Keith Ferrazzi's Blog, page 3

One of the unintended consequences of the constant right-sizing and flattening of our organizations is that we now live in a world where managers just don’t have time to do all that’s required of them in their daily jobs, let alone find time for coaching their employees.

Yet coaching is a critical job for any manager who wants to improve her team’s performance. that training alone can improve performance by 22%, while training accompanied by coaching (that is, collaborative problem solving, feedback, and evaluation) can improve performance by 88%.

So what are time-constrained leaders to do?

In our research at Ferrazzi Greenlight, we’ve found an extraordinarily rich and robust coaching resource sitting around us each and every day — our peers. And the ideal venue for peer-to-peer coaching is already built into our schedules — the staff meeting. You can use staff meetings the way a sports coach uses practice time: to run new plays and build new, better habits. The time devoted to coaching during staff meetings can also propel team members to encourage each other “off the court.”

The staff meeting is one of the only times when all of the “players” are together on the field. It’s also the one time the manager has total control of the agenda and can micro-coach the movements of the team, so that new muscle memories are built under her watchful eye. On a winning sports team, the coach certainly spends time with individual players, but also has group practices where the team runs plays with the coach, who sometimes gives the entire group advice, and sometimes singles out individuals. Coaches then do the same during actual games.

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My research team and I have had a couple of interesting conversations with Colin Kinsella, CEO of Mindshare Interactive. How did Colin end the feet-dragging that had stalled the change he was brought on board to finish? Not by telling the team what leadership wanted them to achieve, but by changing how the team did things. We tell more of the story of how Kinsella changed the...

My research team and I have had a couple of interesting conversations with Colin Kinsella, CEO of Mindshare Interactive. How did Colin end the feet-dragging that had stalled the change he was brought on board to finish? Not by telling the team what leadership wanted them to achieve, but by changing how the team did things. We tell more of the story of how Kinsella changed the...

Last week I had the opportunity to address the Fortune Growth Summit. It was a great day and I was honored to be a presenter. If you weren't able to attend, though, here's my interview with Verne Harnish.

Strong, effective teams are the difference between progress and procedural log jams, between productive decisions and reactionary reflex behaviors that waste time and resources. Individuals in strongly bonded teams are more empathetic, honest and supportive – and if this sounds too “touchy-feely,” here’s where the rubber hits the road: Among 55 global teams at 15 multinational...

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When Ritesh Idnani, CEO of ISGN, takes his morning run, he can see the mail counter on his smartphone logging new messages in real time. Jogging down the road, “I see it going from 30 to 40 to 50,” says Idnani. In a global firm like ISGN, a mortgage services company, where messages pour in from across the globe while North America sleeps, “You start the day by catching up,” he...

Daniel Trapp

Never Eat Alone came along at an opportune moment for me: I was facing a transition at work that left me looking at the best path forward and sought a structure that could help me.

It’s always a humbling experience when someone you help, in however big or small a way, uses that moment of generosity to go on and do greater things of his own. That’s why when ophthalmologist and fellow Yalie, Ravi Goel, wrote me the other day, I wanted to share his story with you. When I was a medical student in the 1990s I applied for the Sigma Chi Foundation scholarship...

Almost two years ago, Evan read Never Eat Alone on the recommendation of a faculty member he met at a small seminar. The message captivated him – he grew up a shy kid, but college had opened him up, and he was ready to hear that intimately connecting with people and building a network can be something other than nerve-racking. It could actually be fun, exciting, and rewarding...