by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Business Owners, Leadership Development, Meetings, Team Manager Skills
I was very pleased to see an international expert on software development express the following clear insights into the types of workplaces my executive coaching seeks to foster.
Visionaries are designing organizations for collaboration. These firms remove the bottlenecks imposed by the strict hierarchies of the past. [In hierarchical firms] no one was being rewarded for taking the kind of risks that lead to innovation or other breakthroughs in performance which thrive in a climate of collaboration.
Knowledge workers spend a large proportion of their time seeking information, much of the rest making sense of what they’ve found, and relatively little time in applying what they now know.
Transitioning from a hierarchical way of working … requires letting go of habitual behaviors that may have worked well in the hierarchy, but no longer serve anyone when collaboration becomes a critical part of the work process.
…
[The result is] … humanized work with an emphasis on mastery of our craft, a focus on rapid learning and feedback, delivery of business value (sooner not faster), and close connection to customer needs (even ones the customers’ haven’t noticed yet).
…
— Diana Larsen on Agile Fluency,
Barriers to Agility &
the value of Open Space Technology
in InfoQ
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners
I am not a consultant. I do not create documents or deliverables.
I do not parachute in to do the job of my client or of their employees.
I do not press my advice on clients or try to make their decisions. (Click to read how a client describes being coached by Tony Mayo,)
I do not fix or cure people. I’m not a psychiatrist, psychologist, or therapist. (Read more on the distinction between executive coaching and therapy by clicking here.)
I am not an entertainer. My goal is not to have my audience enjoy my presentations, feel more comfortable or pleased with themselves, laugh at my jokes, or like me. I am only interested in coaching people toward causing lives they love.
Results matter. If what I do makes no difference I have failed.
I’m out to make people’s lives satisfying and fulfilling, to help them matter and have positive impact. I foster workplaces of humanity and prosperity by coaching the leaders of organizations.
I am an executive coach.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners
Reagan had been doing it for years. He understood an important distinction that [President] Johnson never grasped:
being in control and
being successful
aren’t always the same thing.
–Landslide: LBJ and Ronald Reagan
at the Dawn of a New America
by Jonathan Darman via Delancy Place
lyndon johnson and ronald reagan — 11/26/14.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Recommended Books
AT&T’s Bell Labs can be credited with inventing the 20th Century, having created the transistor, solar cell, trans-continental and trans-Atlantic telephone cables, and communication satellites, not to mention digital audio and information theory. How they did it is the story of The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner. Here are some excerpts.
On Vision:
AT&T’s savior was Theodore Vail, who became its president in 1907,… (p. 18)… His publicity department had come up with a slogan that was meant to rally its public image, but Vail himself soon adopted it as the company’s core philosophical principle as well. [16] It was simple enough:
“One policy, one system, universal service.”
That this was a kind of wishful thinking seemed not to matter. (p. 20)
…in any company’s greatest achievements one might, with the clarity of hindsight, locate the beginnings of its own demise. (p. 186). [See also on this blog, Your greatest strength is your #1 blind spot.]
On Management:
Measurement devices that could assess things like loudness, signal strength, and channel capacity didn’t exist, so they, too, had to be created— for it was impossible to study and improve something unless it could be measured. (p. 48).
“You get paid for the seven and a half hours a day you put in here,” Kelly often told new Bell Labs employees in his speech to them on their first day, “but (more…)
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, For Executive Coaches, Leadership Development, Quotes and Aphorisms, Team Manager Skills
It is rare indeed that people give.
Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is the system of reality in what they assume themselves to be. One can give nothing whatever without giving oneself – that is to say, risking oneself.
If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving.
–The Price of the Ticket:
Collected Nonfiction 1948-1985
by James Baldwin
Page 370
by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Business Owners, Team Manager Skills
Expanded 2nd Edition Now on Sale!
Tony’s short book on building community is now available
with an extra chapter and a guide to additional resources.
The new chapter is a simple, practical guide to building better relationships at work and at home. The focus of the book is the importance of compassion and authenticity, while this new section is all about implementation, with specific advice on how to be compassionate and authentic in your day-to-day life.
This expanded edition also includes links to recommended books and articles for further study and practice.
➤ Paperback , hardcover, and Kindle available on Amazon!
➤ Paperback and hard cover available on Barnes and Noble!
Audio version read by Tony Mayo also available.
To hear a sample click here for Audible or iTunes.
(more…)
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Leadership Development
This summary note, based on recent conversations with coaching clients, is useful for any business owner who has grown beyond finding and fixing and is ready for the next stage of development.
Strategic Leadership
Developing people is your primary work product.
- Empowering others by holding a space that calls forth excellent performance
- Being open to & on the lookout for ways the strategic leader is limiting other people’s development, e.g. rescuing and intervening.
- Remember to share credit and responsibility.
Expecting relevant, actionable reports rather than chasing answers
- Training and then trusting your people to report also supports their development, i.e., learning which events, changes, and data matter to leadership
- Makes visible who is up for responsibility–or not
Standing in the future
- Vision.
- Strategy
- Opportunities.
- Structures.
- Positioning.
The key is, more and more, stepping out of operations, perhaps by putting someone else in charge of day-to-day, even month-to-month operations.
by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Business Owners, For Salespeople, Leadership Development, Quotes and Aphorisms, Sales Techniques, Team Manager Skills
Everyone’s favorite radio station is WII-FM
What’s
In
It –
For
Me
Broadcast on their frequency and they’ll tune in.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Leadership Development, Quotes and Aphorisms
I have just read this and I want to share it with all of you as it describes the promise of who we are as human beings trying to discover identities for ourselves.
A few years ago in the Seattle Special Olympics nine people assembled at the start line for the 100m dash. This was an unusual bunch as they were all suffering from mental or physical handicaps. At the sound of the starters gun they all surged forward except one boy who fell on the asphalt, rolled over a few times and started crying.
The other eight up ahead heard the crying and all looked back to see what is happening. Everyone of them turned and ran back to the young boy. A girl with Downs Syndrome bent down and (more…)
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Leadership Development, Quotes and Aphorisms
When you judge people’s worth only by the results they produce you elevate people whose ends justify the means.
We no longer elevate people of character but people of ruthless results. We are abdicating our right to evaluate character or methods.
The exclusionary rule is a vestige of the character school of public morality. Dirty Harry is the blossom of the anything goes replacement.
Only the modern age’s conviction that man can know only what he makes, that his allegedly higher capacities depend upon making and that he therefore is primarily homo faber and not an animal rationale, brought forth the much older implications of violence inherent in all interpretations of the realm of human affairs as a sphere of making. (p. 228).
We are perhaps the first generation which has become fully aware of the murderous consequences inherent in a line of thought that forces one to admit that all means, provided that they are efficient, are permissible and justified to pursue something defined as an end…
…for to make a statement about ends that do not justify all means is to speak in paradoxes, the definition of an end being precisely the justification of the means and paradoxes always indicate perplexities, they do not solve them and hence are never convincing. As long as we believe that we deal with ends and means in the political realm, we shall not be able to prevent anybody’s using all means to pursue recognized ends. (p. 229).
—Hannah Arendt, 1906-1975, in
The Human Condition
German-born American political scientist and philosopher
See also Gandhi on ends vs. means.
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