A Different Type of Feedback & Coaching Method

Posted on August 29, 2017 by Lisa

In an age where the cognitive components of individual human intelligence are rapidly absorbed by smart algorithms, the next milestone of human performance is emotional and relational in nature. The Kingbridge Institute is now offering a NEW type of learning experience and coaching method beneficial for giving feedback about group dynamics and effectiveness while engaged in discussions.

We have partnered with Mihnea Moldoveanu, Director of the Mind Brain Behavior Institute and Vice-Dean of Innovation at the University of Toronto – to develop the technologies, tools and experiences to help teams develop the awareness, acuity and aplomb to handle difficult dialogues, deliberations and decisions by better understanding their own emotional landscapes and being able to intervene with insight and incisiveness to transform the way they work together.

We are introducing a learning platform that provides a tailored and customized feedback solution for teams who carry out strategic and operational discussions. The tool is designed to diagnose and pinpoint interpersonal blockages to the flow of critical information, breakdowns of trust and hidden biases and power dynamics that undercut the objectivity of their discussions.

This is a transformative feedback solution for giving formative feedback on team member’s social, relational and affective abilities while they are engaged in discussions. Reveals the various degrees of engagement and involvement that people feel relative to each other when communicating.

The social intelligence learning platform – tracks, analyzes and displays variables that give coaches more information about learners’ emotional and physiological states – such as heart rate, heart rate variability and galvanic skin responses – which can be used in combination with a person’s features or characteristic expression and voice analytics to provide even sharper insights of what learners feel while they are interacting with others.

A DIFFERENT COACHING METHOD
The technology – a 360 degree and virtual reality camera is used to capture footage and audio of leaners’ presentations, pitches, meeting discussions, and problem solving sessions which are stored on a secure server. The platform then uses advanced machine learning algorithm’s to identify and map individual users voices and faces and automatically tracks, records, and displays the emotional states of each learner on the basis of recognizing patterns of facial expressions and of voice-related variabilities (pitches, loudness, pitch range, loudness range, rhythm, articulateness) that identify the learners emotional states. Learners can see for themselves the kinds of interpersonal dynamics that their communications – or lack thereof – produce in other participants and they can be coached and briefed on the ways in which their ways of making statements, responding to questions and according or withholding attention from others contributes to the collabortiveness and effectiveness of group sessions.

VALUE PROPOSITION:

Learn how your expressions, gaze, body language, tonality, modes of using language, beliefs and perceptions influence your teams ability to effectively engage in collaborative inquiry during discussions.
Learn how to become more self-aware so you can read and better understand how your emotional dynamics are affecting group performance.
Learn how to communicate more persuasively (great for sales professionals).
Learn how to adapt, modify, navigate and self-regulate your emotional states.

IDEAL FOR:

Sales Professionals
Coaches
Negotiators
Public Speakers
High Performing Athletes
Board Members
Project Managers
Leaders

To learn more about this exciting new technology and experience, visit our website.

The Near Future of Work

Posted on August 22, 2014 by Lisa

As the baby boomers retire and organizational leadership begins to make the shift into the next generation, a functional work environment will come with a significantly different set of required skills for success. Skills such as being trans-disciplinary rather than specialized and adaptive rather than rule driven will determine success. The workforce is already displaying the need for emphasis on such skill sets but finds itself in a state of limbo until the last vestiges of traditional leadership depart.

The infographic below distributed by top10onlinecolleges.org outlines not only the skills that are projected to be the most important to possess to be successful in the near future (2020) but also identifies the drivers of change responsible for the shift in workforce need such as technology and shifts in organizational structure.

Source: Top10OnlineColleges.org

This week Kingbridge would like you to ask yourself: Am I ready for the near ‘future of work’?

Are you leveraging the Informal Networks in your organization?

Posted on July 25, 2014 by John

As a leader have you ever wondered why change initiatives so often don’t generate expected results? How you can completely re-design a reporting structure and have so little change in the day to day operations and interactions? The answer according to a recent Partnering Resources article is in the hidden network in your organization that you overlooked and didn’t include in your change strategy – the informal human network.

In any organization we all know who to go to when we need help with research or to trouble shoot a certain computer program or other specific information – and it isn’t always the person appointed by the organization as the expert. These informal information networks keep organizations running smoothly and can seriously boost productivity and innovation. So how as leaders can we leverage these networks to affect organizational change?

The first step is identification, particularly the key players in any network. Maya Townsend, author of Leveraging Human Networks to Accelerate Learning identifies the key influencers of any informal network:

• Hubs are directly connected to many people and, as a result, have the ability to disseminate information quickly. Hubs sometimes become bottlenecks: people so overwhelmed with information requests and communications that their productivity wanes. When this happens, the ripple effects have a disproportionate affect on the network and many people feel the results. They help CLOs spread information and accelerate change by getting messages out quickly and effectively across a wide network of individuals.

• Gatekeepers stand at the intersection between parts of the organization or areas of expertise. They can be the managers who, for sake of control, prohibit anyone from working with their direct reports without them present. They can be the executives who shield their organizations from abusive colleagues. Or they can simply be subject matter experts who can easily and quickly access people in a certain field of knowledge.

• Pulse-takers are the covert influencers within networks. They’re often more knowing than known, and they connect with others strategically. They can be the Machiavellian, behind-the-scenes players or quietly influential informal leaders who people turn to during times of uncertainty. These are the people CLOs want to have on their side during major change initiatives because, with just a few actions, they have the power to accelerate or impede progress.

Once the key players have been identified the task of leveraging the network becomes simplified. Approach these people, discuss change initiatives with them, gather their perspectives and ultimately get them on your side! Once you have done that the important information and support for the initiative will spread naturally throughout the organization.

The Kingbridge Insight for this week is to “consider incorporating informal networks into your change strategy”. It may seem unnatural and even daunting at first but the potential benefits far outweigh the effort.

Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Collaboration?

Posted on May 23, 2014 by John and Lisa

It has come to my attention recently that in these articles we have often explored the nuances of collaboration including the conditions and behaviours needed to get it right and the barriers you may face to success and how to identify pseudo collaborations but we have very minimally referenced the pit falls of too much collaboration.

It is indisputable that organizations leveraging properly executed collaborations produce superior innovation and results over traditional bureaucratic systems. However, that doesn’t mean that every decision in an organization needs to be a collaborative effort. As part of HBR’s Insight Center “Getting Collaboration Right” authors Morten T. Hansen and Herminia Ibarra identify the 2 main traps organizations fall into when ‘trying to get it right’:

Under-collaboration. Companies that operate as a collection of silos commit the cardinal sin of under-performing. Both ideas and money are left on the table because managers are unwilling or unable to combine resources to create new products, or share best practices to improve efficiency. Sony for example was unable to come up with its version of iPod/iTunes because divisions competed with one another.

Over-collaboration. The alternative problem is that collaboration sometimes goes too far. It sets in when people collaborate on the wrong things or when collaboration efforts get bogged down in endless discussions and consensus decision-making in which no one is clearly accountable. The result is slow and poor execution. At the oil giant BP a few years back, efforts to promote collaboration across the many operating business were so successful that employees over-collaborated. According to former CIO John Leggate: “People always had a good reason for meetings. You’re sharing best practices. You’re having good conversations with like-minded people. But increasingly, we found that people were flying around the world and simply sharing ideas without always having a strong focus on the bottom line.” Only when they calibrated their effort did BP reap benefits from collaboration.

So yes, you can over-collaborate. Having said that, the example of over-collaboration above was missing a key component of any organizational culture as a whole – accountability. In a successful collaborative culture an organization shares common values and goals, as such everyone in that organization is accountable for putting their maximum effort towards achieving those goals. Any organizational systems designed to reward collaboration must take steps to ensure what they are promoting is disciplined collaboration.

The Kingbridge Insight this week is one I am sure you have heard many times before: Collaboration isn’t easy! It takes extensive planning, knowledge, behavioural considerations and self reflection not to mention re-designing entire corporate cultures to even give all that work a chance to be successful! It is not to be taken lightly, real collaboration is a massive undertaking and doing it wrong can be as damaging to an organization as not doing it at all.

Getting Disruptive Ideas to Market

Posted on April 25, 2014 by John

This blog on bringing disruptive ideas to market was originally posted on Xconomy in July of 2007 however, I continue to get comments on the content and requests to speak regarding this topic so here it is back by popular demand!

I’m interested in how one takes inventions to scale. Obviously, that is what Boston Scientific was all about. How do you get a disruptive idea, in particular, into the marketplace? In my opinion, people frequently take the wrong approach.

Disruptive ideas are very threatening to the establishment, or whoever owned that marketspace before. They may be products or technology like the iPOD (catheter surgery in the case of BSC), or they can be processes or services like Amazon or eBay. Or they can be social ideas like a bike path into the city. They can lead to dramatic changes in the field to which the idea applies. That can mean different people will use and control it. And it will be used differently with a different infrastructure and in different locations. There will be economic implications with winners and losers. And the idea will influence many others indirectly.

So how do you overcome the resistance of the establishment (surgeons in the case of BSC, but it could be academia, professional societies, big companies, the government, etc.)? Hire PR? Most of the PR and advertising guys are great if the idea is accepted, lousy if the idea is not accepted. Your goal is to get it accepted. And that to me is the fun part of business. New ideas grow best with viral approaches and that’s all about relationships and reputation.

Don’t go after the biggest idea first.
A disruptive technology can have many applications. If you get funding for it, the funders will want to go after the biggest application first in order to justify the investment. That’s a dumb thing to do, because new ideas and technologies evolve. They grow like a plant as more and more is learned. And there will be lots of problems early on. If you go for the biggest application first, you will create unmeetable expectations which will arm the establishment with more arguments to destroy you. And even mini-failures will be hard to recover from. Pick an application that is smaller and you can more easily find, or create, champions who will become disciples. Their expectations will be more modest. They will be more forgiving when things don’t go right. Over time they will become your unpaid sales force and your R&D department. You won’t just be creating a product and customers, you will be creating a movement.

And you’ve got to be patient. It took us (BSC) over 20 years to help get the Less Invasive Surgery business going. The ATM for banks took well over a decade to catch on. You can not only be too early for the market because your technology isn’t finished, but too early for the market because customers aren’t ready for it—which means the establishment is going to pull every trick in the book to dismiss you.

At BSC, we took our disruptive catheter technologies and went for smaller niche markets. These smaller markets (for example pediatric cardiology) allowed us to experiment. Our customers developed new applications. They suggested modifications. They came up with great accessories to extend the use and improve the results of the procedures for which the products were designed. I used to even make “care packages” for some inventor docs that would contain special wires, tubing, molds, heat guns, shrink tubing, etc, so they could make prototypes themselves. They loved it. We had friends for life, and gained a few good product ideas as well.

There are lots of other examples of technologies that have enormous applications, where it was, or is, important to debug them first. By doing so, you will not only be learning more about the technology, but also the marketing and communication strategies that you may want to follow if in fact it does become super big. By going after smaller markets first, you can evolve, define, and develop more IP. You can do an awful lot of things that will increase the likelihood of a successful attack on the big market when you get there.

Build in-depth knowledge and trust it in hard times.
If it really is a new idea, you will not only be developing the product(s), you will be developing the language and the science behind it—the ontology and taxonomy for talking about it. It’s hard, but when you get there you will have created that market—and you will own it.

The marketing and funding folk will be pushing hard for you to get some big name scientific and other advisors on the masthead for credibility purposes. Yes, a few may be valuable, but remember, these are people who are already famous. They have nothing to gain (except money, of course, and that can sometimes be a bad motivator) and everything to lose. Finding the unknown younger scientist, engineer, or physician who has the capabilities and desire is much more important. They have everything to gain and nothing to lose. I’ll put my bet on the motivated entrepreneurial type every time. I have a checklist of attributes that we used to pick physicians. Ask me if you’re interested.

Focus.
Traditional business experts will always say you’ve got to focus in order to apply your limited resources effectively. But if you’re dealing with a truly new idea, that may be the wrong thing to do because you don’t yet know where the best spot to focus is. You’ve got to be able to say, ‘It doesn’t look like it from the outside, but in fact we arefocusing. We are taking little pieces of many markets and leveraging the daylights out of it, in order to create a new market.’ If your customers are your partners, and they should be, they can help you make the right decisions.

Always build your credibility and reputation.
Who do you trust more; someone who is selling you something which you’ve never heard of before, or someone who is selling something familiar from a well-known company? Everything else being equal, with most people, the affiliation with the well-known brand and organization is a reputational asset. So it’s critical to earn the respect and trust of both your customers and the community members, including competitors, of the field you will be working with.

General Georges Doriot, founder of American Research and Development and considered one of the fathers of venture capital, was a charmer and had an enormous Rolodex. He told me that it was his most valuable asset. He was a generous person, a mentor to many and always doing favors for people. But that generosity had an enlightened self-interest to it. The Rolodex represented his relationships and the personal credibility and reputation that went along with it. That was his most important investment.

I think people sometimes get so caught up in the competition of financial results that they forget that the thing that’s going to give them the best likelihood of success in the future is the relationship metrics.

This is all common sense, of course, and pretty obvious. But it’s amazing how often we forget the obvious.

Hacking Work

Posted on April 17, 2014 by John

Work is broken. As Bill Jensen and Josh Klein point out in their book “Hacking Work”, companies are moving faster, but not really getting anywhere. In fact organizational performance has been deteriorating for decades, regardless of economic conditions. Companies have tried to avert this through short term fixes like layoffs and spending cuts however, in the long run the result is the same. Work is broken and needs to be hacked.

Employee engagement continues to decline, while leadership frustration continues to rise. We could blame the people (employees) or the economy but the truth is that as the complexity in the workplace has increased over the years the way we work has changed very little. People are frustrated with constantly shifting priorities, limited resources and an accelerated market place. The feeling of accomplishment and pride in work that feeds the ‘soul’ of the employee is marginalized because current (and by current we mean old) organizational structures haven’t evolved to accommodate shifts in the market, communication or technology, thus don’t allow for significant achievement. In short, it is the way we work that is failing to keep up, not the people.

Jensen and Klein suggest that the solution to the problem of how we change the work landscape is not a top down approach but rather will come from individuals at all levels of an organization challenging the status quo, daring to bypass sacred structures, using forbidden tools, and ignoring silly corporate edicts. In other words, they are hacking work to increase their own efficiency and job satisfaction. When enough of today’s workforce joins the hack, there will be a definitive movement towards functional work in the 21st century.

The Kingbridge Insight this week, like many others comes as a question:
Are you going to remain part of the problem, protecting the status quo? Or, are you going to join the tribe of individuals implementing the solution and teaching others how to hack work and make it better for everyone?

Measuring Collaboration ROI

Posted on March 28, 2014 by John

In most cases an overall objection to collaboration within organizations is not an issue, however, the where, when and how of implementing collaborative systems is.

Collaboration is an increasingly vital capability for organizations. But when companies just promote collaboration indiscriminately, without the proper culture and resources to support it they create information bottlenecks and actually diminish their organizational effectiveness.

In a 2006 edition of McKinsey Quarterly the article “Mapping the Value of Employee Collaboration” presented an in depth network analysis approach to determining where and how to introduce collaboration initiatives within an organization in a way that is not only effective but measurable against the bottom line. Despite the article being nearly 8 years old, the issue of how to appropriately leverage collaboration mechanisms is as much a problem today – if not more.

The network approach presented in the article gives executives the information they need to foster collaboration at the points where it delivers an economic return – a key indicator required to allocate resources to collaborative efforts.

It would not do this article justice to attempt to summarize nor would it help you apply any of the methods within (for which you may want to hire a professional!). However, if as a leader you have been searching for a way to both justify and accurately allocate resources to collaboration systems in your organization it is highly recommended to read this article.

Do your Collaborative Leadership Skills measure up?

Posted on March 14, 2014 by John

Carrying on the same vein as the last post, we move forward to the increasingly essential skill of collaboration, specifically for leaders.

The Ivey Business Journal recently published an article “The Collaboration Imperative” exploring one of the greatest management challenges of the 21st century – cultivating collaborative leadership skills. Author Rick Lash of The Hay Group, discusses how in the current and accelerating complexity and unpredictability of markets that companies will “need leaders who are highly adaptive, continuous learners, able to lead diverse groups across functional disciplines, regions and cultures.” Essentially, whether across teams, borders or function leaders will need to collaborate.

The first key point in this article – that can not be stressed enough – is that the skills required for collaboration are NOT the same as those required to work effectively in a functional team. As a leader you may excel at ‘teamwork’ but this does not lend to your credibility as an effective collaborator. A Hay Group study found that most executives still require considerable development in influence, inspirational leadership, coaching, mentoring and emotional self-awareness – the competencies that are not necessarily needed for successful ‘teamwork’ but absolutely imperative for collaboration. In short, leadership skill sets have not kept up with the evolution of the marketplace and subsequent shift to flatter organizational structures.

One of the obvious barriers to collaborative leadership is the organizational culture. If the leader is rewarded based only on his departmental performance rather than that of the organization as a whole he/she is unlikely to put long term cross functional collaboration as a priority. regardless if the skill set to do so exists or not.
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Although it is acknowledged that organizational culture plays a considerable role in successful collaborative leadership, the list below succinctly summarizes the key collaborative competencies required in an individual to be successful as a collaborative leader:

Enterprise perspective – they have a comprehensive understanding of the company’s overall business strategy and how the joint work they are leading aligns with that strategy. They use this understanding to resolve any conflicts that may arise.
Cross-functional perspective – they understand the needs, metrics, incentives and deliverables of different functions and business units. They can align these competing priorities within the operating model.
Customer perspective – they not only understand the customers’ interests and needs, they also know how to keep the team focused on making the decisions that enhance the overall customer experience.
Self-management – they exhibit self-control when challenged. They have patience when dealing with colleagues who may have trouble understanding the shared purpose of the collaboration initiative. They do not take disagreements personally.
Listen with respect – they listen objectively and respectfully to multiple opinions. They empathize with colleagues whose position, situation or perspective may differ from their own. They start with the assumption that collaborators are capable and will do their best.
Matrix influencing – they excel at communicating with different stakeholders and influencing them to support collaborative projects.

The level of these competencies can be broadly assessed with the following questions:

1.    Can this leader achieve results by influencing rather than directing?
2.    Can this leader share ownership, even if it means sharing credit and rewards?
3.    Can this leader delegate and let others deliver results?
4.    Has this leader demonstrated the ability to motivate groups of diverse individuals who may not share her viewpoints or perspectives?
5.    Has this leader demonstrated the ability to make and implement decisions collaboratively?
6.    Can this leader get results even when he has no direct control over people or resources?

Now that you have self assessed your abilities against the competencies above and considered your own growth areas to achieve ‘master’ level collaborative skills and have devised a plan to become the best collaborator you can be……. I will temper this with the Kingbridge Insight for this week which is that collaborative skills and leadership abilities are not in themselves a solution. Perhaps the greatest strength of any collaborative leader is to know how to select collaboration opportunities wisely and to recognize when they are not working or not true collaborations.

Robot Collaboration

Posted on February 21, 2014 by John

You are probably wondering how we could possibly program robots to collaborate when most of us have such a difficult time doing it effectively ourselves! Well MIT researchers have recently discovered that it is quite a challenge indeed. (“Helping Robots Collaborate”, Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence News, February 14, 2014)

Currently researchers are working on applying a combination of robotic control programs to enable groups of robots to collaborate. The most recent tests of this complex system have included a simulation of a warehousing application where teams of robots are required to retrieve arbitrary objects from indeterminate locations, collaborating as needed to transport heavy loads. It sounds simple enough right? Well, as with any collaboration communication has proven to be one of the primary issues. There are far too many variables involved to program a detailed set of communication conditions – similar to communications in any work environment. And similar to human work environments and modes of communication the greatest success in this venture for robotic collaboration has come when the robots are given the tools and freedom to ‘decide’ how best to communicate and accomplish what they need – like a self organizing team. Each robot has a series of coloured lights to use for communication when their direct relay systems are slow or out of order. Originally, the programmers were attempting to create a specific light response for any situation/communication need that may arise, which of course proved impossible given the infinite number of variables and qualifiers involved in a group collaboration. What has provided some success is programming the robots to identify the coloured lights as a method of communication and allow the artificial intelligence algorithm determine whether use of the lights is necessary and what the colours mean.

The Kingbridge Insight this week is an extrapolation of the lessons this robotic experiment has to offer while attempting to program collaboration behaviour.

Traditionally, organizations work in a hierarchy, where actions and behaviours are determined by a superior officer. Even though many organizations have taken some steps towards creating ‘bottom up’ environments the underlying structure for the most part remains the same. In this experiment however, the most successful collaborations resulted from self organization and the absence of command and control.

What conclusion would you draw from this about the conditions required for successful collaborations?

TED@Your Company

Posted on January 10, 2014 by John

Imagine giving your own TED talk – what ‘’idea worth spreading’’ would you share in 18 minutes or less?

Recently, this question has been promoted from day dream to reality for some with the advent of TED’s professional development arm, the TED Institute which recently launched a corporate events program. In this program companies can work with TED experts to put on their own authentic TED talk!

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One of the first to engage in this program was the financial services company State Street. The organization put out an open call to all employees for TED talk proposals, from which TED experts worked with company organizers to select those chosen to participate. Those selected were then paired with TED coaches and led through an intense 6 week training program culminating in the creation of a presentation quality TED talk.

Aside from the obvious ‘cool’ factor of presenting your own TED talk for your colleagues, the real impact from these events comes from the creation of a ‘level’ playing field where position is secondary to content – a front line staff member’s talk on professional development may be followed by a personal experience talk by the CEO (if he made the cut!) and be equally as brilliant.

In the current fast paced environment it is increasingly important to inspire passion in employees (those who view new challenges as opportunities to learn additional skills) in order to maintain a competitive edge and foster innovation in a marketplace where many skill sets become obsolete within a few years. These TED inspired events take great strides towards empowering such a culture.

This weeks Kingbridge Insight is a challenge: How can you as a leader in your organization empower a culture of continuous learning and professional development to inspire passion in your workforce?

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Open Minds and Expand Thinking "The paradox of real collaboration is that it is not about getting the best minds together – it's about creating a New Mind Set."

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