Coaching
#83-2/9/09-The Young Are Restless
The Young Are Restless!
“Young People Want Everything Now!”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, February 9, 2009
Hello everyone!
Is it a bad rap?
I often hear managers and training departments in corporations complain about how young people don’t want to wait for their career advancement.
They want to get pay raises after 6 months. They want to be managers 1 year after graduating from college. They don’t want to work 5, 6, or 7 years in one position to earn the “right” to be promoted to the next career level.
This last weekend, in my class I heard it again. One young person said that after joining a company, they found that they were given more and more work, and working longer and longer hours. They were also doing the same work as others who were getting paid much more and who had been with the company many more years. When this person asked for a raise, the manager said “No”. The person subsequently left the company.
Another young person told me that even though they had not yet graduated from college (they would soon) and even though they had been an intern with a large company for several summers, they wanted to be a manager upon graduation. They didn’t want to wait the seemingly standard period before promotion to management...7 years as an engineer.
Equal pay for equal work.
For most of my career I have believed that equal pay should be given for equal work. Although, during my career, I was usually focused on equal pay for women who were doing work equivalent to that of men, my first response to young people who want equal pay for equal work has been to agree with the young people.
And yet, this weekend, when I heard my students talking about their perceptions, their expectations, and their experiences, while I initially responded that it was reasonable to expect equal pay for equal work, on the way home, what I had said just didn’t seem to sit well with me. Did I really believe that equal pay for equal work was always the correct yard-stick? My head said “yes”, but my gut said “no”. I felt that it was more complicated than that.
Here’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
You see, when the baby boomers began their careers, most of them began as “employees” of companies. They even expected to stay employees for most of their career. They expected to get health benefits, paid vacations, and even fixed benefit retirement plans. AND they expected to “work their way” up the organization.
You see, “in those days”, when an organization hired an employee there was an unwritten agreement that the company would do it’s best to keep the employee. That might mean that you might be moved around a little and that you’d do jobs you might not be perfect for, but in return, you’d do the work, you’d gain experience and that experience would actually come in handy over the long haul because you’d be even more flexible and capable of doing other jobs.
And then along came… technology.
The last generation to feel this way and to have this unspoken agreement with the company was the baby boomer generation.
With their children everything began to change. You see, technology began to put a lot of the “organization” into the hands of individuals. For baby boomers there were secretaries who wrote memos. For their children, they wrote their own memos. And so it went, on and on.
The upshot of this gigantic shift was that work became something that could be “packaged” into much smaller and smaller, quantifiable packets. With the emergence of the global economy this trend only accelerated.
At this point, equal pay for equal work took on a very new meaning. If I could pack my task into a tight, neat package, and define it well enough, I could send it to a variety of workers and now experience wouldn’t matter. The only question that mattered would be, “Can they do the job?”. Experience didn’t really matter. Knowing who was doing the work didn’t even matter.
It didn’t matter if the person doing the work was a 12-year-old kid working in her bedroom after her parents thought she was asleep. Experience just didn’t matter… only competence at doing the job at hand.
Thus emerged the profound and newly defined category of “contract worker”.
But not the contract worker of old. A contract worker who was told they could be “independent of the man” (i.e., the corporate boss).The flip side of course is that if you are not beholding to the corporation, then the corporation doesn’t owe the contract worker anything in return.
So where do we go from here?
Corporations and baby boomers and older employees (in general) still accept that companies hire “employees” and when you are an employee, experience matters.
The children of baby boomers and all those children right up to those born today, have been raised, without any of us or them realizing it, to believe that contract labor is the way all people are being judged
Here comes the class!
So now we’ve got young people who have been raised on “only performance matters”. Experience doesn’t matter.
These young people are entering a “corporate” and business structure (in most, but not all, cases) where performance is only part of the equation of success.
Is it any wonder that we have a clash?
If you want to read more about this topic, you can get it in my Ezine/Newsletter at: Steven’s February 9, 2009 Newsletter
Be well,
Steven Cerri
P.S. By the way. If you’d like to leave a comment, and I’d sure be interested if you did, I’ve changed the comments software. Only your comment and your name will show up at the end of the comment. I have modified the software so that your email address will not show up anywhere.
“What would it be like to be as successful with people as you are with your technology?” Steven trains, coaches, and facilitates engineers and technical managers to BE the answer to that question. More information can be found at the:http://stevencerri.com/index.php/Home/index/
Copyright©2008 STCerri International and Steven Cerri. You are free to pass this information on to others and to reproduce it. If you reproduce it in whole or part please give attribution to Steven Cerri. Thank you.
Posted by Steven Cerri on 02/10 at 07:30 PM Coaching • Engineer to Technical Manager • Leadership • Engineering Leadership • Management • Engineering Management • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
#19-11-27-06: What’s Coaching About#2
What’s A Coach To Do? (Part 2)
”Getting down to business”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, November 27, 2006
Good evening!
Last week I wrote about coaching and what some coaches provide and how and why it doesn’t work. Now lets clear the air, and start by asking the question, “What should a coach provide and how should they provide it?” Let’s ask, “What’s a really good coach to do?”
I’ll begin by talking about the different types of coaching as follows:
There is what I call tactical coaching. Tactical coaching provides the person being coached with information and processes about how to perform a specific task or a specific project.
Tactical coaching is about “SHOW ME HOW TO...”. For example, tactical coaching may take the form of: “Show me how to develop a budget”, or “Show me how to develop a project schedule”, or “Show me how to make a major presentation and influence my audience.” It is coaching that demonstrates and coaches a person to “do” a specific task or project. It can last for one coaching session or it can go on for the duration of the project or task.
There is what I call strategic coaching. Strategic coaching provides the person being coached not so much with information and processes about how to perform a specific task or a specific project, but rather “How To Think”. This coaching process doesn’t focus on how to do something specifically, but rather on how have the capability to think about, analyze and be capable of performing a task or project as it might come up in the future.
Strategic coaching teaches a person “HOW TO THINK ABOUT...”. This is also the type of coaching that is performed when coaching high level executives. It is the type of coaching that prepares the client for future life questions and actions. This type of coaching tends to last longer and to continue for some period of time. This is the coaching that prepares the client to handle whatever life throws at him or her.
If you’re a manager and you want to coach one of your direct reports or if you’re a direct report and you want your manager to coach you, the first step is to decide what type of coaching is to be done. Is it tactical or strategic coaching? The answer to this question will dictate the structure of the interaction.
The reason the answer to this question is so important is because tactical coaching will require a type of communication that will be relatively directive, precise, and specific. In tactical coaching the coach will emphasize unambiguous behavior. It’s all about outcome and actions. The behaviors, the activities, the actions, the outcomes, will be clear, precise, and it won’t matter who is looking at the behaviors, we will all be able to agree, “They are either there or not”.
On the other hand, with strategic coaching the communication is less about action and behavior, and much more about thinking, decision-making, judgment, and foresight. In strategic thinking there is a lot of self-reflection that must be performed by the coach. The coach must literally allow the person being coached to “see inside the mind” of the coach.
It is also important for the coach to be able to assess when the coach must be silent and to decide that enough information has been presented, and it’s now time for the person being coached to move forward on their own … for a while. Then the coach once again communicates with the person being coached to take them to the next level of thinking, decision-making, and judgment. In this way the coach is preparing the person to think on their own when the need arises.
These two forms of coaching actually are at the foundation of all good coaching. It doesn’t matter if the coach is providing coaching on a project, a crisis, a interpersonal interaction, life-decisions, or general management processes, one of these two coaching processes will be the necessary path to successful coaching.
Finally, in both cases, going back into past issues is of no real benefit. Digging into childhood memories, or past business ventures offers no real clues about what to do in the future. In all good coaching, point to what you want. Point to the desired outcome. Point to the future.
What about the person to be coached?
In order for there to be good and successful coaching, what must the person being coached bring to the table?
The answer is that for good coaching to take place, the person who wants coaching must bring two things to the coaching experience:
First is a real desire to have something different.
If the person isn’t in pain or doesn’t really, really want the positive change they’ll get in their life or their career, then forget it. The person being coached has to want it for whatever reason is important to them.
Second is that there has to be a strong consequence for being successful (or not being successful) in the coaching process.
These two items may seem closely linked and they are. But I like to separate them because they are separated by time. If the person being coached has no significant consequence from successful coaching, either positive or negative, then the results will be in question.
These then are some of the important issues to consider if you are a manager and you want to coach your direct reports, or if you are a direct report and you want to be coached.
And the final word is this:
Managers, not every direct report will benefit from coaching. So pick carefully the direct reports you want to coach.
And
Direct reports and managers, not every one who is above you, or can do something you can’t yet, is qualified to be your coach. So pick carefully the people you want to coach you.
Be well
Steven Cerri
Posted by Steven Cerri on 11/27 at 06:21 PM Coaching • (1) Comments • Permalink
#18-11-20-06: What’s Coaching About
What’s A Coach To Do?
”Getting down to business”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, November 20, 2006
Good evening!
I had some thoughts this weekend around this topic:
“What is it that a really good coach should do for you if you want to become a technical manager?”
Approach #1:
The first coaching approach requires that the coach think of their role as that of psychologist, and indeed some coaches are psychologists. They want to dig into your childhood, into your pains, and they believe somehow that having this reflection will assist you in being a manager. They believe that something in your childhood is “making” you do the things that are keeping your from being a good manager. The reality is, who knows? Digging into past positive or negative memories and experiences only brings them into the present. And if they are negative memories, then they become current negative memories. That whole approach seems ill-suited to management training to me. I don’t find it very useful and it often turns into psycho-bable that just makes a person “relive the stuff” that is no longer usefull. Transitioning from technical professional to manager is not about psycho-analysis. It’s the present and the future that are most important. I know some people think that the “past informs the present and the future”. But it doesn’t have to. That’s the key. So leave the past in the past.
Approach #1 = Strike One!
Approach #2:
A second approach requires that coaches think of their job as one of imparting project management and human resources information so that you can develop a schedule, generate a budget, and perform performance reviews without offending anyone and getting the company sued. This they think is the fundamental role of technical management.
I think it’s true enough that, as a technical manager, you will have to know how to develop schedules and budgets, and perform performance reviews without offending people. However, these capabilities rely on other abilities that must come first. There are plenty of managers who can develop schedules and budgets, avoid performance reviews because they don’t like them, and still aren’t considered good managers. You may have worked for some of them. So being trained in these abilities won’t make you a good manager.
Approach #2 = Strike Two!
Approach #3:
The third approach requires that coaches think of their job as “holding a space” for you so that you can come up with your own answers. The belief here is that, left to your own devices, you have all the information and knowledge you need to succeed on your own. You only need someone “beside you” telling you “you can do it”.
The theory here is that you know what you need to know in order to succeed. You just “don’t have access to it...yet”. This one just amazes me. If you haven’t been trained as a brain surgeon, how can you be expected to be a brain surgeon? You can’t. If you haven’t been trained as a commercial pilot, should we all feel comfortable with you at the controls of your commercial jet on your first commercial flight? Of course not. This is the reason you want a coach who has been in your industry, your career, you shoes.
Sometimes you’ll even get coaches who will give you little quips and phrases that don’t have anything to do with reality or the reality of your business. Sometimes you’ll be told that in order to be relaxed in front of a group, or in order to be relaxed in an important and tense meeting, or in order to feel less intimated around certain people, you should imagine them without any clothes on. This is supposed to remove any sense of intimidation or inferiority. Sorry, I don’t think that solves anything about your ability to conduct business with powerful people or in intimidating situations. It only gets you good at imagining your colleagues naked. You see transitioning from technical professional to manager requires a fundamental shift in one’s behaviors. It won’t happen with a few little tricks here or there. If you need evidence for what I’m saying just look around. How many really good managers have you worked for? How long has it taken good managers to get good? The answers to these questions are all around us. This is work. This is a new career.
Approach #3 = Strike Three!
So now that you know what I don’t think good coaching is, next Monday I’ll discuss what I think good coaching is and how it can powerfully provide you with tools to be successful as a technical manager. Until then…
Be well
Steven Cerri
Posted by Steven Cerri on 11/20 at 11:17 PM Coaching • (0) Comments • Permalink
