BEHAVIOR
-Some Key Points:
Behavior = A person's
actions which are controlled by the sum of their thinking
processes, attitudes, beliefs and feelings about specific ideas,
situations or other people.
The
Role of Behavior at work:
The
three interlocked factors for an enterprise’s success are: strategy,
process and behavior. Strategy sets the direction for the
enterprise—where it’s going and why. Work processes organize the work
toward strategic objectives. Behavior is the enabler of both
strategy and process. It is people’s behavior—what they say and
do—that is either aligned or misaligned with strategy and process.
Successful personal,
professional and organizational development come down to human behavior—what
people do and don’t do to make each task a reality.
Coaching at Work: Generally the reasons for
seeking out a coach are linked to the desire for change at one or more
of three levels. For example, there may be issues around:
- a desire to become more effective at a professional
skill
- a desire to develop more productive working/social
relationships
- a need to be in step with organizational
objectives
By positively changing an individual's behavior at any
one of these levels the organization as a whole will benefit as the
individual increases his or her effectiveness.
The difference
between technical and behavioral competencies
Technical competencies are usually learned (in an educational
environment or on the job) whereas behavioral competencies
(self-awareness, self-management and work habits and values etc) are
typically learned through life experiences. Behavioral
competencies are the processes or control laws that use the
technical competencies to achieve and/or maintain goals.
Traditional business coaching fails to deliver!
Traditional coaching, built around Effective Listening Skills,
Questioning and Goal Setting, falls well short of developing
behavioral competencies. Coachees are given feedback about how to
do it better, what to change, what the standard is for high performance
etc. However, this
“one-size-fits-all” simplistic approach to
developing competencies is ineffective as it ignores our individual
complexities.
In traditional coaching the
participants shortly revert to habitual patterns at the conclusion of
the coaching cycle. It's an expensive venture for a short-term
"buzz." Thus, the challenge for coaching professionals
is to enhance organizational effectiveness with a behavioral change and
learning model that strengthens and sustains individuals in the desired behavioral competencies.
Profit Eroding Behaviors
Any leadership or management behaviors that negatively impact the
effectiveness of an organization are Profit Eroding Behaviors. The
negative impact of persons with profit eroding behaviors is enormous.
Profit Eroding Behaviors are not just dangerous to the individuals' careers
but also directly impact the bottom-line performance and profitability of
the organization they work in.
Executive Leadership outcomes ultimately
affect organizational performance. Cognitive and
interpersonal skill sets or competencies are critical elements of the
leader’s portfolio of roles which determine specific, situationally-appropriate
leader behaviors. Traditionally, the
leader has been left to develop his/her own behavioral competency
range. This is now regarded as one of the key reasons why there has
always been an acute shortage of experienced leaders who possess
the developed mental skill sets required to operate at the top
level. Today, Behavioral-based Leadership Coaching provides a validated,
proven platform to develop those requisite behavioral skill sets.
A leader's
Cognitive Skills and Interpersonal Skills affects executive
strategic competence through behavioral differentiation
(choosing the appropriate behavior) among the executive's behavioral
repertoire (the range and scope of behaviors and roles the
executive leader is competent to execute).
Cognitive Skills:
(includes the higher mental processes such as; a higher-level of Understanding
and Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation, Problem-Solving,
Judgement etc). The more
closely leaders' cognitive range matches the complexities of their
environments, the more effective the leader will be.
Cognitive skills refers to
leaders' capacity to process information
from their environments, execute their leadership functions, decision
making and critical tasks. Cognitively under-developed leaders
are only able to unidimensionally process information from their
environments while cognitively advanced leaders are capable of
multidimensional processing. The more demanding and complex their working and social environment, the
higher level of cognitive capacities the leader must possess to
successfully operate in it.
Interpersonal Skills:
(includes: social perception, values, self-complexity
and social capital as it relates to social exchange and influence)
Interpersonal skills are the leader's capacity to differentiate the
intra-personal, inter-personal, and relational aspects of a social
situation and integrate them in a manner that results in increased
understanding or changed intention to positively act. It results from the
leaders' abilities to differentiate and integrate their social settings.
The 2 aspects of Interpersonal Skills:
Interpersonal differentiation and Interpersonal integration.
Interpersonal differentiation is the ability of a leader to
discriminate and recognize the various existing and potential facets,
aspects, and significance of a given social situations. Leaders who are
able to differentiate their social environments are able to perceive a
maximal number of dimensions and number of categories. Interpersonal
differentiation is also a function of the leader's ability to
regulate emotions within self and recognize emotions in others.
Interpersonal integration is the leader's ability
to synthesize the various components of a social situation in a manner
that leads to increased understanding and exchanges. Interpersonal
integration is also a function of the leader's ability to arouse
follower motivation by engaging follower self-concepts (e.g., self-worth,
self-efficacy, self-esteem).
Leadership Behavioral
Skills- (includes: giving-seeking information, making decisions,
influencing people, and building relationships etc.)
As mentioned above, the two key components of behavioral skills are:
- behavioral repertoire -- the portfolio of leadership
roles an executive leader can perform -and
- behavioral differentiation -- the ability of leaders to perform
different leadership roles depending on the organizational situation.
Behavioral skills can be
measured in terms of the scope and range of the roles an executive leader executes.
A developed set of cognitive
and interpersonal skills together with a well developed behavioral
range result in situationally appropriate executive leader behavior and ultimately
organizational effectiveness.
©
Behavioral Coaching Institute
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