Some of my clients, as well as people I have known in my life, suffer from workaholism. In other words, an obsessive attachment to, and identity with, their professional persona and duties to the extent that all other aspects of life are a lower priority.

The symptoms of workaholism among managers include; an inability to manage time to allow for non-work activities, being controlled by communication technology, insensitivity to the needs of others, especially family members and a firm belief that working all hours is the only path to security and promotion. They also tend to mistakenly equate this belief with the path to happiness.

In recent times technology has played a major role in increasing the incidence of workaholism. The Blackberry, also known as the Crackberry, can become particularly addictive. A friend recently related a scene she saw play out a restaurant one lunchtime. An executive gentleman was seen having lunch with a young girl, who appeared to be his school age daughter. He spent an hour looking at his Blackberry and talking business into it. The daughter looked bored and occasionally looked at her father, no doubt wondering if she might get some attention. I wonder how many maladjusted teenagers are craving attention from workaholic parents. I have even observed couples in restaurants on Valentines night glued to their communication device for most of the evening, ignoring their sweetheart. No wonder there aren’t enough babies being produced in Singapore!

In extreme cases workaholics make themselves available for work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. I once phoned a friend on her mobile number at 10am Singapore time, not realising she was overseas. A sleepy voice answered and when I asked her where she was, she said she was in London and asked me if I knew what time it was there. It was 3am and her intonation suggested it was a cruel trick on my part to call her at such an unearthly hour. For my part I wondered why on earth she had her phone switched on while she was supposed to be sleeping.

Holidays can be a strife area for workaholics who spend an inordinate amount of time in touch with HQ, either by email or mobile phone. Confirmed workaholics are often completely insensitive to the effect they have on their family or partner in such situations. They will justify their behaviour by responding to complaints with platitudes such as, “But I’m doing it for you sweetheart and to earn money for us to have a better life ( or, give our children a good education).”The spouse or partner invariably has a different idea of what constitutes “a better life”.

This all begs the question, what is the difference between a focused individual who simply works hard to do well in his or her career versus those who we recognise as “workaholics”. Successful people who avoid workaholism exhibit certain behaviours that are distinct from the workaholic. Many successful, productive people seem to have complete control over their working hours yet still manage to produce outstanding results. They assign equal importance to the management of their personal and work time. So what do they actually do that sets them apart from workaholics? Through observation of my executive clients and former colleagues in my corporate career, I’ve identified a number of traits common to high achievers who maintain a healthy work/life balance.

When they become involved in a project outside the scope of their role, they limit their involvement to the contribution of ideas and experience but do not get drawn into time consuming implementation minutiae.

They are expert delegators. For each task on their desk they ask themselves, “Am I the only person who can do this task?” If the answer is “No” they delegate responsibly to someone with the knowledge and experience to carry out the task to the required standard.

They reserve time to coach and develop their staff to take on more responsibility, thereby building a talent succession pipeline and at the same time empowering their staff to achieve more and contribute more to the organisation through their own initiative. The result is that the manager is able to focus more on the job of managing and developing people rather than becoming consumed by operational tasks.

They are assertive when it comes to managing their time. Many managers are tuned into their electronic devices; Blackberry’s, mobile phones, laptops, 24 hours a day. Thus expectations are set and colleagues around the world assume that they will be available to communicate at any time of day or night. Effective managers take control of their communication devices, switch them off when they are in meetings or in personal time and decide when they will return voicemails and SMS messages, rather than being in a constant reactive state.

They are also assertive with time wasting colleagues. When focused on their key management tasks they know how to deal with time robbing interruptions. If someone interrupts an important task the effective manager respectfully and assertively tells them they cannot talk now but will give them focused time and attention at an agreed later time.

They use the phone more than email. It’s very easy to be consumed with emails and spend half the day typing at the PC screen. Picking up the phone to someone in the same time zone is often quicker, more effective and more personal. A verbal message is also less open to misinterpretations that may cause additional work later. They train their secretary to handle all housekeeping and admin tasks as well as some more complex tasks. Delegating tasks and coaching the secretary relieves the manager of mundane jobs, at the same time motivating her and helping her develop an increasing repertoire of skills. They schedule their social, family and exercise commitments in the same way they commit to their business activities and treat them with equal importance. They are assertive when non -critical issues threaten to push non -work commitments aside.

Are you a workaholic? To test whether you suffer from workaholism, ask yourself these questions and reflect on your answers;

• How many times a week do you cancel or postpone commitments to your family?
• How focused are you on your family when you are with them?
• If you have children, how much time do your spend just chatting and playing with them?
• Do you switch off (not silent but switch ‘off’) your work communication devices at the weekends and in the evenings?
• How often do you find yourself thinking about work issues when your partner, friend or child is telling you something that may be important to them?
• Have you set an expectation with your colleagues that you will be available 24 hours, even when on  holiday?
• Do you stay in the office late even when you have completed your critical tasks of the day?
• Do you have trouble sleeping?
• Are work issues on your mind most of the time?
• Have your family or friends given up expecting you on time?
• Do you get impatient with people who have other priorities besides work?
• Do you believe that more money will solve the other problems in your life?
• Is work the activity you like to do best and talk about most?
• Have long working hours hurt your family or other relationships?
• Do you take on extra work because you are concerned that it won’t otherwise get done?

After carefully considering your answers to the above questions, perhaps even talking about them with your family and friends, you may come to realize that there is a problem. If your answers identify you as a workaholic, perhaps it’s time to decide what’s really important to you. You might want to ask family members about changes to your work habits that would make them happier. But only ask that question if you are prepared to act on the feedback.

If you decide to take action, help is available. The web site www.workaholics-anonymous.org is a site where fellow workaholics can exchange success stories and strategies for dealing with their problem. Another source of help is to work with an Executive Coach who can help you to get your life back under control and in healthy balance with your work

In my executive coaching practice I encounter many clients who want to be more influential. Influence is often stated in terms of, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”.

But in the context of corporate life, as managers climb the corporate ladder; they need to be able to exert influence regardless of the depth of their personal relationship with others. Influence is needed to push ideas forward, gain acceptance for strategic plans, persuade investors to input more cash, shape policies, or simply to conclude a negotiation weighted in our favour. Many books have been written on influence but in this short article I showcase some of the techniques that my clients have successfully adopted to improve their power to influence.

Put simply, someone is said to be influential if they have the ability to positively affect and shape the way other people feel about a topic or proposal by removing resistance and gaining support. When influence is skilfully exercised, objectives are achieved without duress and without conflict or protracted debate.

If we have an idea or proposal in mind that we believe is unquestionably valuable and ‘the right thing to do’, the temptation is to barge straight into a negotiation or presentation, with the firm belief that everyone else must surely feel the same way and be suitably excited when they hear our proposal. In reality, to use a rugby analogy, they often meet resistance and end up in a scrum, pushing hard against the opposition until they eventually drop the ball and give up. The reason for failure is the assumption that the people we intend to influence have the same agenda, needs, values and beliefs as we do. These assumptions are invariably wrong.

One of my clients, a senior manager with a large corporation in the finance sector, complained that Board meetings were always a battle. They went on all day and he constantly met resistance to his ideas and assertions. He had to deal with so many “difficult” people. My client was a very dominant personality, very knowledgeable in his field and totally confident that his proposals to the Board were absolutely right and there could be no other sensible way to proceed. His assumption was that the other parties must surely see the sense in his ideas, to the point where challenging them would be unthinkable.

Through the coaching sessions he came to realise that, while his ideas and proposals had merit, he was merely transmitting them without any thought as to how the other Directors might receive them when filtered through their own values, beliefs and agendas. The question then became, “How can I get to know what their filters look like, so that I can shape my message to fit?” The secret is in the preparation before the influencing meeting.

A week before his next Board meeting he circulated the agenda and telephoned each Director in turn, asking them questions about the agenda items. The questions were all simple, open questions, i.e. they could not be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”. Typical questions were, “How do you feel about the proposal? What do you think of the idea? What appeals to you most about the new policy? What adjustments to this proposed new product do you think would make it perfect? What’s your opinion on how the shareholders will view this change of direction?” By asking open questions a great deal can be discovered about other people’s feelings and personal agendas. He listened very carefully to the answers (active listening being a required skill in influencing) and noted the responses. With the input he collected he was able to shape his proposals in a way that would appeal to each individual Board member and at the same time pre-empt objections. Unsurprisingly, his next Board meeting was very different to the previous ones. The meeting took half a day instead of a day and he gained approval for the majority of his plans without stubborn resistance or lengthy debate.

Another client encountered problems with “difficult” customers, to the extent that in one case, in an important negotiation, the senior customer representative got up and walked out. As in the previous example my client was a go-getter; a forceful character who had no time for people who could not accept his perfectly reasonable proposals. He was on transmit most of the time and paid little attention to listening. He recognised that something had to change to avoid future disastrous meetings.

Prior to his next critical customer meeting he conducted some research into the personality, likes, dislikes, career history, business style and affiliations of the senior decision maker. The forthcoming meeting was a oneshot, fail or succeed event, so the outcome was critical.The meeting was a greater success than he anticipated. Because of the way he was able to shape his proposal and hit all the decision maker’s “hot buttons” he not only succeeded in the acceptance of his proposal, but the other party became an advocate for my client’s ideas within the customer’s organisation.

The key point to remember from these examples is that attempts at influence are more likely to succeed if you first make the effort to understand the drivers and values of the people you want to influence. As the author of “7 Habits of Highly Effective People“, Stephen Covey once said, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood”.

The context of executive coaching and mentoring in this article refers to their application from an organisational perspective, where coaching or mentoring is being used to develop middle to senior managers to a higher level of performance.

The organisation may be a commercial entity or government department. A professional Executive Coach is usually hired from outside the organisation, while a Mentor is usually an internal employee.

In discussions with prospective clients, Coaches often find the terms “Mentor” and “Coach” used interchangeably. Although both refer to a person who is responsible for the professional development of another individual, they are quite different in scope and application. The danger is that organisations unaware of the difference may be applying one, when the other is clearly more appropriate. Making the wrong choice is unproductive and expensive in the long run.

There are fundamental differences between coaching and mentoring. A Mentor is most often senior to the person being mentored and in a different area of the company.The job of a mentor is to help the less experienced person develop his or her functional skills and to advise on the best way to achieve their work objectives within the culture and politics of the organisation. The Mentor is someone with whom to discuss ideas and problems, in order to receive advice based on his experience of handling similar situations within the organisation. The Mentor will be aware of company procedures and processes, as well as the political traps the mentee may encounter when putting forward a proposal or implementing a plan. In some respects the mentor is the “oracle” the mentee goes to for specific advice and help on the workings of the organisation and is usually an established “old hand”.

On the other hand an Executive Coach is usually an external third party, who does not give specific instructions on how to navigate organisational processes and politics, nor does he provide technical advice on how to carry out a particular task. The Coach need not necessarily be familiar with the industry or the function within which the coachee is working. The Coach, like the Mentor, will act as a sounding board for ideas and tactical plans. Through skillful questioning techniques he will then challenge those ideas, cause the coachee to think more deeply about his approach to an issue and prompt new ideas as to how the plan can best be achieved, or how the idea can gain support from seniors and peers. The Coach will also work with his client on leadership behaviour and communication style to help him become more effective and influential within the organisation and externally. Throughout the coaching engagement the coachee will work on business and personal goals established at the beginning of the coaching programme aimed at achieving a higher level of performance.

Some of the key differences between coaching and mentoring lie within the nature of the relationship. Whilst in both cases sessions are confidential, there is always a feeling that a Mentor may have a personal agenda or that company politics may preclude 100% trust between the Mentor and mentee. A professional Coach on the other hand, has an ethical duty of confidentiality towards his or her client and is uninfluenced by company politics or power plays.The Coach may also possess tools to help his client deal with lapses in confidence or self-limiting beliefs which are holding back career progression.These feelings of uncertainty or self-doubt are unlikely to surface in a relationship with an internal Mentor but may be freely expressed within a Coach/coachee relationship.

When launching a mentoring or coaching initiative, make sure the people doing the mentoring or coaching are qualified for the job. An in-house mentoring programme can be an excel lent step towards creating a learning organisation, but only if the Mentors have received proper training to equip them with the requisite skills to be effective in the role. Similarly, when hiring a Coach be certain you are hiring a professionally trained Coach who complies with a code of conduct, such as the International Coach Federation, Code of Ethics. Furthermore, accreditation by the ICF is added proof that they have undertaken professional training, have a minimum amount of experience and have passed an ICF accreditation exam.

I like to keep fit and last year I found a fun way to stay fit, make new friends and contribute to a team endeavour. ‘Dragon boating’ is a fairly strenuous sport and the techniques of a winning team involve, strength, competitive spirit, paddling technique and most importantly, timing. To keep the boat flying at its maximum pace, all twenty paddlers must be synchronised. If one team member is out of time (or disengaged) the whole team suffers, as those immediately behind the errant team member will follow his or her timing and also be out of synch. The result is that the boat cannot gain speed and will inevitably drop back in a race.

In a recent dragon boat training session it suddenly occurred to me that the dragon boat scenario is a great analogy for what happens in a corporate setting when team members are not aligned or engaged with the company’s goals. Not only is their own performance affected but the unaligned, or out of synch team player, affects the performance of others. So what does aligned and engaged mean? It means everyone in the team is in synch with each other and understands their part in achieving the goal.

In a disengaged state employees merely come to work, do the minimum possible to earn their salary and view the company as nothing more than a pay master to be discarded at the first sign of trouble. In the worst cases of disengagement employees can cause misalignment (loss of synchrony) among the rest of the team with their attitude. The disengagement may manifest itself in an attitude of putting the least possible effort into performing a task, frequent errors, excessive gossip and time wasting, sick days and negative talk about the company and colleagues. Attitudes are contagious and this kind of attitude can be very poisonous if the rest of the team are not fully aligned and engaged in working towards the common goal.

The end result is a poorly performing team, which may in turn negatively affect other teams or departments who are dependent on the effectiveness of the poor performing one. The knock on effect on the organisation as a whole, just like the dragon boat, is a slow down in competitiveness and growth.

In my coaching practice I often encounter senior managers who tell me, in a state of frustration, that their teams, “Just don’t seem to get it” “Don’t appreciate the bigger picture”, “Don’t realise how important their results are to the organisation’s strategy as a whole”, “Work in isolation and don’t cooperate properly with other departments”. I sympathise with them and then ask, “So who is responsible for making sure team members understand their part in the bigger picture, appreciate and support the strategy and are aligned and engaged with achieving the company’s goals?” It usually only takes a couple of seconds thought before they look at me and then point to themselves.

Newly appointed senior executives especially, sometimes have difficulty in letting go of their old functional job and it takes an “aha” moment for them to realise they are now the ‘Chief Motivation Officer’. The key task of the CMO is to ensure team members are aligned, in synch with each other and the rest of the organisation and performing at their very best. Here’s a few questions to ask yourself if you have the feeling your team is not fully engaged and aligned with the organisation’s strategy and goals:

“How frequently do I get my team together to talk them through the latest company strategy?”

“How often do I help them understand the competitive situation and what our contribution means to keeping ahead of the rest?”

“When was the last time I got the team out of the work environment to help them bond as individuals and appreciate each others’ strengths and personalities?”

“Have I ever invited other departments to my team meetings to explain their mission and what the performance of my team means to them?”

“Am I ever guilty of negative or defeatist talk, formally in meetings, or informally at the coffee machine?”

“How often do I seek ideas from my team as to how we can perform more efficiently and make a bigger contribution than we do today?”

“Do I know my team members and their personal hopes and aspirations?”

“For those team members I do know, how well am I presenting the company’s goals such that they have some meaning and influence towards the individual?”

When an executive is heading up a large team of people, it’s very easy to be drawn into daily operational issues and lose sight of the real job of Chief Motivation Officer. There are two key reasons why executives new to the role lose perspective on their real job. One is a natural desire to stay in their comfort zone of their old functional job, the one that got them promoted in the first place. The other is a failure to delegate and trust team members to tackle operational tasks, thus stealing time from the CMO role. These issues are less likely to occur in a company where high potentials are trained and coached prior to moving into senior management positions, which comes down to effective succession planning.

Is your team engaged and paddling in synch? Are your senior managers leading or just managing in a reactive mode? Are the people in your succession pipeline ready and fully prepared to step into a leadership role and be effective from their first day as a senior leader? Is your organisational boat really flying and accelerating, or is it lagging behind the competition? If it’s lagging it’s time to talk to WayAhead.

For more information on Dragon Boating visit:
http://www.britishdragonboat.com

Are you getting what you deserve in life or what you expect? Sometimes when we expect a bad day or a failure of some sort, that’s exactly what we get.

In a coaching session with one of my clients (we’ll call him David for the purposes of this story), a regional finance manager, he remarked that he was about to make a business trip to Korea and it was going to be a disastrous week. He would be joined on the trip by a senior manager from the company’s HQ in Europe. The manager (we’ll call him Chris) was a new hire and apparently a friend of the COO of the company. Feedback from colleagues in Europe had indicated that this Chris didn’t seem to have any real functional portfolio and simply arrived in a territory, meddled, left the local finance manager with a bunch of actions, which were not really the finance department’s remit and then disappeared back to HQ.

Having heard David’s premonition about the trip I said, “And your wish will come true.” This puzzled him and I explained that with such a strongly held belief about the trip it was pretty much a guarantee that it would be a disastrous week. The problem is that when we create such expectations and absolutely believe in them we are subconsciously putting in place all the conditions to guarantee that our expectations will be met. Our belief affects our feelings, our feelings affect our behaviour, which in turn affects results. In this case David, due to his belief, was going to feel lacking in energy, down in spirits, defensive and perhaps even feel some animosity towards Chris. These feelings would inevitably lead to a negative approach to meetings, off-hand or distant behaviour towards Chris and attempts to block him from making input into finance affairs in Korea. In other words the disastrous week was already pre-ordained in David’s mind.

I asked him if he could look at the trip from some different, more positive perspectives. After some coercion he admitted that he didn’t have good high level contact at HQ and Chris might be a useful gateway to top management. He also realised that it would be good for someone to come out from Europe to experience first hand the challenges of doing business in Asia, Korea in particular. Not knowing Chris’s background, it may also be possible that he possessed valuable experience that could be leveraged in Asia. David also determined that he would take the trouble to spend some leisure time with Chris and endeavour to get to know him. With this changed belief and expectation he left our session.

A couple of weeks later I received an email from David telling me what a positive experience the Korean visit had been. All objectives had been achieved, Chris had some common interests with him and the relationship was good. Finally a manager from HQ understood the business climate in Korea and a new channel of influence into HQ had been opened. How differently that trip may have turned out if David had gone into it with his original mind set. A mind focused on failure.

Are you predicting a bad day, week or even year in your own mind? Think again, you may get exactly what you expect.