02Feb 2018

Miguel Ángel Pla
Presidente y Director General
direccion@miguelpla.com
Teléfono: (81) 83 78 47 10

La comunicación dentro de la empresa es un elemento de gran relevancia en las relaciones humanas. Una persona, por naturaleza, requiere relacionarse con otros individuos para poder satisfacer sus necesidades de afecto y socialización.

En el caso de las empresas, la comunicación es la base estructural de cualquier organización.
La transmisión de información es una actividad diaria y de gran importancia.

Da lugar a la transmisión de la información dentro de las organizaciones para identificar los requerimientos y logros de las mismas y de sus colaboradores.

La principal finalidad de la comunicación organizacional es primordial para cumplir con los objetivos institucionales; elementos que en conjunto dan paso al desarrollo de las empresas y de sus empleados para que se vayan preparando para alcanzar su mejor desempeño en los mercados.

La comunicación interna, es el conjunto de todas las actividades realizadas por una empresa para crear y mantener las relaciones entre sus miembros, a través del buen uso de los diferentes medios de comunicación existentes en la organización.

Para que una comunicación organizacional se vuelva efectiva se debe buscar una retroalimentación de la información recibida. Por ello, se debe de establecer un canal en el que jefes y subordinados puedan establecer cierta cercanía para comunicarse entre sí y para que la comprensión de lo que se quiera transmitir fluya de manera adecuada.
Facilita que la gestión empresarial se lleve a cabo con éxito; el buen manejo de ésta, puede hacer perdurar a la organización.

Un mensaje expresado con claridad y con un canal adecuado de comunicación, será convertido en una acción por parte del receptor; por otro lado, un mensaje impreciso y ambiguo, puede causar problemas en una organización.
Las empresas que desean sobresalir en los negocios son aquéllas que le dan un lugar especial a la comunicación y a la información, debido a que han entendido que éstas contribuyen en gran medida a mejorar el clima laboral de la empresa y a elevar su competitividad.

02Feb 2018

www.miguelpla.com Tel 8378 4710
In many countries, one hears about numerous programs on what is proudly called performance-oriented executive coaching. This seems to be especially rolled out within sales departments and divisions. This is definitely a growing fad in pharmaceutical companies and in the larger consumer goods distribution sector. In these organizations, corporate in-house training programs originating in the US or UK summarily prepare internal sales trainers to “coach” sales people with a very clear short-term objective: increase corporate sales. And with great surprise, we can witness that under the fancy name of coaching, the same corporations are re-inventing coercive management processes.

Consequently, with this new coaching strategy driven by executives and HRs, a number of managing and follow-up procedures are enforced by sales trainers to accompany salespeople to define challenging goals, to follow up on their clients, to measure progress, and to achieve better results in the field. 
Now, what is surprising is that normally, sales management is also about implementing procedures to accompany salespeople to define challenging goals, follow up clients clients, measure progress, and achieve ambitious financial results.


Considering this overlap of responsibilities between sales managers and sales coaches, some questions may be raised here, including the following:

When sales trainers are busy following up on salespeople to ensure that these achieve results, what is sales management doing?
Who gets the bonus in case of higher results, the alledged coaches or the managers?
Is this parallel coaching-cum-management process focused on rapidly achieving higher sales results really a coaching approach?
How is this internal process participating in blurring the difference between top-down management cultures and a coaching approach that should principally rest on tapping creative energy that can emerge from the bottom up?
Are these trainers-coaches merely surrogate managers that will eventually replace the existing managers? 
 indeed, if they really learn how to accompany sales teams to achieve higher results, they will in effect become excellent managers. They could then apply for the job and be paid accordingly.

Interestingly, some companies who have not wanted or not been able to develop a performing internal sales organization have externalized or outsourced their entire sales force to specialized external “mercenary” sales teams. These often succeed in achieving excellent results. Note that coaches do not manage these external sales teams. Indeed, in these external sales companies, real sales managers know how to enforce results-oriented procedures, accompany salespeople to define higher goals, follow up their clients, measure progress, and achieve very high results. These organizations must be more motivating, somehow. Or rather than coach sales people, is it the managers and executives that are being coached?

What seems to emerge out of the recent “performance coaching” trend is that some organizations have given up on developing their executive and management skills of the people who hold these positions. When executives and managers don’t manage their personnel to achieve measurable results, the new strategy is to have their personnel directly “coached” by a third person to achieve results. Interestingly, these third persons do not get perks and bonuses linked to sales results, as they do not hold management position. This seems to be quite a roundabout way to protect all the executives and managers who lack management skills. But then, it is no secret that most executive decisions just aim to increase executive comfort.

The real issue may be for companies to accept to face their reality. Too many people holding executive and management positions are still not trained to be real people leaders and managers. Most of them may indeed be good experts or have friends in the system and seniority in the organization, but they do not know how to accompany their personnel and teams to achieve outstanding professional results by delegating, motivating, enforcing procedures, defining ambitions goals, following up, measuring progress, and achieving higher financial results. This, interestingly is the focus of executive coaching.

It is quite clear that these organizations are underachieving. But bypassing executives and management with operational coaches will not solve the issue on the long run. Consequently, people holding executives management positions need to be coached or trained to embody management skills and really accompany their personnel. That is their main function. To achieve this, it is the executives and their managers that need training and probably coaching. Not their personnel.

But considering this situation, what are the real management and people skills of the managers who manage these managers? What is the strategic competency of those that design these roundabout bypassing programs? What are the real training skills of the trainers, who should be training people to develop behavioral skills rather than just entertain with concepts originating from books? It is indeed difficult to apply a coaching solution when all the real organizational needs have not been identified.

Now don’t get me wrong. There is a lot to be done with real executive coaching to help organizational clients, executives, managers and sales people achieve very performing results. But this cannot be achieved by simply compensating for non-existent management skills. Nor is coaching the same as training or managing. Coaching rests on accompanying exceptional employee growth and development to achieve outstanding results, in their own creative way, at their chosen pace. To be sure, that can often lead to achieving much higher results than any old top-down approach within an organization that avoids to train its management.

Typically the organization cultures I have mentioned (but not named) above are very centralized. Their programs are directed from conceptual headquarters to distant countries. Centralized systems want to roll out their solutions all over the world. They are much more concerned with controlling every person on their sales force, every minute of their professional day, than with achieving higher results. What these organizations call internal “performance coaching” is very often just another centralizing controlling process that ends up creating more personal stress and dissatisfaction, less motivation and ownership within sales forces and the feeling of helplessness within internal training teams. This has to be revisited on top levels with real executive coaching. Then, individual, team, and organizations coaching may be one of the appropriate means to accompany professional systems to really achieve short and long-term success.

01Feb 2018

Miguel Ángel Pla
Presidente y Director General
direccion@miguelpla.com
Teléfono: (81) 83 78 47 10

¿Tiene un individuo que estar posicionado en la cima de un organigrama para desarrollar relaciones con los demás y para hacer que ellos quieran trabajar con él? ¿Debe ser el presidente o director ejecutivo para poder enseñarles a las personas a ver, a pensar y a trabajar?

¡Por supuesto que no! Influir en otros es un asunto de disposición, no de posición.

Usted puede dirigir a otros desde cualquier lugar de la organización. Y cuando lo haga, usted hará que la organización mejore.

Cada nivel de una organización depende del liderazgo de alguien. Lo importante es esto: el liderazgo es una decisión que usted toma, no un lugar donde usted se sienta.

Cualquiera puede escoger ser un líder dondequiera que se encuentre. No importa dónde esté, usted puede marcar una diferencia.

01Feb 2018

Los beneficios del mentoring en el desarrollo de Lideres

Hace apenas unos días ha caído en mis manos este excelente artículo sobre un caso real de Mentoring dentro de una compañía americana, escrito por los máximos responsables de la misma, y publicado en la Harvard Business Review este mes de Diciembre.

David F. Melcher, CEO and president, y A. John Procopio, senior vice president and the chief human resources officer, nos relatan los resultados del Programa de Mentoring llevado a cabo en su empresa, EXELIS, dedicada al sector aeroespacial y de defensa, que factura 5,5 billones de dólares.
El programa de Mentoring en esta organización se diseñó con el objetivo de que los miembros del Consejo de Administracion ejercieran como mentores de los ejecutivos de alto nivel de la compañía, que podrían ser los líderes de la misma en el futuro, al objeto de desarrollar sus habilidades de liderazgo.
El perfil de mentor que ha utilizado esta compañía tiene las competencias y características que defendemos desde la Escuela de Mentoring , pues no se trata de un mentor que simplemente aconseja, sino que también utiliza competencias y técnicas de coaching, forma y transmite conocimientos, y relaciona y patrocina a sus mentees. Contempla por tanto las tres dimensiones que es necesario desarrollar en cualquier rol profesional, la emocional, la intelectual y la social.
El programa contó con la participación como mentees de 10 empleados y tuvo una duracIón de uno a dos años. Desde el principio se consideró vital realizar una buena selección de las parejas mentor-mentee, pues es una de las claves del éxito de un programa de Mentoring. Asimismo la compañía elaboro una guía interna con una metodología propia para desarrollar el programa.
Los beneficios del programa para los mentees fueron muy bien valorados por estos y por la compañía, destacando el incremento de la confianza, una mayor asunción de retos, el incremento del aprendizaje de su rol de una forma más rápida y práctica, el aumento de contactos profesionales, la adquisición de mayor experiencia a través de la observación del modelo que representaba su mentor. Destacaron especialmente el aprendizaje y desarrollo de estrategias personales en gestión del tiempo, muy útiles para desempeñarse con éxito como líderes en el futuro.
Uno de los participantes, vicepresidente senior y presidente de la división de Sistemas de Información de la compañía, señala que ha aprendido lo que realmente tiene que hacer un CEO y como tiene que interactuar, relacionarse y comunicarse con el Consejo de Administracion.
Sin embargo, lo que más sorprendió a la compañía fueron los beneficios que los propios mentores reportaron, especialmente en cuanto al incremento y mejora de las habilidades para capacitar a otras personas y desarrollar su potencial. A ello hay que añadir algo que a veces no se valora suficientemente en este tipo de programas: el incremento del nivel de satisfacción personal de los mentores, que es un recurso y activo valiosísimo en una organización. Hace unas semanas publicaba un post sobre la necesidad de incrementar el nivel de engagement en las organizaciones para obtener resultados excelentes, y citaba el Mentoring como una de las prácticas que favorecen el incremento del nivel de compromiso y satisfacción de las personas que forman parte de una compañía.
Los mentores consideran muy satisfactoria su participación en el programa, no sólo por la mejora de sus competencias, sino también por haber contribuido a lograr una diferencia, un cambio y mejora en la vida de su mentee. También porque vieron ampliadas sus propias redes de contactos profesionales, y por la adquisición de nuevos conocimientos técnicos a través de sus mentees. Algunos señalan que el programa de Mentoring les ha servido para conocer más de cerca la empresa y que esto le ha servido para ser más eficaz como consejero de la misma.

Una vez más se cumple mi visión de que el Mentoring tiene un efecto multiplicador, pues no sólo genera beneficios para los mentees y los mentores, sino también para la compañía. Lo he visto en todos los programas de Mentoring que he dirigido y coordinado, y en los que he podido revisar a través de mi labor como miembro del Consejo Editorial de la Internacional Journal European Mentoring & Coaching Council: el Mentoring produce beneficios para los mentees, para los mentores, para la organización, y para la sociedad en su conjunto.
En el caso de la compañía de la que habla el artículo de la HBR, la propia empresa cita las siguientes mejoras obtenidas a través del programa de mentoring:
-Mejora del rendimiento individual: Los mentees han demostrado un mayor compromiso, lealtad y productividad.
-Mejora capacitación organizacional: El resto de ejecutivos de la compañía han comenzado a ejercer como mentores, en base al ejemplo de los que participaron en el programa de mentoring, y han tomado como mentees a otras personas dentro de la organización para mentorizarlos.
-Mejora la gobernanza: Las relaciones entre los distintos grupos de interes a nivel interno de la compañia mejoran, hay un conocimiento más claro y directo del talento y las capacidades de liderazgo de las personas que trabajan en la organizacion, lo cual facilita la identificación de futuros líderes que pueda necesitar la organizacion.
–Mayor conocimiento y mejora de la supervisión: Los miembros del Consejo tienen una mejor comprensión del negocio, lo que facilita y enriquece las reuniones del consejo y mejora la gestion de la compañia.
–Incremento del nivel de confianza: El programa de mentoring ha aumentado el nivel de confianza entre los miembros del Consejo y los altos ejecutivos o lideres de alto nivel de la compañía, pues ambas partes han aprendido a comunicarse de una forma más cercana y franca.
Contar con un Mentor o Mentora es algo que ni las organizaciones, ni las personas pueden dejar al azar. Los beneficios que reporta el mentoring a todos los niveles son demasiado importantes para el desarrollo de organizaciones y personas. Con el diseño de programas formales de mentoring se logran cuatro procesos que hoy en día son claves en las organizaciones:
– Acelerar el proceso de desarrollo del potencial y por tanto obtener talento para la organización de una forma más rápida.
– Capitalizar el saber acumulado en las personas que están en la organización y facilitar por tanto la transmisión del conocimiento dentro de la misma.
– Generar vínculos y relaciones valiosas entre las personas que conforman la organización, creando un sentimiento de comunidad que favorece la mejora del rendimiento, la productividad y el compromiso organizacional.
– Facilitar y acelerar los procesos de cambio y tránsito que constantemente se dan dentro de las empresas, tanto a nivel organizacional como individual, permitiendo una mayor y más rápida adaptación a nuevos retos y demandas.

01Feb 2018

For at least last twenty years, and in most corporations worldwide, there has been a growing concern about the steady decline of personnel motivation, stress in the workplace, and in some cases, outright employee burnout. Almost paradoxically, the key management buzzwords and phrases focused on these corporate issues are centered on how to empower the personnel, how to enable co-responsibility, how to foster pro-activity, how to develop ownership, how to create a learning environment, how to tap on collective intelligence, etc. Note also that all these themes are central in most executive coaching requests.

Considering that this concern has very consistently stayed on the top of most Human Resource department’s wish list for decades, we can assume that the issue is not being solved, and therefore that it has not been approached properly, including in executive coaching programs. Indeed, in spite of millions yearly allocated to diverse personnel empowerment programs, inspirational conventions, incentive schemes, motivational coaching, financial perks and bonuses, training schemes, executive coaching and development programs and a host of other monthly or yearly recognition exercises, significant measurable change is far from perceptible. On the contrary, it seems that in too many companies, personnel is generally subject to more absenteeism and occupational illnesses, under stress and voicing distress, quitting, and generally expressing dissatisfaction with their immediate work environment. In fact executive coaching is often used to treat the symptom rather than to permanently solve the underllying problem.

Conclusion: to deal with this generalized motivational issue, the array of means deployed by Human Resources seems to have been inversely proportionate to achieving perceptible results. It is high time to reconsider corporate perspectives on the empowerment issue and find original executive coaching strategies to really deal with developing personnel motivation.

For one, it seems that if generalized personnel de-motivation can indeed be increasing in modern organizations, this evolution should less be considered a problem in itself and more perceived as a consequence or a symptom resting on other causes. Indeed, if we are not solving the problem, maybe it is not correctly formulated, including in all our executive coaching processes.

Notice that when an executive or leader asks the question “how can we empower personnel”, it is both assumed that the issue is with the personnel and not with the executive. It is also assumed that the original state of those personnel is one of disempowerment. On both counts, how amazingly convenient!

The very way the problem is formulated automatically drives a search for a certain range of solutions to be applied to the employees: more pay, more perks, more recognition, more bonuses, more training, etc. What else motivates personnel? Unfortunately, over time, we have noticed that this approach is not solving the issue. We may even notice that these apparent solutions are often fostering unproductive individualistic and competitive behavior when more is to be gained in collaborative teamwork. So these apparent solutions may actually do no more than add to organizational problems.

But let’s face it, in spite of all the apparent corporate concern and extensive Human resource programs focused on developing employee motivation, ownership and commitment, it seems that over the past decades, the corporate work environment has gradually become much more alienating. So let us now consider that the problem was not defined correctly. What if we are just trying to cure a symptom and not the real illness? To approach the issue with a different perspective in all executive coaching, it may be useful to consider a completely different frame of reference.

For instance, we could indeed assume that most people are naturally motivated to contribute to the achievement of meaningful and stimulating individual and collective goals. We could consider that when given a chance and a supportive environment, any normal worker, employee or executive will spontaneously volunteer positive and constructive energy to achieve corporate objectives. If one adopts this point of view in the course of any executive coaching process, then the leadership question becomes “why are employees and managers becoming unmotivated in the corporate environment, often to the point of quitting in order to become self-employed by taking great personal risks? What indeed makes people loose their motivation for one environment and choose to leave for other horizons?

In this perspective, the real question in executive coaching today may be to simply ask: how is the corporate environment systematically de-motivating, dis-empowering and alienating personnel?

Indeed, it seems that most corporate leaders, executives and management are deploying an array of methods specifically tailored to limit empowerment, stifle initiatives, curb all risk taking, increase predictability and ultimately succeed in rendering their employee’s and middle management’s life utterly boring. Indeed, one doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to perceive that organizations are becoming more and more controlling. Consider:

The growing amount of increasingly detailed standardized operating procedures that are usually rolled out and controlled from distant centralizing headquarters.
The extraordinary array of complex and very detailed reporting systems that occupy many managers almost full time. Many of these control systems routinely by-pass and overlap managers and are redundant, for extra security.
The extensive time spent in meeting presentations to inform and over-inform an increasingly inquisitive micro-managing executive hierarchy,
The widespread deployment of ISO and other so-called quality measurement systems focused more on establishing another set of measurable procedures than on really developing client quality,
The very wide and continuously growing range of financial and executive control systems,
The growing complexity of matrix co-management structures, where everyone reports to at least two or three contradictory if not competing and conflicting hierarchies.

All these control systems and more are implemented in the corporate environment to achieve two very complementary objectives: minute executive control over any possibility of initiative, and extremely precise predictability of results. This is the central issue that needs to be approached and solved in the course of most executive coaching processes.

Delegation means “untie”. De-Legature. Legature is kin to ligament. This is what most managers and organizations do not undertand about the whole concept of delegation.

Organizations and executives need to face the fact that unmotivated and disempowered personnel are not the result of a world-wide and general social evolution that would have today’s employees require more perks to function normally. The lack of interest for work in the corporate environment results from growing a form of neo Taylorism that has been very gradually developed by over-centralizing headquarters, with HR often coming in first place, and over-controlling executive processes and paradigms. This has acelerated over the past thirty to fifty years.

As a result, outstanding increases in the volume of sales or of financial results are not first in the hierarchy of executive concerns or priorities. Executive managers mostly want to know what each and every person is doing and want to control exactly when and where they are doing it in a very predictable way. This has become much more important than to have the same people creatively achieve really outstanding results in a less controlled and more unpredictable way.

In effect, most executives priority is to justify its managerial presence by proving that it can very correctly and minutely predict and control. Executives must be able to answer any question concerning their organization, at a pin’s drop. This is what their shareholders expect. If an organization’s personnel ever aims for outstanding goals in a fashion that escapes executive control, then the latter will often react in fear and move to establish tighter controls. Consequently today, it is much more important to merely make a safe and sure budget than to unexpectedly deliver multiplied results.

As a consequence, when the large majority of an organization’s personnel seems to display lack of motivation and empowerment, the real issue is that their corporate culture is primarily focused on pleasing security-oriented shareholders who prefer stable and predictable progressions over unexpected opportunist peaks and slowdowns. Shareholders want their corporations to compensate for their fear of change by providing apparent stability. Consequently, employees have to suffer a fundamentally insecure management culture focused on implementing a very wide range of coercive control systems essentially designed to limit unpredictability for executives.

In such a context, middle management and personnel adapt, comply, and limit themselves, slow their potential growth and minimize all risk taking. Why indeed spend time and energy fighting more and more pervasive internal limits imposed by the corporate system if the priority is not to develop. Organizations are today running in the fashion of excessively reigned race horses. In this context, it may also seem useless for executives to attempt to motivate, empower and grow personnel. One does not grow in coercive environments. At best, one will better survive by displaying apparently compliant and pleasing behavior. Just deliver the very safe expected results.

In this context, there are two possible executive coaching strategies that could bring much more coherency.

The first strategy is to cancel all useless expenses on training, coaching, empowering and other means that are fundamentally incoherent with the underlying corporate priority on total control and legation rather than delegation.
The second strategy would consist in using executive coaching to develop a more goal-oriented management culture that would not privilege a top-down centralized micro-controlling environment. This executive coaching strategy would indeed consist in accompanying leaders to create a learning environment for their personnel to grow, unfold and achieve their potential for outstanding results.

Organizational personnel would then be simplie untied. They would not need to be empowered nor motivated. They would just be allowed to express and unfold their existing natural motivation to grow and develop in a positive environment. In this systemic executive coaching context, the personnel would be less stressed and distressed, and executive coaching and training alike would have their rightful place.

31Jan 2018

Miguel Ángel Pla
Presidente y Director General
direccion@miguelpla.com
Teléfono: 83 78 47 10

Las personas que están más cerca de mí determinan mi grado de éxito o fracaso. Cuanto mejores son, mejor soy yo. Y, si quiero llegar al nivel más alto, sólo puedo hacerlo con la ayuda de otros.

Para esto también es importante encontrar a las personas indicadas para el viaje.
Las personas a quienes quiero guiar…
• Hacen suceder las cosas: Estas personas descubren recursos en lugares que parecían yermos. Hallan perspectivas donde no parecía haberlas.

• Ven las oportunidades y las aprovechan: Muchas personas reconocer una oportunidad cuando ya se pasó. Pero verlas venir es muy distinto.

• Influyen a los demás: Todo depende del liderazgo. Esto es así porque la capacidad de una persona para influir con los demás y a través de ellos depende por completo de su capacidad de liderarlos.

• Poseen actitudes inusualmente positivas: Una buena actitud es importante para tener éxito ya que a menudo determina hasta dónde se podrá llegar.

• Cumplen sus compromisos: Cuando se trata de triunfar, el compromiso lleva a una persona a un nivel enteramente nuevo.

• Atrae a otros líderes: Cuando busques posibles líderes a quienes desarrollar, es necesario que tomes conciencia de que hay dos clases: los que atraen seguidores y los que atraen a otros líderes.

Los líderes que atraen SEGUIDORES se concentran en las debilidades de los demás y necesitan que los necesiten.

Los líderes que atraen LÍDERES se concentran en las fortalezas de los demás y quieren tener sucesores.

Cuando las personas que componen tu equipo comparten tu grado de compromiso, el éxito es inevitable. Cuando elijas gente para ser su mentor, concéntrate en quienes no sólo aprovechen bien lo que les brindas y te ayuden; elige a personas que luego lo transmitan. Lo que se aprende se debe de compartir.

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