Blaming is easy.
Taking responsibility is hard.
It’s no wonder so few people actually succeed in real life.

photo credit: babasteve

It begins with the understanding of two different approaches. The first is the independent mindset, the second is the interdependent mindset.

In many cases, individuals who are brought up with the independent mindset think about themselves and consequences for them the majority of the time. Very often, people in this category are deemed as individualistic and uncooperative, and seldom have this intention of bringing out a win-win situation within a team.

Those who have been brought up in an interdependent environment (many Asian cultures experience this) on the other hand, experience things differently. Their decisions are often based on what the group decides to do. Hence, the amount of time spent on a collaborative effort tends to take a very long time.

It appears that people seem to prefer one over the other, when in reality, it is very difficult to justify a proper win-win for choosing one over the other. It is better to consider the benefits of flexibly being able to switch from one to the other when appropriate.

I recently encountered a trainee who had suggested in a class that training is a weapon used to control employees. He had an attitude that can be best described as “cancer” within his company. Fortunately, one of the surgeons happened to be one of his department members, who said that there’s nothing wrong with proper control, and absolute freedom is chaos. Yet another member in the audience suggested that the fact that this first trainee mentioned that “training is a weapon of control” itself is controlling. In many cases, such individualistic thinking exists and often requires a paradigm shift.

Building a solid team is not about getting people together for fun. It’s about getting people to go through difficult moments and still come out strong, if not stronger.

By learning to be independent and proactive, one can provide an interdependent arena for everyone to participate without having limiting thinking. The first participant I talked about eventually was fired for performance issues not related to the training. The second and third participant were eventually promoted – one within the company I trained, the other outside after he joined a new company.

It must mean that building a team is far more than being a body of people. It is about the maturity of thinking that an individual has to be able to command, connect and collaborate with others in a win-win fashion without having to give up individuality of choice. This wisdom can only come from post-event feedback that is received as a team. Everyone needs to take responsibility in order to move forward.

photo credit: gibffe

I’ve been asked by people in corporate training programs about how they should develop themselves in their careers and it strikes me as very surprising that companies, no matter how much they commit to developing their people, often fall short on a variety of factors, particularly in career development and progression.

Some organizations actually develop their top leaders but not their entry level staff because of the belief that there is little reason why they have to focus on their new staff. Mostly, it boils down to budget constraints and the need to focus on those who are creating the biggest value at the moment. Unfortunately, that’s an undeniable fact. Individuals, therefore, must step up to the occasion in order to develop themselves.

Here’s what you should do if you have just graduated and have not got a career development plan.

First, do a personality profile that focuses on your personality type (not traits). Personality typing is a far better and much more stable form of personality assessment than a trait based assessment because traits are affected by skills while type is not influenced much by skills. You need to know where you stand in order to do develop yourself.

Next, understand your organizational structure and the promotion prospects. In life, our paths are not really planned for us. It’s essential therefore that you learn how to plan your own progression and different ways you can reach your goals.

Next, identify the skills and capabilities required for you to achieve the next higher levels of promotion. These skills and capabilities are not necessarily the technical skills for the job alone. You often need to develop one or more of the following skills:

• corporate leadership, strategic thinking, business acumen
• team leadership, motivation skills
• sales and influence
• communication, empathy and rapport
• public speaking
• and many, many more

Eventually, once you have a list of all these, you still will need a coach to guide your thinking processes and your expectations for working within the corporate environment. For example, it is easy for someone new in a large organization to have unrealistic expectations of how others should respond to them. I’ve found that the naivety comes from an ideal mindset and a lack of preparation in taking on the working world, corporate politics and others’ expectations of you.

Therefore, it is important for the coach you select to be able to provide you this kind of support, share skills and seek opportunities to raise your capabilities and prove those capabilities to yourself.

For more information on career coaching in Singapore, click here.

I’ve discovered that really great coaches are not hard to find, they’re just hard to develop. They are a special breed of people who want to do the right thing for a noble (sometimes lofty or idealistic) purpose.

So what exactly is coaching in the first place? As a good coach, you need (i) experience connecting with people you can help, (ii) looking for patterns of behavior that can help them move toward the direction of their choice, and (iii) resolve limiting patterns of behavior by looking for resources they already have, which they could missed.

Here are some competencies of a good life coach.

1. Identifying desired outcome of a client.

A good number of clients have absolutely no idea what they want. Either that or they are confused with the choices before them. A good coach must be able to understand their clients well enough to open up possibilities to them.

2. Uncovering the limiting patterns in a client.

Everyone has limitations. In the case of your client, they may face limitations in various areas including emotional, knowledge, strategy, behaviors and even communication. To be able to identify these patterns, a coach must be prepared to detect similarities across contexts.

I was listening to one of my clients who had told me that his dream was to become a wealthy business owner. The interesting thing is that when asked to describe his immediate environment, he said that the place was disorganized and messy. In parallel, I asked if the immediate environment reflected that of a wealthy business owner, and he said “no”. Instead, he recognized that his state of mind was messy, just like his environment.

It is cases like this when you can see the pattern of something being “just like the other” where you can draw a parallel and discover new patterns of behavior and understanding.

3. Dealing with resistances.

There will be clients who pose a conscious or unconscious resistance when working with them. Coaches need to find the best possible way to connect and handle the resistances that are presented to them. Conscious resistances may indicate that there could be unconscious agreement, and unconscious resistances may give way to unconscious disagreement.

I find that sometimes, the more a person resists consciously, that energy is moving in one direction that can be utilized. As an example, saying “I’m not stubborn” in a determined or stubborn manner may be useful to reveal resources that are not in their conscious awareness.

So I would be naive to believe that I can fill up all the life coaching essentials in such a short post. I’ll definitely add more as I continue to groom more life coaches to support the growth of people in the world today.