harvard professor doing dishes in an Italian restaurant, for example?.
She identifies five ‘talents’ possessed by rebels: talents for novelty. curiosity, perspective, diversity and authenticity, and she devotes a chapter – each catchily titled – to each of these talents. And she finally identifies eight principles for rebel leadership, which she feels is necessary in most organization.
The main lessons to be drawn for managers are the value of rebels, identifying rebels and allowing them to work their magic rather than being squashed as dissidents and being told to ‘toe the line’.
CEOs should read this book with care (and I am sure, interest), as should HR practitioners and consultants. After all, if rebels can contribute to efficiency and profitability it hardly seems sensible to squash them, does it?
The importance of this book for coaches is that, as Francesca Gino points out regularly through the book, rebels can be a thorn in the side of managers – particularly those who still cling to the outdated command-and-control approach. They could easily be misidentified as problems because of their non-conformity, and I suspect that managers may turn to coaches to help get the answer to the question: What should I do about X, the rebel? Some ill-informed managers may even ask the coach for help in finding a way to get rid of X who has been pre-judged to be
a problem person. On the other hand, the coach may be asked to work with X the rebel to help him/her ‘fit in better’.
Coaches should already be aware that most management situations can be regarded as problems or opportunities. Francesca Gino sees rebels as valuable resources to be nurtured rather than problems who need to be got rid of.
A word of warning is needed, however. If the coachee has already prejudged the situation and sees the rebel as a problem, the coach needs to be very careful about how s/he works at persuading the manager to change his/her stance.
Allow me to share my story. I regard myself as a rebel in the field of HR, believing as I do that many current HR practices are well past their use-by date. My rebellious spirit almost lost me a good contract some years ago, when I was a good bit more impetuous that I am now. I had just started a long term contract with an Indonesian conglomerate, and was being briefed about the HR department and its operations by my new boss. He told me quite proudly that the company had an international recruiting initiative whereby he went to America each year to try to recruit Indonesians who would be graduating from prestigious US universities. He proudly told me that there were a number of new recruits coming in a few months, and that I would be used in the orientation course on which they would learn about how things were done in the company.
Without sufficient thought, I suggested that if these were fresh grads from leading universities, they should be right up to date with the latest trends in management, so they should be introducing existing managers to the new things they had just learned – to become ideas brokers in fact (though I didn’t know the term at that time).
He was unimpressed with my idea, and – perhaps not unsurprisingly – I was not invited to participate in
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that particular orientation program. I still think I was right though!
Rebel Leadership
In the penultimate chapter of her book entitled Rebel Talent, Francesca Gino makes some observations about rebel leadership and gives eight principles for implementing it.
Rebel Leadership for All
She suggests that anyone can be a rebel leader. You don’t even need to be in a position where you have staff reporting to you. She suggests that rebel leaders fight against the more natural human tendency to follow the status quo and stay in your comfort zone, accepting things the way they are without question.
She suggests that this can occur even in the way you dress, citing Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg as examples. She even offers research evidence that suggests that when people flout the dress code, they can be seen as more competent. She cites an example of her own when she conducted an executive seminar at Harvard in a business suit, but wearing pink sneakers!
From her extensive research, she proposes her ‘Eight Principles of Rebel Leadership’.
1. Seek Out the New
Rather surprisingly, she does not cite Henry Ford as a rebel leader, though he undoubtedly was. Apart from the innovation of the assembly line, Ford also paid his workers wages that were deemed excessive at the time.
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Probably because she is of Italian heritage, she does cite Adriano Olivetti when he took over from his father as CEO of the Olivetti Typewriter Company as it was in the 1930s. He gave two hours for lunch, one to eat and the other to ‘eat culture’ providing speakers and a company library to facilitate that end.
She also suggests that you investigate when something new or out of the ordinary happens, noting how doing this potentially saved race driver Juan Fangio from a potentially serious accident in the 1950 Monaco Grand Prix race.
2. Encourage Constructive Dissent
She explains how President John F. Kennedy learned from the Bay of Pigs fiasco – which led to the concept of ‘groupthink’ – and thereafter insisted that there must be disagreement in all meetings, and even formalized a process for it.
Dissent is something that many managers try to avoid, but this is not a sound strategy according to Gino, who proposes that dissent is not only advisable, but necessary if managers are to come to the best decisions. It needs to be controlled dissent, though. It is not an invitation to brawl. It could be as simple as appointing a devil’s advocate whose job it is to question the material during the meeting. For really major decisions, a more formalized debate on the issues involved may be useful, and questioning underlying assumptions is particularly important.
The key word in this principle is ‘constructive’.
3. Open Conversations, don’t close them
Gino notes: ‘The rebel keeps an open mind, understanding that communication drives insight and that closed conversations generally fail because they cut off contribution.’
She proposes the use of the ‘yes and’ approach used as the basis for improv comedy as the communication tool to keep conversations open.
This approach needs participants to accept a contribution to the conversation and add to it by saying ‘yes’ – which signifies acceptance – and then ‘and’ – which builds on it. Elsewhere in the book, she describes the experiences that she and her husband had while attending a series of improv workshops. She notes that this approach is used extensively at Pixar studios in developing their blockbuster movies.
4. Reveal Yourself – and Reflect
This principle is risky for the manager, who may want to keep him/’herself private. But Gino points out that the more you expose yourself – politely of course, not like the man in the raincoat – the more your staff can relate to you.
At time of writing, Mayor Pete, Peter Buttigieg mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has announced his run for president of the US in 2020. Mayor Pete is openly gay and has a husband, and this causes reflection. If he is a successful mayor, might he make a successful president? Does sexual orientation really matter? Recent events in New Zealand have thrown our prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, into high focus. Early in her time in office she gave birth, but has not hidden the fact that she and her partner are not married. This clearly does not make her less effective as PM.
By sharing information about oneself, a manager may find points of contact with his/her staff that were not clear previously. The reflection is probably more important than the revelation.
5. Learn Everything – then Forget Everything
This principle appears odd at first sight. The author got it from her favorite Italian chef, Massimo
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Bottura, who appears regularly in her book. It means learn as much as you can, but don’t get fixated on where you learned it from. Use the knowledge you gain to do something new and different – and better.
6. Find Freedom in Constraints
Constraints are often seen as restrictions and of course they are. But fighting against them doesn’t achieve much. This principle suggests that you accept the constraints and do what you can within them.
Consider the manufacture-to-a-price constraint, where you are tasked with developing a product that must be able to be sold for a certain maximum price, or the miniaturization process where a product needs to be made to meet certain size specs (Apple have used this approach very successfully as have motor car manufacturers).
Instead of thinking outside the box, you have to think within the box – but that entails thinking outside the box also.
7. Lead from the Trenches
On the surface this looks a bit like lead from the front, using a World War I analogy, but in fact it implies more than that. Gino suggests that effective leadership is only possible where leaders are fully aware of what it means to operate on the front line. It doesn’t imply that a general must lead from the trench, but it does mean that a general must know what it is like to be there. Some companies insist that their senior executive spend a certain number of days as frontline staff to keep them grounded. (Remember that during the research for her book, this Harvard professor spent time in the kitchen and waitressing in Massimo Bottura’s Italian restaurant.)
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By Bob Wrighton. He has been an independent management and an HR consultant since 1980, and more recently a freelance writer and editor. He is an ideas broker.
8. Foster Happy Accidents
A happy accident in this context is a chance meeting between two (or more) people who normally may not meet. Gino advises against separating executives from staff, suggesting common areas – like dining rooms – where staff bump into others from different areas and different levels whom they normally would not meet. From such chance encounters great ideas may come. She cites the common atrium area in Pixar headquarters where all staff must go regularly (the toilets are sited there!) to foster such happy accidents.
None of the Francesca Gino’s eight principles is unique to her, but by pulling them together she has provided a set of practical activities that managers can implement to facilitate innovation and creativity. Coaches should be aware of them so that they can feed them into discussions with their coachees to help build a rebel culture.
SPECIAL 20% DISCOUNT
The Center for Executive Education would like to extend to APAC Members a special 20% discount off the published price of the book “Transforming the Next Generation Leaders: Developing Future Leaders for a Disruptive, Digital-Driven Era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0)” published by Business Expert Press, LLC, New York.
The published price for the book on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Transforming-Next-Generation-Leaders-Digital-Driven/dp/1949443043 is USD36.95 for the paperback copy. It is also available locally in Singapore at Kinokuniya Bookstore at https://singapore.kinokuniya.com/bw/9781949443042 at the price of SGD54.04 for the paperback copy.
CEE is pleased to extend a *20% discount off the published price of the paperback version only* until December 2019.
If you would like to purchase the book, please email [email protected] and indicate "APAC" as the code for the 20% discount. An additional 10% discount is applicable for bulk orders of 50 copies or more. For orders outside Singapore, shipping costs may apply.
FOOD 4 THOUGHT
“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and
attended to with diligence.” - Abigail Adams
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The Tunnel
Source: https://upliftconnect.com/7-ego-dissolving-zen-stories-that-will-make-you-view-things-differently/
At last the tunnel was completed and the people could use it and travel in safety.
“Now cut off my head,” said Zenkai. “My work is done.”
“How can I cut off my own teacher’s head?” asked the younger man with tears in his eyes.
Zenkai, the son of a samurai, journeyed to Edo and there became the retainer of a high official. He fell in love with the official’s wife and was discovered. In self-defense, he slew the official. Then he ran away with the wife.
Both of them later became thieves. But the woman was so greedy that Zenkai grew disgusted. Finally, leaving her, he journeyed far away to the province of Buzen, where he became a wandering mendicant.
To atone for his past, Zenkai resolved to accomplish some good deed in his lifetime. Knowing of a dangerous road over a cliff that had caused the death and injury of many persons, he resolved to cut a tunnel through the mountain there.
Begging food in the daytime, Zenkai worked at night digging his tunnel. When thirty years had gone by, the tunnel was 2,280 feet long, 20 feet high, and 30 feet wide.
Two years before the work was completed, the son of the official he had slain, who was a skillful swordsman, found Zenkai out and came to kill him in revenge.
“I will give you my life willingly,” said Zenkai. “Only let me finish this work. On the day it is completed, then you may kill me.”
So the son awaited the day. Several months passed and Zenkai kept on digging. The son grew tired of doing nothing and began to help with the digging. After he had helped for more than a year, he came to admire Zenkai’s strong will and character.
DELIGHT STOP
“Live and work but do not forget to play, to have fun in life and
really enjoy it.” - Eileen Caddy
Riddles
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ANSWERS:
1. He wanted to die of natural causes. 2. Birthday candles
3. Clouds 4. You don’t knock on your own hotel room door. The
man did. 5. The wise son bought a candle and a box of matches.
After lighting the candle, the light filled the entire room.
1. A clever thief was brought before a king to receive his punishment. The king, feeling merciful, asked the thief how he would like to die. The thief told him, and the king let him go. What did the thief tell the king?
2. When it is alive, we sing. When it is dead, we clap our hands. What is it?
3. I can fly, but have no wings. I can cry, but I have no eyes. Wherever I go, darkness follows me. What am I?
4. A woman is sitting in her hotel room when there is a knock at the door. She opened the door to see a man whom she had never seen before. He said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I have made a mistake. I thought this was my room." He then went down the corridor and in the elevator. The woman went back into her room and phoned security. What made the woman so suspicious of the man?
5. An old man wanted to leave all of his money to one of his three sons, but he didn't know which one he should give it to. He gave each of them a few coins and told them to buy something that would be able to fill their living room. The first man bought straw, but there was not enough to fill the room. The second bought some sticks, but they still did not fill the room. The third man bought two things that filled the room, so he obtained his father's fortune. What were the two things that the man bought?
Source: https://riddles.tips/
APAC FAMILY
“Families are the compass that guides us. They are the inspiration to reach great
heights, and our comfort when we occasionally falter.”
- Brad Henry
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We would like to offer our deepest condolences to the family of Mark Hemstedt, who passed away recently. The coaching community has lost a valuable coach.
Mark Hemstedt, MCC, of Newfield Asia and Works Partnership, passed away suddenly on 9 Aug. I received this news with disbelief. He was too young to go. My memories of brief interactions with Mark were always positive as he was full of passion and enthusiasm for life and for coaching.
He was a great supporter of the Coaching Community in Singapore. In 2015 during the Coaching Week, I requested him to support the Symposium. He smiled and asked a few questions about what need was to be addressed. He listened patiently and said, "Yes, I will do this." Despite his busy travel schedule, he created and delivered a specially crafted workshop "Linguistic Reconstruction of Emotion" and had so much to share and had received a standing ovation from the participants. During the Asia Pacific Coaching Conferences (2010, 2012) and the Coaching Week (2015, 2016, 2018), he, along with his team, was there to support and interact with the coaches.
The Coaching community in Singapore has lost a friend, a Master Coach, and a great human being. May his soul rest in peace. Goodbye Mark, you will be missed.
By Jass Malaney, Executive Leadership Coach.
In Memoriam
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A WARM WELCOME to the (20) new members who joined us since the last APAC Voice in July to October 2019! We wish you a long and fruitful association with APAC!
Our SINCERE THANKS to the introducers as well! Thank you for supporting us in continuously growing this professional, diverse, learning, serving, and engaging community. Your help is highly appreciated!
Corporate Membership (3):
LOCATION NAME INTRODUCED BY
CHINA Ying Frances Yao Nicholas Wai
THAILAND Cristy Aphimonthol Salway Teoh Swee Lin
UNITED STATES Pamela Siliato Gary Wang
Individual Membership (17):
LOCATION NAME INTRODUCED BY
CHINA Mei Zhang Wu Yong Yi
Wei Hong Catherine Ng
Jack Wu Enrichment
Winston Wang Foo See Luan
Kristin Xu Eric Wang
HONG KONG Suzanne Silver
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Individual Membership (17) (cont.):
LOCATION NAME INTRODUCED BY
INDIA Saloni Singh Narayanan Shankaran
Punita Taneja Yogesh Sood
Karun Sharma Dr. Ajai Singh
Siri Khalsa Dr. Anne Dolly K
Ramakrishna Rao Narayanan Shankaran
Prasad Palav Narayanan Shankaran
Aditya Kuchibhotla
PHILIPPINES Steve Borek APAC representatives at an ICF event
SINGAPORE Thawanrat Laemsuwanchuen Jimi Potchanart Seebungkerd
Alice Leung Vuibert Laurent Vuibert
THAILAND Chanakarn Kachonseree Jimi Potchanart Seebungkerd
As of October 16, 2019, APAC has 161 current members.
12
17
1 3
16
30
7 71
912
39
1 1 3 41
05
1015202530354045
APAC MEMBERS BY COUNTRY
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JOIN US AND HELP APAC GROW! Share your benefits and recommend your colleagues to join us today! Share your skills and experience and become a sub-committee member! Contact us on [email protected]
! Coaching voice of Asia Pacific
! Unique regional community ! Professional development & support
! Pro bono coaching and R&D projects ! Newsletter – APAC Voice ! “Find a Coach” listing
! APAC Coaching Conference
FIND US ON: Website: http://www.apacoaches.org LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1957098
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/APACoaches Facebook (Members Only Group): invitation will be sent upon joining APAC
MEMBERSHIP RENEWAL By renewing your APAC membership, you are supporting APAC in giving impact to society through Coaching.
NO. OF CURRENT APAC MEMBERS
TOTAL: 161 members
Corporate6%
Individual94%
Hello Everyone! It has been an exciting couple of months for APAC! We have just completed our Mumbai Conference and our AGM as well! It was the first time APAC ever hosted a conference in Mumbai,
and we are encouraged by the feedback from participants. Our AGM saw the swearing in of a new batch of EXCO members happy to volunteer and serve APAC, bringing us to greater and better heights than ever. Welcome onboard, new APAC EXCO!
This issue of the newsletter is themed 'Coaching for Teams' as companies realize that in today’s world, collaboration is key to success. As a result, the demand for team coaching has been steadily rising in the industry. Team coaching is a more complex process than individual coaching and requires an experienced, agile coach to succeed.
I do hope that more research and companies will get into it so that the coaching industry can and will mature alongside the demands of the corporate coaching clientele. Please enjoy the articles that I have curated for your reading pleasure on this.
Have a lovely day ahead!
Michelle Woo PR Committee Chair, APAC
The Final Say
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