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1 Developing a Developmental Bias, or a 3 a.m. Wake-up Call

Editor: So where to now?

Author: I thought I’d talk a bit about how this focus on developmental bias evolved and led to the five “rings” we’ll be discussing in the book, and why this is important in the business world.

Editor: Hmm . . . I’ve been thinking . . .

Author: Oh-oh! Every time Sandra, my wife, says “I’ve been thinking” I know something is about to happen or change for me.

Editor: That’s because wives often have a strong developmental bias as far as husbands are concerned, and that’s what I was going to point out. The wife thinks: “I see so clearly where he needs to get better. Why doesn’t he get it?”

Author: I want to point out that getting married does not often lead to the type of developmental bias of which I’m speaking. Sandra, for example, has clearly identified countless ways for me to be better. Observing my many and obvious flaws, she sees my need to be better in an increasingly wide variety of settings. I would suggest, however, that most of it is more connected to the fact that when we’re out in public together, she doesn’t want in any way to be associated with, or embarrassed by, any quirky behavior on my part.

Apparently this is quite a common pattern. Peggy Baumgartner, head of our training division, recently asked her husband, Richard, to write a selfassessment, an exercise we use in many of our workshops. When Richard scored low on the “self-critical” scale, Peggy couldn’t understand, given his many and obvious faults, how he could be so blind. His response, she tells me, was that he had no need for such self-reflection, since she pointed out his flaws and shortcomings with some frequency!

Editor: I don’t know Peggy but I sure can see her point. At any rate, perhaps my way of pointing out my husband’s shortcomings could use some work. Let’s hear if there’s anything of value in what follows.

Author: Quit buttering me up . . .

You could have cut the tension with a knife. The finalists for the 100 meter hurdles at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens were in the blocks. The world champion and gold medal favorite, Perdita Felicien, was in lane 5, and the hopes of a nation were riding on her. The gun sounded, and Perdita shot out of the blocks toward the first hurdle. She hit the hurdle, went down onto the track—and in a second her dream was shattered, along with the dream of the woman in the next lane, who fell over her.

I was asleep in my bed in the Olympic village by the time my roommate, Gary Winckler, returned from the track events of the evening. He tried not to wake me as he fumbled around in the dark, but I rolled over and muttered, “What a bummer, Gary.”

“Yes,” came the reply, “but it will make us stronger.” Gary was Perdita’s coach.

In my role as a sport psychologist, I have worked with and coached hundreds of coaches. Gary, who is also the head coach for women’s track and field at the University of Illinois, is an example of one of the exceptional ones. A scant few hours after what could have been a careerdefining disappointment, he had already reframed the situation and was laying the necessary groundwork for recovery. His strong developmental bias—evident in his quest to ferret out the possibilities for growth in a bleak situation—was already in play.

Coaches come in all shapes and sizes, and with a range of personalities. But what the very good ones all have in common is that they operate on a similar set of beliefs and principles. Beneath the different personalities and the widely varying situations in which they work, the five characteristics of a developmental bias are very much in action. The same is true of exceptional business leaders and parents. A strong developmental bias underscores everything these people do. Their view of the concept of performance is much broader than athletic prowess, quarterly sales figures, or good grades. It is concerned with the whole person and that individual’s development as a human being.

I first heard this “bias” expressed by the famous UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, at a seminar I attended in 1971 when I was a university basketball coach. Over the years, Wooden’s teams at UCLA won 10 national championships—seven in a row at one point. (No one else has come close; the next highest is two in a row.) Yet despite his brilliant successes, Coach Wooden always maintained he would not know how good a coach he had been until at least 20 years after his last player graduated and he was able to see what they had done with their lives. As I write this, Coach Wooden is still observing—in his 97th year!

Let’s further expand on exactly what I mean by a strong developmental bias so you can begin to see how you could tap into the Third Factor of the performers in your world.

Developmental bias is a new term that juxtaposes what is often perceived as a negative term—bias—with a decidedly positive one—development. But one can be biased in a positive sense, as in, “He had a bias toward always being honest, no matter what the circumstance.” I could just as easily have used the phrase developmental prejudice, but the word prejudice has even more baggage attached to it. To be prejudiced toward a person’s growth, success, well-being or development is a very good thing for any manager to have, but I settled on the word bias because it suggests a kind of listing in a certain direction, like a car with steering that pulls slightly one way.

Good leaders are always skewed to the developmental side even while trying to produce “straightforward” results. They get the results, but they develop the person in the process, so that the achievement of those results—or even higher results next week, next month or next year—is possible.

Managers with a strong developmental bias are not mean or dictatorial. They are just very passionate about their people using all of their talents and abilities. They hate to see talent go to waste. They are like my high school English teacher, Mrs. Lockyer. She knew what you were capable of and insisted on holding you to that standard. This is the essence of the developmental bias. And in exceptional coaches, it’s like gravity—always there, exerting a pull, influencing everything a coach does. In good coaches, developmental bias supersedes everything.

I know that it was teachers like Mrs. Lockyer, who had a strong developmental bias, who had the most influence on where I am now and what I am able to do. I can also list the bosses and coaches I’ve had since my high school days who exhibited this bias with ease: they are those who have had the biggest impact on my abilities and beliefs. They are the ones who ignited my Third Factor, my desire to be more or better or different than I was.

In talking to and working with other exceptional coaches, I became more and more aware that this strong developmental bias was a major undercurrent in each and every one of them. It also became clear to me that there were five main principles at work in the service of developing their athletes.

In Search of the Developmental Bias

I can honestly say that until that 3 a.m. conversation with Gary, I really hadn’t given any thought to writing another book. But in the ensuing days, as the Olympics progressed, the outline for what you will read here slowly emerged. It was clear to me that there are some exceptional coaches, and that leaders of all types—managers, parents, other coaches— could learn a great deal from them.

This wasn’t a new idea in the sense that I’ve been teaching coaching skills for years. What Gary triggered in me was the desire to go beyond the obvious, to get beneath the surface and uncover what the coaches did. What was it about them or their style that made them so good for the people they coached, and so successful? Given all the experiences I have been fortunate enough to be part of—including six Olympic Games and numerous world championships—I felt I was in a unique position to identify and convey those lessons.

I also have one other advantage. As an instructor in the executive development programs at Queen’s School of Business in Kingston, Ontario, and as a trainer with my own company, Performance Coaching, I spend much of my time working with leaders in organizations. It has given me a clear understanding of the demands placed on everyday leaders. I could easily see that the leadership lessons from this “performance laboratory” called the Olympics also applied in the so-called real world.

In the process of writing this book, I first laid out the five characteristics of a strong developmental bias that I had observed in great coaches: that is, the five sets of behaviors they used to translate their developmental bias into results. Then I interviewed Olympic coaches and got them to comment on the principles and give their views. The coaches I selected were recommended to me by a few for whom I have had tremendous respect over the years. You’ll get to meet these men and women in the main body of this work.

Once I had collected the data from the coaches, I put together a presentation on the five principles and took it on the road, to corporate audiences across Canada and the United States, to get feedback on the applicability of the concepts for everyday leaders. This book is the result of that feedback.

Go Deeper We have developed a website in conjunction with this book so that you can assess yourself in each of the five areas as well as get some coaching on key skills. Go to www.ignitingthethirdfactor.com. Your username: perform. Your password: lead.

What follows is a summary of each of the five characteristics of a developmental bias to whet your appetite for what’s to come. Over numerous presentations, I have arrived at the “five rings” diagram, which I find appropriate since so much of the wisdom contained in these pages comes from Olympic coaches and athletes.

Manage Yourself

People cannot move to high performance if they have to spend time and energy adjusting to you. Coaches are human. Even those with a strong developmental bias and the best intentions can sometimes get in their own way when they are coaching and developing others. In Chapter 3: Manage Yourself we talk about the tools you can use to be a more effective leader at critical times. Being skilled at managing yourself is a precondition to being able to access your developmental bias. This is especially true when you’re under pressure, feeling rushed or uncertain— which pretty much describes the work world every day!

Build Trust

Here is what Olympic decathlon coach Andy Higgins had to say about building trust: “Robert Frost said it better than I can. . . . It’s putting our belief into them so that they can have a belief they can use until they acquire their own.” Wow. I had to read that several times to get the full impact of it. There are many other aspects to trust, of course, including competence. No matter how nice someone may be, or how much they say they believe in you, you will not trust them if you don’t feel they are knowledgeable or competent enough about the area you are engaged in to give that kind of reassurance. We cover this in much more detail in Chapter 4.

Encourage and Use Imagery

Chapter 5 outlines one of the most powerful tools great coaches use: the language of imagery to create clear pictures for their performers. Imagery is the language of performance. People can’t do things they can’t imagine. The potential for development here is huge.

Uncover and Work Through Blocks

The fourth characteristic is all about dealing with the blocks that inevitably come up when developing others. When you are trying to get better at something, you are going to run into blocks. In Chapter 6 we discuss how to uncover the blocks in the first place and then build the performer’s commitment to deal with them.

Embrace Adversity

In Chapter 7 we look at how exceptional leaders and Olympic coaches take an active role in situations of adversity to ensure that the adversity is channeled in a developmental way. When you have prepared for adversity, you’re able to deal with it when it arrives—as it surely will. Choosing to be in the competitive arena in any endeavor means that sooner or later you will face adversity. It’s the nature of the game. In today’s business climate, for example, with its frequent and fast-paced changes, mergers and downsizings and unexpected setbacks, learning to turn adversity to advantage and ride the waves in a storm is an essential survival skill.

Interrelationships Among the Five Characteristics

We’re going to talk about each of these characteristics separately, but in reality they are intertwined. They are like the ingredients in a cake: they combine in interesting ways that change them and make them into something more than they could ever be as separate entities. You can’t effectively extend trust, for example, until you learn to manage yourself (and particularly your ego). It won’t be possible to allow someone to do something their way unless you are prepared to let go of the conviction that only you know how something ought to be done.

The Tough Lab of Sport

Sir John Whitmore made some interesting comments on sport as a “developmental” laboratory. “Because sport is compressed in terms of time, the emotions involved are much more intense, so life after a time in sport is actually easier because you have been there before; it’s familiar territory. I never experienced an extreme of emotion in life, in terms of highs and lows—that has been new to me. I experienced all of them in sport.” He goes on to point out, as Dabrowski did, the importance of emotion in development and what we are calling the Third Factor. “I feel some people go through life cushioning themselves from their emotions, and I think they miss something. It is the extremes of emotion that give you your deepest experiences in life, and sport did that for me” (p. xi, Sporting Excellence, David Hemery).

In Paradise Lost, John Milton argues that virtue is not virtue until it is tested. How well things work when under fire is a test of their value. It is hard enough to succeed in the everyday world, but in the competitive arena both coach and athlete are on display before large audiences, exposed to scrutiny, their performance continually analyzed, evaluated and critiqued. The more important the event is perceived to be (the Olympics especially), the greater the impact on both performer and coach. But even at a minor sporting event one can see how competition brings out the worst in many people. That’s why the five characteristics discussed here are so important: great coaches and performers have demonstrated that they hold true even under fire. And if they work so well in the heat of competition, just imagine how effective these fundamentals will be when applied on a daily basis.

In some organizations, particularly those where there are engineers, hi-tech people and others who pride themselves on being practical and task-oriented and on “getting things done,” there is a stigma attached to the so-called soft skills. Developing others, coaching, and other such activities are seen as “fluff ”—not really connected to getting the job done, hitting the numbers or bringing things in on schedule. This is a misguided view. It’s the so-called soft skills that produce the “hard” results.

The coaches I interviewed for Ignite the Third Factor were united in their view that their role was to develop those under their tutelage to the best of their ability, using all of each person’s potential. But sometimes the developmental requirement calls for the equivalent of a kick in the pants. I am not talking about being vindictive, but of being willing to have that “difficult conversation” even when you’d prefer to bail. Confrontation is difficult for most of us, but the ability to face it and use it effectively is an essential skill in developing others. We will cover that skill in Chapter 7: Embracing Adversity, but it is also outlined in detail, for those who are interested, in Appendix B: When All Else Fails.

Unfortunately, too many leaders focus on the end goal, and more particularly on what it will do for them. For such people it is certainly not about developing anyone. It’s only about getting results. In most environments these leaders and coaches have a very short shelf life. I say in most environments because in a few situations, such as college sport, for example, the performers are forced to adjust their game to fit the predetermined designs, plans and idiosyncrasies of their authoritarian coaches. Winning coaches in these situations are tolerated even if they are not developmental. They get to replace 30 to 35 percent of their “workforce” every year. Try that in your workplace!

Commitment and the Developmental Bias

There are other ways of talking about developmental bias. In his excellent book Coaching for Commitment, Dennis Kinlaw emphasizes that almost everything a coach does should be in the service of developing commitment in the performer, the person being coached. He is not talking about commitment to the organization, but about building in people a commitment to themselves—a commitment to develop their own talents and skills to the highest level possible, and to work for continuous improvement.

In her book Leadership and the New Science, renowned systems analyst and consultant Margaret Wheatley helps us see a broader and more comprehensive meaning of commitment. She talks about people in dysfunctional organizations, organizations that have been tipped into chaos by leveraged buyouts or dramatic downsizings. She points out that about 25 percent of people continue to work to a high standard, care about their results, and bring creativity and enthusiasm to their daily work. At first she thought these people were simply denying reality, pretending everything was going to be okay three months down the road even though they had no guarantee of employment. When she interviewed them, however, she discovered that something else was going on. These were the people who had taken the time to create a sense of purpose and meaning for themselves in their work and in their lives, so that even if the organization didn’t make sense, they did. They were performing this way, to this level, because it was part of who they were as human beings.

Such inner commitment to one’s talents and skills usually reflects the work of some very good teachers, parents and other leaders who have taught, parented and coached with a strong developmental bias. Often, it is reflected in the individual in activities such as continuous learning and working on blind spots.

It is interesting to observe this commitment in young Olympic performers. Over the years they take on more and more responsibility for developing their own excellence and their own training programs. When athletes are young, the coach almost always does this, but exceptional coaches early on begin transferring these responsibilities to their young charges. The really good coaches understand that their job is to work themselves out of a job. They believe that this is the true meaning of empowerment.

Marco Beaulieu, who works in engineering management with Bell Canada, was a student in a weeklong leadership development program at Queen’s School of Business in 2007. During this program, offered four times a year, I get to meet many excellent managers and leaders. Marco told me the following story about the development of commitment and belief.

He was coaching 10- to 12-year-olds in minor hockey in Montreal. He had three important values he wanted them to learn during the year: sharing, teamwork and respect. He focused hard on those values and brought in a few people with the appropriate expertise to help teach such skills as power skating and shooting drills. One of these experts was Nancy Drolet, a former national team hockey player and Olympic gold medalist. Marco said the kids loved her. She spoke to them about never giving up, and it became a kind of rallying cry; they became committed to pushing through.

The team made the playoffs, and to Marco’s surprise got to the final game against a team that had beaten them all year. “They never gave up,” he said, “and we were tied 2–2 at the end of the second period in the final. Before the game I had bought a cheap hand-mirror with a handle. In the dressing room between the second and third periods I had all the players close their eyes. I told them that when I tapped them on the shoulder they were to open their eyes for a second and look at the picture of the person who would make the difference in the third period.” He then went around the room and in succession tapped each player on the shoulder while he held the mirror up to their face. The players rose to the occasion and won the game 5–2.

I had Marco tell my students that story the following morning. I asked the class how many of them wished their son or daughter had a coach like Marco, and every hand went up. We all, as parents, rejoice when our children get a teacher or a coach who has that developmental bias. It’s wonderful to have an ally as we raise our children in these challenging times, an ally who helps ignite the Third Factor in them.

We can see a good many of the characteristics we’ve been talking about in this one example. Marco knew what he was good at and left the skill development to others. He was an aware coach with a well-managed ego. He had spent a great deal of time throughout the year developing trust in his team. He had a clear image of the kind of experience he wanted to create for the players, and told me he met frequently with the parents to engage them and get them on board. He knew confidence could be an issue in the final, when they’d be playing against a team they had never beaten, but he stuck to his values and gave everyone a chance to play. Finally, at a critical moment, he gave each player an image of himself as “the one to make a difference.” He believed in them, and in the end they believed in themselves. In all likelihood, none of these players will ever go on to play in the National Hockey League, but with great coaching all the kids and their families had a major-league experience.

Developmental Bias: The Business Case

If you don’t have kids and aren’t involved in coaching recreational sports, at this point you may be thinking to yourself, “Why was this book in the business section?” Don’t panic. I spend 95 percent of my time working with managers from across North America, and I can assure you that what follows was developed for, and applies directly to, your world.

So, why might this developmental bias be so important for your situation right now? What are your folks going through that might make the five characteristics of a strong developmental bias an important tool in managing them? We’ve asked hundreds of managers this question in our corporate training workshops and looked at the research. While we’ve received thousands of different answers, they can largely be grouped into five categories of required adaptation.

Demographics

If this one surprises you, you are likely living in either a research outpost or 1985. From 2005 to 2025, the number of people of working age (15 to 64) will fall by 9 percent in Canada, 5 percent in the United States, and 4 percent in the United Kingdom. By 2010, 50 percent of the management workforce will be eligible for retirement.

The time of being able to take it for granted that workers will simply appear when you need them to fill a key position is long gone. In “Make Your Company a Talent Factory” (Harvard Business Review, June 2007), Douglas A. Ready and Jay A. Conger note that they have worked with numerous companies that have “been forced to pass on hundreds of millions of dollars of new business because they didn’t have the talent to see their growth strategies through to fruition.”

The other side of the demographics coin is a company’s capacity to appeal to, and retain, the so-called Gen-Y employees. These workers place a high value on development. They expect developmental opportunities and are willing to switch jobs in order to get them.

If you focus on development you’ll increase the likelihood of retaining the employees who are key to your future success.

Emotional Health

The mental side of health has recently become a prominent issue for HR departments in all levels of business. With mental health claims representing 75 percent of short-term and 79 percent of long-term disability claims, the cost of ignoring the emotional state of employees is massive: $3.5 billion annually in Canada for stress-related absences alone.

The most important variable in the mental health equation is the relationship employees have with their direct supervisor. Managers who focus on development using the five characteristics of a strong developmental bias send a message to their employees that they are valued, that their voices are heard, and that they will be given opportunities to use their talents and improve. This directly addresses many of the key sources of workplace stress, including the most important: a perceived lack of control.

Moreover, if employees feel valued and cared for, they will value and care for their colleagues, customers and teammates. Just as stress promotes stress, so too does caring promote more caring.

Performance Expectations

Simply put, last year’s numbers won’t do this year. The competitive climate often requires departments and individuals to hit ever-higher targets with smaller budgets and fewer resources. The reality is that the only sustainable way to accomplish this is to focus on making the people you rely on produce better results.

The “Hallmarks of Leadership Success” report by the Corporate Leadership Council stressed that “above all else, top-tier leadership organizations are distinguished by their cultures of development. Central to these cultures are senior executives and managers who believe in employee development and act on these beliefs.”

An article entitled “Executive Coaching as a Tool: Effects on Productivity in a Public Agency,” published in Public Personnel Management, showed that training increases performance by 22 percent, but training combined with coaching increases performance by 88 percent.

Constant Change

Change is accelerating. With time-to-market shrinking, and many products being beaten to market by their own knockoffs, the ability to respond quickly and decisively to changes in the competitive landscape and to competitors’ moves is widely acknowledged as a critical organizational competency. The only way to build this capability at an organizational level is to deal more effectively with change at the individual level. That means less “foot-dragging” and being on board sooner. And yet, this ability to adapt to change isn’t something that can be accomplished by sending everyone to a workshop, seminar or conference; it needs to be built up slowly and thoughtfully through a one-to-one relationship between aware managers and their people.

Your Own Third Factor as Coach, Leader or Parent

So far, we’ve been focused on the “other person,” but what about you and your Third Factor? In reality this book is all about my trying to ignite your Third Factor, about getting you interested in developing or expanding your developmental bias. What’s in that for you? I am always surprised in our workshops at how focused the managers are on their organization and on their people. It is rare that leaders mention what’s in it for them. I like to emphasize how satisfying it is for leaders to take on a developmental bias. It is much more fulfilling to develop people than to manage or supervise them. You are, in effect, leaving a legacy.

The Bottom Line

Improving your people will result in payoffs in the five areas above, as well as directly to your organization’s bottom line. According to the McKinsey report “War for Talent 2000,” “A-level performers deliver a 50 to 100 percent advantage over average performers in productivity, quality and revenue.”

Join the “A” Team

There are leaders with a strong developmental bias everywhere, identifiable by their demonstrated belief in developing others and engaging with them, not managing them, supervising them or controlling them. They recognize that each individual is in charge of himself or herself, and that their job is to create an environment where each performer will focus on that personal commitment and grow. They make a significant difference in the lives of others and, by extension, the significant others in that other person’s life.

Editor: Okay. I’m a bit clearer on the whole concept of developmental bias, its connection to the Third Factor, and its applicability to the world of work. When do we get to the “how to do it” stuff?

Author: Soon. The next chapter covers the communication skills that are essential in coaching others. Then we’ll cover the five areas and finish with a summary. In Appendix B we’ll outline the difficult task of confronting when things aren’t going well.

Editor: I thought confronting was part of communication.

Author: It is, but it requires attention all on its own. I put it at the end in an appendix because it’s instructional and contains a lot of information, and not everyone will be interested in it. I called that section When All Else Fails.

Editor: I sometimes open with confrontation. It gets people’s attention and keeps them on their toes.

Author: I can feel myself rising as we speak. Let’s move on to talk about communication skills.