Maybe the title gives this away, but maybe not. With Coaching-style Leadership, there are still times when more directive leadership makes the most sense. Speaking at the HR program I mentioned a few days ago, there were a number of professional coach trainers in the audience. One who is totally committed to coaching as the best solution for all situations took me to task on this after my presentation, zeroing in on this one comment.

I’d said there are times when command and control is still the most appropriate style – and used an example of a sinking ship where you want the person who knows best what to do to assume control and direct the best actions for everyone, the more firmly the better – no panic, life jackets, lifeboats, line up here!

The coach trainer insisted that even on the Titanic, if the captain had coached, everyone might have been saved. In fact, it would undoubtedly have led to a better outcome if the captain had coached the crew sufficiently before the emergency so they knew how to take charge, but I can’t honestly see the opportunity to coach once the iceberg was hit. If you think about the coaching process and questions, is it really an appropriate time to ask people “how’s it going, what do you really want, what should our strategy be, what needs to be different and what will we do now?” Or do you hope the crew lines people up firmly, guides them into lifeboats and tells them how to launch?

The one antidote to panic is clear confidence from a leader who remains calm and balanced and seems to know what to do when you don’t. This is true for any situation, but in true emergencies, it can take a pretty directive leader to convince people. Once things are underway, you hope individuals will take initiative and you may be able to coach that once everyone’s in boats and away, but in those first stages of crisis finding the right balance of command first before coaching seems wisest.

Marcus sure gets mentioned a lot both by those who agree you shouldn’t waste time trying to change your weaknesses, only work on strengths and those who strongly dispute that. If you’ve followed my posts you may guess I believe in doing both! That’s the Zen answer. But which ones when and how much?

A key function of Human Resources is trying to get people hired or existing ones moved into jobs that fit their strengths. Buckingham would be right in thinking I’d be wasting my time aiming for the Olympics, definitely not in my strengths. But every athlete or manager who legitimately wants his or her role and has talent still has “weaknesses” to work on. It would make no difference to me if my biggest problem in the 100 meter dash  was my start, but for those who win or lose by microseconds, knowing their weaknesses and working on them is huge. And to suggest they not bother would be completely wrong.

So, should we only work on strengths – no way! But starting with strengths and working on them as well as what makes them weaker than they could be is essential. Since studies show the lowest rated skills for most leaders are all aspects of working with people (versus things), we clearly need to promote those with inclination and relevant ability, but we also need to work hard to ensure they get exposed to experiences that help them grow people skills.

Tips: How to choose what to work on

Ideally trial and error and solid self-reflection have landed you in a job you like a lot. (If not, figuring out what you really prefer is priority #1.) Then, to get better at what you like doing:

1.    Try to evaluate and especially ask others for their opinions of your strengths and weaknesses for this work. Take time to assess accuracy. Don’t be reactive to emotional issues about these and don’t take anyone’s first word, especially your own.

2.    Work on your three or four biggest strengths… by looking at your weaknesses in those areas, planning a strategy to improve them and consistently doing a bit each day whenever they come up. Set reminders for yourself or you’ll forget.

3.    Then look at your two or three biggest weaknesses. Really look. Some may not be as bad as you think; others are worse. Be aware you have a couple of approaches – first, get someone else to do those things instead (a team member, co-leader, spouse, etc.). Figure out how to be great without ever doing these. Don’t let yourself be tempted. Pamper the people who do this for you so you’ll never have to. …But also… decide on one, just one, weakness you really, really, really want to change. Create a plan and work on it every day, asking people continually how you are doing and asking for their help and suggestions. Make this into a daily habit of practice. In a few months or a year or two, evaluate your results. Chances are you’ve made enough progress (and built some continuing habits) that you can choose a second miserable area to work on. But expect to keep working on these for the rest of your life. They will never come entirely naturally.

4.    Periodically assess your results and the balance between work on strengths and weaknesses, not letting either completely absorb your energy – do both. The proportion of time you spend on each is a balance only you can decide.

The bottom line is you can’t easily change weaknesses, but you better know what they are and have a strategy to prevent them de-railing you. Over time you can certainly improve some of these areas, but only if you work hard on one at a time and choose only those you really want to change… and then persist, persist, persist. For me this has meant a lifelong drive to get over feeling shy. I’ve developed tons of behaviors that work most of the time, but there are still areas where my original habits continue to affect what I do and unless the day ever comes that isn’t the case, I’ll keep this in mind and keep working away at little bits.

Today’s Training Zone (UK) item about pros and cons of blogging (free registration) drew the main opinions - it can be good for marketing, certainly for self-reflection by the writer, but nay-sayers cite their lack of time (and a wide-spread belief that it’s a vanity thing).

The larger question is who reads blogs and do they help? Clearly most of the people writing business blogs intend them to help and most must believe at some level that they do. Vanity undoubtedly drives a lot of short term efforts to get seen on the Internet, but to stick with it year after year, disciplining yourself to write two or three or more times  a week on your subject takes something more than vanity, especially if few ever read or comment on the majority of what’s out there.

Why bother? Of course some derive solid marketing benefits. I doubt that I will. I’m not great at marketing in any forum and see that a more of a by-product of the real question. For me that is… can blogging about leadership really help?

In organizations over the year, my most startling observation is there are so many people talked into leadership roles, for the money, the power, the prestige, the challenges and on and on, who have no training, no real inclination to lead or much knowledge of what its about at least when they start. In some ways perhaps that makes sense because leadership is best learned by doing. But lots of people never learn, which produces pain and misery for vast masses of employees, co-workers and organizations themselves so to speak.

The hopeful fact is that the best approach to leadership is extremely basic, human and easy to follow. Conversation about it can help. For me, I haven’t fully been able to figure out the best way to say it or develop those conversations widely. This medium may work. Only time will tell. It’s a new way to feel that I’m making the effort. As time goes on the results will enhance reflection and perhaps jointly the blogging community will ultimately identify what creates value and how. Right now it’s a bit of the wild west.

Sometimes ideas seem to converge because human behavior and human expectations are pretty consistent in every area. J. Ragsdale Hendrie writing about hotel HR and performance in Hong Kong-based on-line travel publication ”4Hoteliers” points out the need for HR to be more long-term strategy oriented - and to market more in-house what they can do for their organizations.

McKinsey & Company in their latest weekly points out long term recruiting strategies are necessary in China to overcome growing shortages of managers - an external marketing challenge.

Susan Abbott who runs an excellent blog on marketing and branding points out in her newsletter today that for a group to be effective they need to keep focused in for the long term… stick to the strategy.

And finally, Sherrill Burns of Culture-Strategy Fit Inc. emphasized in a presentation this morning that a strong culture makes HR work - and that requires a long term, consistent marketing strategy focused on getting everyone step by step into the same cultural mold and keeping them there.

The message? People don’t just work superbly together by accident. There needs to be a strategy, clearly focused and consistently pursued, to make that happen. It’s simple enough, but so few organizations manage it that the ones who do win awards. Sherrill brought along the President/Founder, Pat McNamara, of one such award-wining model company, APEX, a 32-consultant PR/issues management firm with remarkably low turnover for their industry, achieved by internal marketing to their staff - which enables them to use that as a powerful selling feature with clients and thereby earn exceptional returns.

Awarded “Best agency of the year” twice in a row, Pat has also been named one of the Top 100 Women Entrepreurs. One of her comments - “it takes a lot of time - more than you ever expect - to engage every single person, but it’s absolutely worth it.” They turn business away to keep the positive culture and people’s lives and sanity intact. And make enough money to give perks like an extra five days off in an employee’s fifth year and a month paid sabbatical in the eighth. Sticking to those policies requires commitment… long term. The message - basics: long term, strategy, commitment, consistency and marketing internally as much or more than externally… if  you want happy staff and great results!

Often when you’ve had a chance to sleep on it, some remark you’ve made the day before seems incorrect (that’s the polite word) or maybe just dumb.

Yesterday I suggested that "multitasking" would be OK if you’re working to help people become better while also working toward an objective was an exception to the rule against trying to do two things at once. That’s not what I intended, I see in retrospect.

In fact, it’s better to say you should look for ways to achieve two ends at the same time with the same, single action. By helping others improve, you get work done - through them, with them and even on your own as you model for them how they could approach things. It’s a way of working and thinking about work that ultimately produces better results in every situation.

It really isn’t a "multitask" because you’re not stopping to help them and then stopping that to go back to work, you are doing both together, sometimes working alongside them on a problem, sometimes on your own, but with the objective that your work will help them move forward in some way.

Of course, we can’t avoid distractions. They happen all day long inevitably. But we can avoid distracting ourselves by attempting multiple tasks at the same time. Everyone gets caught up in the sense of urgency and the layering on of one new demand on top of the last.

We have to catch our breath sometimes and say stop the roller coaster, let me sort out what to work on first, second and third and then do those in that order… without trying to do every task simultaneously. If the goals of every task include how this improves things for people as well as achieves results, we’re on the right track. If we can’t see how, we need to rethink our approach to it until we find a better strategy for it.

Networking expert Michael Hughes wrote a comment in a newsletter that captured a key insight. It isn’t only New Year’s Day that produces resolutions. I always resisted that idea. After all what’s different about one day, just because it’s designated as the start of something.

Rather it’s the combination of a designated new start following a substantial mental break with the preceding grind and what you do after that. The elements work best when the work together.

Mentally we think "the old can be left behind at least partly" and "we have an accepted point at which to start something new," where, for instance, sales people begin with a fresh set of goals, a blank page. There’s nothing they can change about the past, but mentally a "do over" opportunity appears.

Whatever different stresses the holiday season presents - last minute shopping, more family than you see all year, special efforts for parties, celebrations, dinners and possibly travel - the new stresses ensure time for the old routines to fall into a bit of perspective.

You can think in terms of a "do over" each day, too, as Mark LeBlanc, outgoing President of the US National Speakers Association captures in his book, Growing Your Business (reviews at bottom of the linked page).

It’s a great idea for tasks with targets like selling or losing weight - do just one thing each day. Get into a habit. Don’t beat yourself up if you didn’t do it one day, but make sure you do that one thing TODAY. Don’t feel you have to "catch up" and do two today. The goal is simply to get into the pattern of one per day until it feels comfortable, you know where in your typical days to fit it in and it starts to get done regularly.

One sales call a day, or one task on some project you need to get done (sending out those resumes?) or one step in building a strategy (signing up for or scheduling training?) or implementing an idea. One-a-day. 

Even Jerry Seinfeld says, "Mark each day on the calendar when you do that one thing. Don’t break the chain whatever you do." If you keep shooting to lengthen that unbroken chain the habit becomes more and more automatic and you get better and more comfortable. Doing whatever it is just once in a day generally seems easy enough to keep you going. Once you’ve mastered the flow, you can move on to a new "one thing."

Not a bad reminder for two weeks into the new year. That’s when I start to see people at the gym who made an early new year’s effort start to drop away. Are they doing just one thing to stay fit somewhere else? We can hope. It’s fine for the way you do it to evolve. Just don’t stop. But don’t beat yourself up for one miss. Make sure you do it next time… today, tomorrow, the day after, somewhere, sometime, somehow. Get into the groove.

By the way. If you find you just can’t, that you rarely or never get it into your day and that continues week after week, it’s time to think up a new strategy to try out, a new variation that you CAN do once each day. You only get better at what you can tolerate doing regularly. Don’t wait for another New Year’s to modify your plan. The real commitment is to progress, whatever it might be or however it comes about.

A group of financial executives recently asked me to help them develop more creativity.  They feel their profession requires so much attention to detail that being creative is an under-used area for them and they know little about it.

It’s great to have a group identify an area they want to know more about and recognize they might have limitations.  It’s often said you can’t learn anything you think you already know.

The good news is most of this group already have a great deal of creative skill.  They just don’t know what it feels like and how to find it.  That’s a key purpose of understanding the five basic leadership skills.  When you know how they work, you know where to find your creativity.

Creativity arises together with use of the other four skills as a package.  Each of us tends to be more creative in areas where we do the most work.  Since accounting frowns on "creative bookkeeping," it’s a concept accountants don’t think they know much about, but as a group they’re about as creative as anyone else.

The first key to creativity is to develop a goal for something new you’d like to achieve.  That takes practice.  Goals aren’t as easy to come by as people make out.  In fact developing a goal happens while using the other skills, through repetition. 

Great goal setting is a habit like any other.  Take your best shot at setting a new goal for yourself, then working toward it will clarify the process. As you start toward this tentative goal, you need to believe you can achieve it or, more accurately, get beyond it.  Don’t let it be too small.  This also takes practice.  Just do your best. 

Start to research how others achieve this sort of goal.  As you do, you’ll struggle with doubts and flashes of inspiration and positive thinking.  Keep balancing pros and cons as you test out each new idea for achieving your goal.  Keep trying. 

Keep looking for new ideas as you encounter hurdles.  Don’t give up the goal… but you can modify it, expand it and refine it.  Persist.  Think of this process as developing habits that will help you piece by piece to move forward. Here’s where creativity really begins. As you persist you’ll find yourself coming up with more and more creative, new ideas that didn’t occur to you at first.  Eventually they will begin to be substantially different and new, beyond things you’ve been reading or have heard about.  That’s creativity pure and simple.  Remember the famous quote from the most prolific inventor of all time, Thomas Edison, "Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration."  This is the way to perspire effectively.

In short, creativity is a habit that takes time to build.  No matter how creative we think someone is they got there trying one idea at a time with a stretch objective in mind.

A news column pointed out a very interesting, relatively new site http://zenhabits.net. Blogger, freelance writer, Leo Babauta, gathers some excellent points and suggestions about personal change and productivity through simplicity and basic changes of habits.

I was disappointed to read criticisms of his site based solely on the fact some feel he isn’t truly representing Zen. The purists, I fear, will just have to get used to the idea that Zen is in the public domain. Not everyone will apply the terms the same way. It’s associated with ideas that are simple and practical as much as it is with challenging concepts of philosophic detail. I’m on Leo’s side. I’ve read, as it appears he has, a good range of ideas, discussion and works of Zen from masters, observers and philosophers. His ideas seem as valid as anyone’s about the practical applications of Zen principles.

The particular piece I saw citing his blog referred to his Haiku Productivity principles - a neat way of saying let’s keep it simple… and by doing so you can accomplish your work in much less time. In his view you can do all you need work-wise in a couple of days a week. You can find the reference by putting Haiku into the search engine on his pages. This idea is growing in popularity as evidenced by books like "The 4 Hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferriss.  Personally I prefer Leo’s Haiku principles.

Ferriss seems to me logical enough, but in ways that few could reliably immitate. Unless you get lucky with a breakthrough idea, I can’t believe you’re going to succeed financially with a new company the way he happened to do. It’s tempting to model yourself on success, but we have to remember that the people who do all the work he doesn’t do in his 4 Hour week company are closer to observing him than readers of his book - but they haven’t yet all run out and copied his example successfully. If it were that easy, no one would actually be accomplishing work.

On the side of Zen Habits, these are things a single individual would seem to have a reasonable chance of emulating that can serve as examples others can use in their particular fields. It’s rare that I run into blog pieces I so thoroughly wish I could have written. Keep up the great work, Leo.

Many authors claim 80% to 90% of what we do every day is habit. I believe that’s wrong. The percentage is far higher. We spend lots of time problem-solving in our heads and come up with many new ideas in the course of a day that we could try. We reject nearly all of them.

When we do decide to try something new, the skills we apply to it are almost all habits. That’s what makes learning new activities a significant challenge. Either we try, but find ourselves simply repeating a muddle of past mistakes or we actually attempt some fundamentally new action or pattern of actions and feel so uncomfortable and awkward we really don’t want to try again.

Most often we learn new behavior because we have to; there’s no choice. If a favorite store closes, we have to head somewhere else, adapt to their hours and location, try new products and more. Repetition creates new habit… and habit soon feels comfortable.

Inevitable life-changes force development of many new habits. A new job might seem to mean lots of new habits, but after working a few years, many of the basic behaviors we bring to a job remain the same. That’s why CEOs who did well in one organization are more likely to fail in a new one than someone promoted internally. Not only does the outsider have more habits to be awkward with, but they’re up against everyone else’s habits that they may struggle to change or that they aren’t consciously aware of.

What helps is to recognize the challenge is about forming habits. That way we can at least consciously understand why we gravitate to a wrong actions like homing pigeons even when we know something new or different is needed. We can anticipate and use our considerable power of conscious thought to prepare for the awkward feelings, minimize them through a better learning process and establish new habits as soon as possible. After all, it typically takes only 10 to 30 repetitions of a new action over as many days to turn it into a habit, and from there further practice makes it a full-blown "skill." Concentrating speeds this along.

Rather than complain about habit, we need to use it. It keeps us on track, locks in skills, can be developed with relatively little effort and forms a powerful base of success that can’t be taken from us easily. But we need to consciously manage it!