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| John C. Renner, Ph.D. |
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John Renner, Ph.D.
I coach managers to help them do their job better and to do it with less stress. Most managers can recall some specific experiences that helped them learn to be leaders. They also remember advice advice from bosses, high school coaches, and motivational speakers. As my clients have gained experience and changed industries or cultures, they recognize how important it is that their management style fits their personality, their values and their goals. At the same time, they know that force of habit makes it hard for them to be objective about their strengths. That is where I can help.
My qualifications for doing this work include my formal training in management coaching from Right Management Consultants, from the Hagberg Consulting Group (now Accenture) and personally, from the coach Marshall Goldsmith. I also keep up to date on the research and writing in this field because I teach coaching and assessment in the graduate studies department of the Marshall Goldsmith School of Management at Alliant International University. I personally supervise the coaching of about 50 managers a year and am a licensed psychologist in the state of California (PSY11956).
My leadership responsibilities in the international consulting firms of KPMG Peat Marwick (now, BearingPoint) Lee Hecht Harrison and Right Management Consultants taught me about the role of management from the inside out. In addition, I feel comfortable in working with managers in start up companies because I was an entrepreneurial founding partner and managing partner of ARA Consultants.
I am also the Managing Director of the Organizational Consulting Center of Alliant International University www.organizationalconsultingcenter.com. The Center does work such as organizational diagnoses, compensation studies, organization development and team building. The research component handles performance measure projects, market research and job satisfaction surveys. |
Simple, but Hard
Managers who are interested in development often read and hear about ways to act or think that would make them better leaders. If you have been doing that lately, you know that acquiring knowledge is the easy part. Doing something--for the long term--is hard. How do you decide where to focus or to tell if your efforts are working or to keep up the improvements you make? The hard part becomes easier when you have a coach.
There is nothing very mysterious about coaching. I use conversation, interviews, and a various assessment tools to help me get to know you and your life and work situation. We'll decide on what you want to change and who would notice if you did make that change. Then we will talk about the kind of support from those around you. We can then set up ways to measure incremental improvements so we can determine if the magnitude and rate of change makes your investment in this development seem worthwhile.
Variations
One on one coaching is certainly not the only way to approach this. I can help you set up a cost-effective Peer Coaching system so that managers can coach one another. Sounds fanciful? Well, it is popular and cost-effective for many corporations.
You may also want to consider a powerful Pair Coaching arrangement with a partner inside or out of your own organization. For some managers, it is helpful to have both support and accountability from someone at their own level when they go through this process.
Getting Energized
Leaders who are learning are constantly re-energized. A business that isn't supporting this development attitude is losing its competitive edge. However, the popular "outside-in" training strategy doesn't work well once you move beyond entry level management training. People prefer to develop talent, passion and new competencies from the inside out. Being energized, and following-through, requires a personalized one-on-one approach.
Does it work? I use a simple but powerful measure of success. I look at the number of managers who, after coaching, want their direct reports to be coached. That is why technique is so popular--those who have been coached can't wait to share the experience with others.
Typical Goals of Coaching
Everyone has their own interesting combinations of motives and habits but the types of challenges that managers want to work on are:
▪ Becoming more self-aware and purposeful
▪ working more effectively with difficult people
▪ Showing a stronger executive presence
▪ Sharpening political skills
▪ Developing decision-making skills
▪ Building better teams
▪ Increasing interpersonal influence
▪ Showing greater self-confidence
▪ Controlling arrogance and impatience, and
▪ Improving planning and priorities.
For the most part, I help people identify what they want to work on, and then we develop a strategy to help them develop. It sometimes helps my clients to seek some insights first through some basic readings about management. You might check out the following site for excellent free and quick reads about management issues http://www.marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com/
For more information, contact me at (858) 752-8355 or john@jrenner.com.
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