Delivering work to new clients in Southern Europe as we continue to build our international business in new locations.

Dr Harry Freedman has joined us at Hanover Executive to work with us on building a new career services business to complement our other client offerings. We're all really excited about this as Harry has a proven track record of innovation in this area. 

American Chamber of Commerce, Belgrade

John O'Brien was recently honoured to have been asked to present as guest speaker at the Coaching, Assessment and Development Workshop organised by the American Chamber of Commerce in Belgrade.  For further information please visit the Amcham site below

http://www.amcham.rs/advocacy_activities/working_groups/hr.94.html?nId=538

'Go and open the door'

I was reading the poem 'Jdi a otevri dvere' by Miroslav Holub yesterday. Holub was a poet and immunologist from the Czech Republic. He once said that he would like his poems to be read by people as they make their way to football matches.

Go and open the door

Maybe outside there's a tree

or a wood, 

a garden,

or a magic city.

Go and open the door.

Maybe a dog's rummaging.

Maybe you'll see a face,

or an eye,

or a picture

of a picture.

The poem continues to suggest that maybe there is '...a hollow wind' or '...only the darkness ticking'? 

Are you brave enough to go and open the door?

What do you think you might see?

Selecting an Executive Coach

What 5 things should an organisation be looking for when selecting an Executive Coach?  

1. Psychologically minded - a good coach will be insightful and profoundly interested in human behaviour.
2. Qualified – a coach should have appropriate training.
3. All coaches should adhere to a rigorous code of professional ethics and should be able to describe what these are.
4. A good professional coach is an expert but the client is the expert in him or herself and should at all times remain responsible for the content and goals of a coaching programme.
5. All good professional coaches should receive regular qualified supervision.

The professional coaching community is a thriving and dynamic environment full of excellent, committed coaches, passionate about what they do and making a real difference to the lives of people and companies. When you choose an executive coach, be sure you choose someone who meets these five criteria.

Get Motivated    

I would like to mention a topic that has come up in discussions with clients in recent weeks: motivation. As it was put to me yesterday, “how do we get motivated?” 

It all begins with your mental framework. To construct a mental framework that will enable motivation to occur, we need to understand what motivation is. The word ‘motivation’ originates from the Latin word ‘motus’ meaning ‘move’. Conceptually motivation involves the desire for movement from one ‘state’ (cognitive/emotional/physiological) to another. To do this we have to discover and explore our uniquely constructed meaning-making processes – as these enable us to be energised to change our behaviour.

Your orientation towards, and purpose for, motivation matters too. Motivation can be directed towards avoidance. A person may be aiming to eliminate threat or avoid pain and conflict. It can also be related to achievement: attaining a new personal goal, learning a new skill or wanting to demonstrate high-level competence to others.

Depth psychology approaches enable you to create, maintain and sustain a mental framework for motivation. This is because we must engage in the type of reflection that helps us understand the deeper structures of our consciousness. We may have to confront our own beliefs and constructs about our potential to change so that we can discover new knowledge about who we are and what we can achieve. This ongoing process is necessary if we are to fulfil our potential and be the best that we can be.

At Hanover Executive we have expert psychologists that can help you and your teams “get motivated” - and stay motivated - so that you and your business can raise your game and maximise your performance.

To arrange a meeting to discuss your needs or the needs of your team, please contact us.

Solutions Focussed Coaching

In most coaching situations, identifying and analysing a problem becomes the precursor for action planning and subsequent change. Breaking from this traditional mould, 'solutions focussed coaching' emphasises the solution rather than the problem, the future rather than the past and a positive focus on what is 'going well' rather than the negative approach of what is 'not working'.

    Solution Focussed Coaching;

• sees problems as creating the path to the solution. There is no need to over-analyse the problem and over-investigate the causes, just focus on the solution. In other words, a problem can be solved without it's cause being the sole focus for intervention.
• focuses on possible solutions that are hidden inside the problem.
• involved asking useful questions to solve the problem rather than offering predetermined solutions.
• moves to 'free' the coachee from negative thought systems and beliefs towards the positive.
• achieves a rapid generation of solutions and therefore success.
• enables the coachee to take ownership of reaching the solution thereby enabling the same approach to be adopted for future problem solving events.

To discuss this approach in more detail, or arrange a meeting with one of our coaches, please contact us.

Roland Nagel
Executive Coach, Hanover Executive

Developing Integration    

Successful leaders are integrated people. In essence, they have integrity, and this is manifest in their decision making, management of people and resources, and exercise of good authority through empowerment and social responsibility. 

While it is acknowledged that these qualities are difficult to identify and develop, many global corporates invest heavily in precisely this endeavour and employ external specialists qualified in psychology and business to help develop their senior management talent.

We have a range of highly qualified and experienced executive coaches with specialist knowledge of creating and developing successful leaders. Please contact us to arrange a meeting.

Enabling Transformational Change   

One of the rewards of executive coaching is being able to help an executive see, in a way that they can experience for themselves to be true, that a quantity of their available energy is being used counterproductively.  That they are using up valuable resources wastefully.  The ability to develop a working relationship with an executive which facilitates this kind of realisation is one of the gifts of the work.  From such points we are able to assist an individual in making a step change in their working styles which impacts upon their working relationships, their personal effectiveness and productivity. It is one of the ways in which transformational change occurs.

Toby Ingham
Executive Coach, Hanover Executive

Hanover Executive Involved in Transformational Work in the Legal World   

The global legal industry has undergone substantial change in response to the recessionary pressures of the last two years. Not only has pressure on the top line required firms to take a more commercial view, but work flows have needed to be reshaped to changing client demands. With pressure on the cost base, this has meant that Partners have been faced with the challenge of simultaneously managing change and managing Practice Teams.

With our help in equipping the Partner population with the tools and techniques required to engage and motivate people, some Law firms have achieved the "win/win" - an organisational culture based upon teamwork, mutual respect and good communication, underpinned by a flexible workforce of the right size and shape to support the firm in it's strategic ambitions.

Unchallenged Assumptions

I would like to respond to emails I received after a presentation I gave at a recent business conference. The emails referred to my comments and concern about the cultural transmission of assumptions in organisations.

My concerns emanate from a philosophical position. I believe that knowledge is tentative because it is socially constructed within and between communities of interest within organisations. Knowledge shapes our reality. Reality is similarly constructed - through the sharing of social discourse and interaction. Therefore it is logical for me to propose that shared meanings are at the core of any evolving business culture.

Lack of communication and clarity can exist in organisations and this results in people thinking and behaving according to their assumptions about the shared meanings within their business. Assumptions exist even if we are not consciously aware of them. They exist at multiple levels within organisations and over time they can become unchallenged and taken-for-granted.

How often do you check the assumptions that exist in your business? As I highlighted in my presentation, unchallenged assumptions can create a reality that is counterintuitive to the desired culture and climate of your business. If unchecked they can be responsible for creating barriers to high performance. Taken-for-granted assumptions can also create a fertile ground for the corrosive development of low morale.

I have just finished reading My Life by Nelson Mandela.  

It has really surprised me… as I wasn’t aware that he knew anything at all about my life!

See what I mean about assumptions?

USA Coaching Program

One of our Associates in the USA – Janine A. Schindler – has launched the Brooklyn College (a City University of New York accredited college), coaching certificate program called the High-Impact Coaching Certificate Program. The first cohort is about to complete the 15 month program and the second cohort is in their 4th month.  A web based program is about to be launched.

Differentiating Between 360 Feedback and Performance Appraisal 

In 360 feedback, the leader obtains important developmental information enabling him/her to develop action plans and subsequently monitor improvements over time. Performance appraisal is quite different in that it is a process of evaluating job performance and is often associated with the provision of a performance rating as well as a plan for career development. Furthermore, performance appraisal is often used as an input to a job promotion or remuneration decision whereas 360 feedback is utilized for feedback, learning and developmental purposes.

The inclusion of a 360 feedback component as an input to performance appraisal is problematical as any promotion of remuneration outcome could be compromised if 360 raters saw the opportunity an opportunity to reward their friends or 'get even' with those less popular. Clients need to be made aware of how the objectives of 360 feedback and performance appraisal differ. Such programs should ideally be undertaken at distinctly different times so that there is no confusion between them. More importantly, appropriate links to the outcomes of each activity (performance rating, promotion and remuneration in the case of performance appraisal and feedback, learning and development for 360 feedback) should be separately identified and communicated throughout the organisation.

Roland Nagel
Executive Coach, Hanover Executive

Coaching for Executive Performance 

At Hanover Executive, our coaches are focussed on how to deliver enduring benefit through coaching and ensure value for our clients.

We have known for some time that any intervention, or change to a situation involving people will lead to an initial boost in performance. This is known as the Hawthorne effect and has been very widely studied in the 90 years since it was first described. This raises the issue of how this applies to coaching interventions and the important implications concerning the point at which benefit is assessed.

Potentially any benign intervention will lead to an initial improvement in performance. It won't be enduring or particularly in-line with the coaching objectives defined at the outset, but it might make people feel good, require less skilled coaching practitioners and perhaps even be cheaper in the short term. Arguably there can be benefit in this. However, most professional coaches and most buying organisations are looking for lasting and profound performance improvement: to achieve real personal growth and change that does not slide back to an earlier state when the intervention has ended.

One way to minimalise the Hawthorne effect is to extend the assessment period to a point in time after the effect is likely to endure. This would involve holding 3 reviews of each coaching programme;

       1.   A mid-point review, roughly halfway through a defined number of sessions

       2.   A formal meeting to review the outcomes and progress against the initially defined business objectives is held on
             completion of the programme

       3.   In addition, this progress is then reviewed at a later date, usually anywhere for 3-12 months after the assignment
             has ended, according to the situation and context

This approach helps to ensure that enhanced performance has been achieved and is enduring, thus producing business benefit and realised value.

Sarah Jaggers
Executive Coach, Hanover Executive

Leadership Development

Research has proven that coaching is a powerful tool in developing leaders and leadership at all levels. Of course a successful outcome of a coaching programme depends on the coach’s ability to deliver professional coaching. A deep understanding of psychology, of leadership theories, people skills are all requirements of a professional coach. That and the ability to understand business life and the core essence of being a leader. At Hanover Executive the coaches have these skills plus a long experience of delivering executive coaching to a variety of clients all over the world.

Per-Olof Eriksson

Executive Coach, Hanover Executive

Embracing change

Businesses often undergo systemic change. This can be driven by factors such as strategic development, a desire to create industry-leading models and the arrival of a new CEO.

We believe that executive coaching and depth psychology have a vital role to play in these situations. We have the qualifications and expertise to support clients in reflecting upon the phenomenological and psychological relationship between ‘me’ and ‘not-me’ - self and other. This enables them to become aware of the internal and external realities that we continually construct and reconstruct. It reduces anxiety about the self and other relationship in changing personal and corporate environments.

They can begin to understand – in a unified manner - the interaction between their thoughts, feelings and behaviours and the emotional contradictions and tensions that they may be experiencing.

This can help them to develop the cognitive and emotional adaptability that is necessary to embrace individual and systemic change and to approach such change with a positive and creative mindset.

As Executive Coaches we are pleased to be able to offer such approaches to help our clients become the best that they can be.

What drives conceptual frameworks?

I was very pleased to receive your questions on the practical application of depth psychology to leadership development. As a global executive coaching enterprise we acknowledge, respect and engage with the many different worldviews of our clients. These are unique at the individual level, and are also informed by corporate and national culture.

A developmental perspective

A person's worldview will give clues to the forces which shaped and constellated it. Early developmental patterns often repeat, and key themes travel the generations, appearing and reappearing as though they have their own life. And so our worldviews and behaviours are strongly determined, and to some extent our conditioning drives our thoughts. Genetics, psychological type, the family, cultural, and corporate milieu all have similarly strong deterministic influences. Interacting with external stimuli, we form concepts which are more or less useful. (These are maps and not territory). To the extent that we acknowledge the forces behind our thoughts we can increase consciousness and transform self and others, generating new concepts from an inner and collective wellspring of creativity. This is transformational leadership in the proper sense. It requires self-knowledge and ego sacrifice.

A future perspective

There is much we do not know or understand about the mysteries of human experience and development. We sense a mystery, a benign force of free will informed by intuition, dreams, and creative urges which help us to transcend our pre set patterns, to approach a knowledge of self and to transform. Analytical psychology helps to free this natural process of individuation, to help us to become what we may. By following our vocations, we discover a continual flow of creative life energy. An appreciation of this energy and a meaningful connection with others is a gateway to quantum change, significant development beyond what we had imagined possible from our original conceptual position.

Transformational people transform organisations.

John O'Brien. Managing Director

Hanover Executive

What is going on inside your head?

Thank you for your questions about a particular point I made in a recently published journal article about aspects of elite performance.  I would like to briefly explain why I believe that eliciting and altering a person’s construction of reality (to support them in improving performance) must begin with a robust, yet intellectually flexible, conceptual framework.

World-class coaching can empower people to explore a space in their mind where they have to confront the uncertainty of not knowing and not being able to fast-map connections and patterns that reinforce their view of reality.  This can lead to the discovery of new evidence that fundamentally challenges our beliefs about ‘self - about who we are, how we feel and how we behave. People may experience high levels of emotional risk, even fear, when they begin to acknowledge that reality is ambiguous, complex and unpredictable. This is especially true when they have become stuck in a fixed view of reality and are challenged, though depth psychology and coaching, to embrace increasing degrees of complexity.  Superficiality does not illuminate complexity.

Coaching must be based on a conceptual framework that is empirically grounded but also flexible enough to be responsive to individual and systemic disposition and context.  The existence of this type of conceptual framework is just as critical in making a small step-change in performance as it is in enabling those perceived to be at the top of their game to become even better.

Congratulations  

One of our associates in the USA - Janine A Schindler - has been awarded 'Woman of the Year' 2010
by The National Association of Professional Women. Well done Janine.

Across the world 

As the new year gets underway we are leading a breadth of innovative and exciting projects in the UK, USA. France, Germany, Denmark, Portugal, Australia and Morocco.

We are happy to be working with new clients as well as long-term clients.

We also have projects at various stages of development in European countries such as Italy, Poland and Switzerland - as well as beyond Europe in countries that include Israel, UAE, Russia, Kuwait, Hong Kong, Japan, Indonesia, China and India.

These projects include executive coaching, leadership assessment and development and high performance teamwork. In fact, the full range of our services, products and approaches are being applied.

Please spend time to read more about who we are and what we do and contact us if you have any questions.  

Happy New Year

Wishing all our clients and colleagues a very Happy and Prosperous New Year.

We look forward to hearing from you and helping you to fulfil your goals in 2011.

Reach Your Destination

A friend had a dream in which he had fallen asleep and woken up on the moon. He was confused and anxious. He found a map and consulting it he set off towards Earth. As he navigated his way through the solar system he realised that the map was a map of the universe. It was a map that lacked the detail he needed to get home. To reach his destination he needed a map that would help him find the right planet, country, county, street and house. He became overwhelmed by the inevitability of being lost in space.

This dream can be interpreted in many ways. One interpretation offers an insight into our philosophy and approach towards executive coaching at Hanover Executive. A person’s contextual perspective matters. Also, the process of navigation is vital. However, if it goes no further than being a process of general mapping, it will always be problematic. This is how people and organisations become stuck.

If you want sustainable emotional and behavioural change and accelerated leadership development, it is critical that you have clarity of vision about what your destination is. To get there you will need more than one map. Maps with different degrees of scale and detail will enable you to reach your destination. In a coaching relationship with us these are mutually constructed through a process of progressive focusing - a process in which Hanover Executive has unique professional expertise.

We respond to your needs and make reaching your destination inevitable.

We are pleased to announce that HanWAT our new Word Association Test is now available for use on laptop. We have succesfully used this tool for the selection and assessment of critical senior hires in the banking, media and nuclear sectors. Capturing the wisdom of 20 years consulting at CEO level, not only can we help you to identify key performance risks and development areas, but we can also incorporate particular leadership competency requirements of your organisation.