Top Executive Coaching Newsletter Directory


The Business Owner’s Executive Coach, Tony Mayo has shared a great deal of practical information with business people since re-launching his free e-mail newsletter in 2008.
Here is a list of topics covered. Newsletter sample from Tony MayoJust click on any title to read more.

023 The Values of Anger • DeskVideo • PODCAST

023 The Values of Anger • DeskVideo • PODCAST

 


Click here for Tony Mayo's podcastA quick message from an executive coach on how to get value from your anger.

Just click here to listen now or subscribe on your device using Apple’s Tunes, Android, and other podcatchers to have this and all new episodes placed on your device as they become available.


Thanks to MusicOpen for providing public domain recordings of Beethoven.

TRANSCRIPT:
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Grow a Big Company by Keeping Your Job Small

 


 

These leadership insights from MCI founder Bill McGowan should sound familiar to my executive coaching clients and to readers of this blog.

 

INC.: You’ve taken a company from nothing and, in the span of 18 years, created a new industry and built a company doing almost $3 billion worth of business. How do you account for the fact that you didn’t allow the company to outgrow you?

McGOWAN: Besides the fact that there is no accounting for it, I suppose it’s because I realized at every point along the way that I didn’t need to be the person who had to do any particular thing other than make sure that the focus and direction of the company was clear, and that the forces and people were set in motion to get us where we were going.

I’m naturally a delegator. I guess I realized early in life that, (more…)

Berkshire’s Radical Strategy: Trust – NYTimes.com

 


 

Here is a top-level endorsement of a principal I have often voiced, most specifically in this popular post, Truth or Consequences? Beyond the Punishment Model.

“By the standards of the rest of the world, we overtrust. So far it has worked very well for us. Some would see it as weakness.” … Mr. Munger and Mr. Buffett argue that with the right basic controls, finding trustworthy managers and giving them an enormous amount of leeway creates more value than if they are forced to constantly look over their shoulders at human resources departments and lawyers monitoring their every move.

“We just try to operate in a seamless web of deserved trust and be careful whom we trust.”

Munger agrees with what I have called natural consequences, citing “late Columbia University philosophy professor, Charles Frankel, who believed ‘that systems are responsible in proportion to the degree in which the people making the decisions are living with the results of those decisions.’ …if you built a bridge, you stood under the arch when the scaffolding was removed.’”

 –Warren Buffett’s business partner
Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman
Berkshire Hathaway
Berkshire’s Radical Strategy: Trust – NYTimes.com.

Read more about the power of trust on this blog by clicking here.

 


 

The Courage to Create Community

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 Courage to Be in Community Expanded 2nd Edition

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.

Click here to “Look Inside” & see a sample on Amazon.

➤ Paperback , hardcover, and Kindle available on Amazon!

➤ Paperback and hard cover available on Barnes and Noble!

 

iTunes Spoken word version available on Audible

Audio version read by Tony Mayo also available.

 To hear a sample click here for Audible or iTunes.

 

 


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Poor Morals or Poorly Managed?

 


 

As I discussed in my popular article, Truth or Consequences: Beyond the Punishment Model, employers are too quick to act like cops with the result that employees respond like criminals. Here is more support for my advice, this time from a rigorous study of new restaurant software. Instead of using the software mainly to fire workers suspected of theft, all employees were made aware that the software was looking for misbehavior. The results were positive and–to those not familiar with my approach–surprising.

The same people who are stealing from you can be set up to succeed.

–Prof. Lamar Pierce
Washington University

“The savings from the [monitoring software’s] theft alerts themselves were modest, $108 a week per restaurant. However, after installing the monitoring software, the revenue per restaurant increased by an average of $2,982 a week, or about 7 percent.

“The impact, the researchers say, came not from firing workers engaged in theft, but mostly from their changed behavior. Knowing they were being monitored, the servers not only pulled back on any unethical practices, but also channeled their efforts into, say, prompting customers to have that dessert or a second beer, raising revenue for the restaurant and tips for themselves.”

 

How Surveillance Changes Behavior:
A Restaurant Workers Case Study
The New York Times

 


 

Get smarter by asking “dumb” questions




Mine was the Depression generation of journalists. Many of the best people were not educated. When I went to London as a sportswriter, I didn’t even know the difference between the Baltic states and the Balkans. But I learned the advantage of the dumb-boy technique. I found that people love to talk about themselves. You get more news by trust than by tricks.

But that is not a very popular idea with this generation. Because they went to college, they think that they know more than the guys who run the joint, and that’s a pretense that doesn’t work. Also they like big shots. I always felt that the way to gather news in Washington is at the periphery not at the center. You get it from the people who tell the big shots what to say.

 

James Reston
interviewed by Alvin P. Sanoff
US News and World Report

 




What Trust Is

5 Types of Trust


 

Trust is increasingly recognized as an essential element of successful personal relationships, effective teamwork, and large-scale commercial relationships. The amount citizens of one country trust the residents of another has even been shown to correlate with the amount of trade between the countries.

Evaluating the level of trust in a relationship is an often evaded and sometimes sensitive task. My work coaching top executives and facilitating work groups has taught me that the “trust topic” is much easier to discuss once we realize that trust has at least five constitutive components. Examining each aspect of trust, one by one, leads us to better judgments and more fruitful conversations.

  1. Sincerity
  2.  

  3. Capacity
  4.  

  5. Competence
  6.  

  7. Consistency
  8.  

  9. Care

When we say that we trust or mistrust a person it means that we have evaluated their:

1. Sincerity — Does what the person says match their internal conversation? Are they telling us what they honestly believe and truly intend? Once a person establishes a reputation for (more…)

The asymmetry of give and take

 


 

Boaz Keysar

The Great Recession has led many of my executive coaching clients to reduce 401(k) contributions, celebrations, work hours (through furloughs), and cut other employee perqs. These leaders often explain the reductions as prudent adjustments to avoid layoffs. Employees, unfortunately, are likely to react by becoming less trusting and cooperative with their employers, as this new research illustrates.

 

Although people reciprocate kindnesses proportionately, slings and arrows prompt bullets and grenades.

 

By Laura Putre

 

“Even something that is not so strong as a vindictive action—something simply perceived as a negative act,” [Professor Boaz] Keysar says, “escalates quickly.”

The researchers paired up participants for several games of give and take. In one a designated leader decided how much of $100 to give to a partner. In another, leaders decided how much of $100 to take from their partners. … Subjects in the study also consistently reacted better to receiving something than to having it taken from them, even when the gift left them with less money, say $30 instead of $50.

Leaders, however, thought they were being fair … “They did not anticipate,” Keysar says, “that the other person was going to perceive them as doing something negative.” What’s more, he discovered that as the game wore on, each successive round saw partners grabbing more and more as they alternated the taking role. Perceiving the takers as selfish, the participants became less generous.

How to avoid the retribution? This paper doesn’t say. Other research suggests laying out the facts for employees and letting them design the adjustments. People are much more supportive of changes they have helped create.

 


 

See also, on this blog, step-by-step conversation instructions with video here:
The Conversation Contract.