Three Coaching Traps and the Egotist Executive

Executive coaches can toss out their normal play book when taking on the Egotist executive client In fact, effectively and productively coaching the ardent Egotist is a steep challenge that many executive coaches are ill prepared to tackle. There are three distinct traps coaches may get caught in while working with the Egotist. These traps can hinder, or even ruin, the coaching relationship and progress.

The first trap to be wary of is that while good news sells, it is not enough. While developing and leveraging a leader’s best strengths and talent is a pivotal part of the executive coaching process in many instances, focusing predominately on strong suits alone with the Egotist executive can be counterproductive.

The second executive coaching trap is that the inherent nature of the Egotist is to reject negative feedback. Candid criticism, and anything less than glowing reviews, is not something that Egotists accept easily. Their sense of being uniquely superior and gifted is naturally at odds with these critiques. The CDR Risk Assessment describes that the Egotist leader

“is self-centered, has a sense of entitlement, takes credit for others' accomplishments, is viewed as a hard-nosed competitor, has a sense of superiority, and expects to be looked up to.”

The third problematic trap is the lack of essential baseline data collection early in the executive coaching process. When working with limited data, executives are provided only partial, potentially skewed, and superficial findings.

Clever and manipulative Egotists are adept at dismissing easy-to-mold, incomplete data. 360 feedback is not enough. It is important to have personality characteristics, risk and motivational data to get a clear reading on why behaviors manifest they ways that they do. Then, along with 360 feedback, there is no wiggle room for the Egotist.

Is Your Executive Coach a Help or Hindrance?

Many executive coaches are overpaid and underperform. Unfortunately, many of the best known and highly compensated executive coaches waste a great deal of time, energy, and client resources. While they may provide ample opportunities for leaders to confidentially explore issues and observations, discuss goals, and brainstorm, often these services do not get to the root cause of performance behaviors and inherent capabilities. Without getting to the crux of these behaviors, the coaching dialogue often does little in the way of producing tangible results. Often, coaching session dialogue includes traditional information exchanges and stays within what feels most comfortable. While the executive goes through the motions, little or slow progress is made towards accurately identifying matters of real consequence.

What are your thoughts and experiences?

Posted especially for vocal sports enthusiasts...

Risk Assessment Quiz Question:

What CDR Risk Factor does this cartoon depict?

(Those of you with low Amusement & Hedonism scores may wish to ignore...)










(Answer: Upstager)

Can You Teach Empathy?

Here is a question that was posted on an ASTD LinkedIn board the other day. A couple of training consultants disagreed with my comments and the the entire post was taken down last night.

The Original Post: It's always been our thinking that you can't teach empathy, but it seems to be harder and harder to find applicants who can actually demonstrate it. What do you think?

My response:

Great discussion.

I have a couple of points to add. Inherently, some people have high levels of empathy some have very little to none. In terms of normal personality (i.e., not dealing with sociopaths or clinical disorders), there are suitable jobs for both characteristics. Obviously, in leadership, some level of empathy and the ability to demonstrate this trait with sincerity is critical to building and maintaining relationships.

On the other hand, there are many other positions where the lack of empathy can be essential and productive. Think of: prison guards, special ops in the military, IRS auditors, state highway patrolmen, morticians, etc. These positions are generally better served with individuals who have very low empathy. This is because they do not allow emotions or feelings to interfere with their objective decision making – which in some cases can mean the difference between life and death. In other words, they are hard-nosed, task focus and look at facts and situations, not at how people will be immediately impacted. This helps them not be hit with a sucker punch, a con, or a sob story that will detract from their performance and ability to take control of a difficult or dangerous situation.

Most professions require a moderate level of empathy to be successful. High empathy is frequently found in the more nurturing roles such as: nursing, teaching, child care, social services, and the like. In leadership roles, very high empathy can be a negative in that these leaders frequently have trouble giving timely, candid feedback and they may often sugar coat their comments. Obviously, when this happens, the employee doesn’t get the needed critical insights that would be helpful.

Even in sales positions, you may want an empathic or a non-empathetic candidate. While high “Sociability” is required – extraversion and the ability to meet and greet well—empathy is another matter. For relationship sales, where the sales associate will need to maintain a positive, ongoing relationship with a customer, a sufficient level of empathy is a must. However, for “cold calling sales” which calls for those who can take rejection easily and keep moving on, low empathy is needed. In these type of positions, there is no need to maintain relationships once the deal is made. (Think of used car sales types…) Actually, if a sales person who has a great deal of empathy is placed into a “cold calling role”, they will fail and waste too much time with each prospect or customer to be efficient.

Often, social skill or “charm” is confused with empathy. These are quite different constructs. Think of the charismatic politician who really is a cold fish when it comes to empathy and true concern for others. They love to talk at people and tell their stories and seek center stage, but then want to go away as soon as they are done talking. They thrive on talking at – not with – people.

We measure these “traits” and help right fit people according to their empathy and numerous other factors to help best-fit them into roles where they will be most productive and successful. So, the degree to which someone has or does not have empathy is not necessarily a good or a bad thing in and of itself, it depends on whether or not each person is placed into the right fitting – or suitable -- job role.


Then -- a post came back with:

Nancy:
I am curious how you arrived at some of the conclusions stated in your last post. People in the military (or the highway patrol, another example you cite) who may be called upon to respond instantly with deadly force do not, for the most part "lack empathy." You also give examples of sales roles where you appear to believe low empathy would be an advantage. I am at a loss to understand how you think this would be good for either the employer of these salespeople or for their customers.I have personally served in both of these roles.

The best soldiers (or Marines, in my case) and the best salespeople - whether in relationship-based or transactional, cold-calling environments, were invariably those who cared about other people -- who had "high empathy" and, in the right circumstances, demonstrated it readily. I had one, single example of a salesperson in a cold-calling environment who had low (if any) empathy. He lied compulsively, tricked and deceived customers and internal employees alike, and was utterly indifferent to the concerns of others. When this became apparent, I fired him immediately, of course. But not before he damaged the reputation of the business and alienated a number of our customers.The ability to regulate our emotions, and the self-awareness that allows us to do so, is important to people in practically any profession. This is also true of empathy.


And, I responded,

I arrived at the conclusions based on our extensive assessment data and validity research. We use this data to screen candidates in and out of given jobs based on what correlates to successful performance – so the measures are solid. This is used for external selection screening as well as internal promotional/succession planning decision making.

Low empathy, or compassion, can be a benefit – it can also be problematic depending on what job role one is serving. Or, it can be a non-factor in some cases – again, depending on what the job role is.

Also, scoring low on empathy does not necessarily correlate to “lying, tricking and deceiving.” You may have a low empathy person who is forthright, honest, and acts with the highest integrity. They may be a loner and just not inclined to work in a “team” environment. They may be highly productive and effective – in the right role. For example, research scientist who works in isolation may not be someone you want to hang out with or go to lunch with because of their low empathy, yet they may be brilliant with their breaking ground work.

A low empathy person could, as you noted, also have other negative characteristics. However, high empathy people may also have these negative traits and may be harder to spot. There are, for example, back stabbing, phony, and egotistical people who may charm the socks off of you, while they proceed to attack you or damage you or the team in some way. So, empathy, is not the only or primary lever to dishonest or delinquent behavior.

I agree that self awareness is important to everyone. Again, self awareness does not equal empathy – it is a different set of traits we measure to assess “self awareness” (Adjustment, No Regret, Egotist to name a few scales.) Even if someone has low empathy, self awareness is important so that this individual can pay attention to how their lack of concern for others is impacting performance and communications with others. Having low empathy is not excuse for bad behavior. Rudeness or inappropriate comments or outbursts should not be tolerated.

While most of us prefer to work with people who are warm, supportive, and empathetic, not everyone is hard wired this way and they can still bring tremendous gifts to the organization. They may bring ideas, humor, wit, practical resolve, determination, courage, and many other valuable traits. They may help prevent us from making decisions based on too much “emotion” rather than logic.

Last, when we get into these discussions, we frequently debate issues more over the semantics than the issue. We define and measure as empathy as a clear subscale trait – you, on the other hand, may be including additional characteristics or commonly found traits that frequently accompany the “low empathy” trait.

I’ll throw another one out there for fun…There is a difference between “intensity” and “achievement orientation.” We have had clients who thought these competencies were one in the same. Any takers on this? (Maybe this is another post discussion.)

Thanks for the discussion and comments.

Nancy

Then, the sarcasm began... and next the string of over 60 posts was gone!

Your comments are welcomed!

Are leaders "born" or "developed"?

This question was asked on a LinkedIn post on ASTD. Here's my response:

You can’t teach fish to fly. Once a person is a working adult, their hard wiring is set. Unfortunately, too many organizations try to “train” people to lead. Even those with an MBA from the finest schools may or may not possess leadership traits.

In our assessments, one of the base line scales we measure is “Leadership Energy.” This is the first hurdle in identifying leadership capability. In order to have a pulse in leadership, one needs to score from the mid-range to a high score.

Jared Sandberg, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, took our assessments and had a coaching feedback session. For his article research, he took two other companies assessments and had feedback. Both of the other companies told him he had leadership potential or capability – it just needed to be developed. Mr. Sandberg reported in the article, I put it to him gently – telling him that he had none. He then self reported scoring only 6% (out of 100%) on Leadership Energy. He commented that he thought I was right because his dog wouldn’t even listen to him. Mr. Sandberg is a highly accomplished investigative journalist – and that is his best-fit calling. (Article: “How I Survived the Tests That Introduced Me to My Inner Executive,” WSJ, March 10, 2004)

So, while individuals have certain predispositions and temperaments at birth, their personalities evolve from infancy through early adulthood. The key for training professionals is to measure or identify the individual capability, strengths, risks and motivation and then develop accordingly. Too many organizations never accurately measure ones' personality traits and waste millions of dollars annually trying to develop the wrong things or by just throwing generic training out there – hoping something will stick. Again, you can’t teach fish to fly but you can help people to soar when you honor and help them develop according to their inherent strengths and gifts.

Nancy

(copies of the WSJ article are available on request.)
nparsons@cdrassessmentgroup.com
www.cdrassessmentgroup.com

Choosing Assessment Tools Wisely

Personality assessment is useful for describing an individual on characteristics which can not be directly observed. Behaviors are visible to people, but the reasons behind them and the motivations for them are not observable. Psychological assessment results provide a vocabulary for describing propensities and a view of the “whys” behind the behaviors. This information sets the stage for more effective employee and manager selection, succession planning, team building, and professional development.

So how does one determine the validity of a personality measure?

First, there is what’s known as the test-test validation process which correlates scores on an instrument with other instruments. These test-to-test correlations are conducted with instruments that are hypothesized to have similar or related constructs and with instruments that are hypothesized to be unrelated. For example, the process of validating the Character Assessment included having subjects take the Character along with the ASVAB, PSI Basic Skills Test (both should be unrelated), Myers-Briggs, SDS, Interpersonal Adjective Scales, Big Five Factor Markers, and the MMPI-2 (all of which should have some relationship to the measures). These analyses resulted in correlations that confirmed hypothesized relationships.

The next level of validation should include correlations between test scores and relevant non-test indicators—such as actual performance ratings. This step is taken to validate (confirm or not) whether the instrument accurately measures the predicted behavior and the impact on performance. Using our assessment, those who have high scores on the CDR Character Assessment “Adjustment” scale and a high CDR Risk Assessment “Egotist” scale will generally have higher self-ratings on 360 performance reviews. This translates to people who have higher opinions about their own performance in comparison with the perceptions of others. Thus, the correlations will be higher between these scale scores and the resulting behavior ratings.

The validation process should include statistical analyses using a variety of non-test indicators and performance results. In addition to performance reviews, other examples of non-test indicators may include: sales results, customer retention, customer complaints, accidents, turnover, errors, etc. We can provide summaries of this analysis or actual sample validation studies conducted for clients.

When evaluating personality assessment measures or styles inventories, it is important to determine whether the assessment authors performed only the first level of validity analysis, i.e. test to test, or, also validated the assessment results through correlations with actual performance behaviors. The test development process determines the applicability of the assessment results to workplace decisions. Only valid and reliable tools, as determined through the test development process, are valid for selection decisions. In other words, valid measures correlate to actual results.

~Kim

CDR Business Updates...

...on June 10 & 11th, we're hosting an Executive Coaching Certification Workshop in Tulsa -- so any late comers need to contact us at 918-488-0722 or ilenoir@cdrassessmentgroup.com This is a great way to leverage your existing practice with unmatched tools and support behind the scenes.

...on June 24th, (1:30 to 2:30 pm CT) we are hosting a complimentary webinar introducing "myLADR". This proprietary session provides an online tour introducing you to this one-of-a-kind advanced personalization front-end for any Learning Management System.

MyLADR begins with comprehensive individual assessment and coaching feedback. Once individual coaching feedback is accomplished, the system is designed to link to key competencies and populates each employee’s Individual Learning & Development Plan. The competencies are mapped to online, classroom and other available (internal and external) learning resources. The system makes suggestions, provides for interaction and choices and approvals, produces management reports and budgets and tracks individual, department and organization development activities. Also included in the system are required learning segments such as orientation, ethics, harassment, etc. This is a custom micro-to-macro system that carves out individual learning plans linked to business needs and competency requirements. The system is ideally suited to provide reports for succession planning and development activities.

This is an invitation only complimentary tour of the Learning Personalization system we developed for the Department of Defense which we now, with our partner companies, are introducing to private industry.

This can be a great service that CDR certified independent coaches can offer to their clients as well. Remember, the upfront portion of this service requires individual coaching.

Contact India Lenoir at ilenoir@cdrassessmentgroup.com if you have interest or call us at 918-488-0722.