Joel A. Garfinkle: An interview by Bob Morris

Joel A. Garfinkle is recognized as one of the top 50 executive coaches in North America. His valuable insights have been sought after by leaders in companies such as Google, Amazon, Hewlett-Packard, Gap, Starbucks, Deloitte, Cisco Systems, Oracle, Bank of America, Citibank, and Microsoft. He is the author of seven books and more than 300 articles on leadership, executive presence, getting ahead at work, career transitions, and work fulfillment. His most recent book, Getting Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level, was published by John Wiley & Sons (2011).

He is regularly featured in the national media, including ABC News, National Public Radio, New York Times, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, USA Today, Newsweek and Fast Company. Sign up to Joel’s weekly report, Fulfillment@Work Newsletter (delivered to more than 10,000 subscribers), and receive the free e-book, 41 Proven Strategies to Get Promoted Now! For more than two decades, Joel has had first-hand experience advising thousands of executives, senior managers, directors, and employees at the world’s leading companies. He draws from this experience to provide coaching programs that serve individuals and organizations throughout the world.

He is also a sought-after speaker who conducts workshops, trainings, and keynote addresses that empower corporate audiences. He has delivered more than 1000 customized presentations that provide fresh insight into common issues that employers and employees face. Learn more about his books, executive coaching services and over 300 FREE articles at www.GarfinkleExecutiveCoaching.com.

Here is an excerpt from my interview of him. Please click here to read the entire interview.

*     *     *

Morris: Before discussing Getting Ahead, a few general questions. First, who has had the greatest influence on your personal growth? How so?

Garfinkle: My wife, Jueli. We’ve been together for eleven years. In this relationship, she is has always been 100% committed to her own personal growth. As she consistently focuses on her own spiritual development and growth, it has spilled over to me and the relationship we have together.

We use the relationship as a vehicle for our own growth. We both dedicate ourselves to communication and connection at all times. We are willing to work through the difficulties that arise (and they do). We never go around them, instead we go through them.

Together, we both spend time doing spiritual work that helps us develop as human beings so we can be more truthful, honest and clear about who we are in the world and how we want to show up as authentically as possible.

I am honored and very blessed to be in relationship with Jueli. She helps me be a better person, father and husband. She knows my issues, challenges and difficulties extremely well. She uses a soft touch in reminding me when these issues show up and I’m unaware. We are both steadfast in living the examined life.

Morris: The greatest impact on your professional development? How so?

Garfinkle: I’ve thought a lot about this question. I’ve never had specific mentors who have had huge impact in my professional development. I am extremely driven in my own professional development and work hard to become the best at what I do. My business, coaching practice, speaking and writing are specific areas that I work hard to improve.

I’ve always been dedicated to growing and learning more about who I am. This has had a strong influence in my own professional development. I’m constantly looking for ways to do things at work more efficiently. As my business has continued to grow, it’s forced me to grow with it and learn new ways of doing business. I will always strive for ways to make things work as smoothly as possible so that I can have the right balance. Balance is important to me. I will always prioritize myself, my family and my connection to Jueli. Thus, part of my professional development is learning how to streamline my business as effectively as possible so I can have time for my life.

Morris: Years ago, was there a turning point (if not an epiphany) that set you on the career course you continue to follow? Please explain.

Garfinkle: The turning point in my life came in college. I found psychology an easy subject, as I’ve always was curious about people. Business, accounting, science and other subjects never were as easy for me. Psychology felt right and something “‘clicked”‘ inside of me. That’s when I became clear on what I really wanted to do. The name of the specific profession, coaching, hadn’t been invented yet, but I knew that I wanted to help healthy individuals improve the quality of their lives. The word healthy was a clear distinction. About eight years later, I was reminiscing and realized that what I had been describing in college was the profession now known as “coaching.”

I found my true essence and what I was meant to be doing after eight long years of exploring what my dream job might look like. I felt that I wasn’t in the right field, industry, job or career and was very frustrated. The job environments and the people I worked with didn’t feel right either. I was tired of trudging my way through a series of unenjoyable jobs that didn’t align with who I was as a person. I didn’t necessarily know who I was, but I knew something was wrong.

I knew that I was working for companies that didn’t respect me and treated me poorly. They didn’t allow me and my gifts to come forward and shine. At the time, I wasn’t sure exactly what my gifts were, but I definitely knew that my environment was suppressing them. I kept getting subtle and not-so-subtle hints that began to create a great deal of frustration and unhappiness

Throughout these years, I began to employ an unconventional, yet simple, method to find my true essence. I said to myself, “I want to enjoy my job. I want to enjoy my life. How can I get there? How can I find work that matches who I am?” The quest to find answers to these questions led me to my life’s work.

I stood by my decision and knew I had to find a way to follow my dreams. I was talking one day to someone about the purpose I had identified in college—to help healthy individuals better their lives. I was amazed when she told me, “That’s called coaching.” Finally there was a label for my dream profession! I joined a three-year coaching program and started my own company. That was 16 years ago.

I took the biggest leap of my life and said NO to just having a job and YES to fulfilling my dream. I left the corporate world to follow my passions and do what I really wanted. I realized that it is truly possible to create work aligns to who I truly am!

Morris: Opinions are also divided, sometimes sharply divided, about 360º feedback. What do you think?

Garfinkle: I had a client who worked at Deloitte. She was successful in her job. Throughout this period of coaching, she had a clear understanding of how she was perceived in the company. She thought others saw her as: Smart, dedicated, cares about her people, well-organized, sees the big picture, tremendous at execution, others respect her skills/abilities, she is one of the best sales people in the entire company and customer love her.

After a few months of working together, we decided to do 360 degree interviews. I interviewed two people below her, two people at the peer level and two people above her. A lot of the feedback was positive in affirming how she thought others saw her in the company. However, all six people did provide a negative perspective of her that even surprised me. They said she was a bully, harsh, blunt, hard-ass, forceful and intimidating. This was the lens they saw her as. This became their reality and truth. She was shocked by the feedback and we did a lot of work from that moment onwards to get others to view her as she saw herself.

As you can see from this example, my client at Deloitte had no idea she was being viewed this way. Her perception was drastically different then what others thought of her. This is why I like 360 degree feedback, especially if I am conducting interviews (and not an assessment) because I can dictate the direction of the interview to gain the key information. The 360 provides important information on how others view you in the company.

*     *     *

Please click here to read the entire interview.

Joel cordially invites you to check out the resources at these websites:

Getting Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level

Garfinkle Executive Coaching Website

100+ free articles that provide practical, ‘‘how-to’’ information and insights to help you become an effective leader and boost your career success.

Blog

Speaking Services

“All Together Now” with Peter Drucker

Image credit: mutanthands.com

Here is another thought-provoking article featured by the the Drucker Exchange (the Dx), a website that “hosts an ongoing conversation about bettering society through effective management and responsible leadership. It is produced by the Drucker Institute, a think tank and action tank based at Claremont Graduate University that was established to advance and build on the ideas and ideals of Peter F. Drucker, the father of modern management. The Dx was first published as Drucker Apps in 2009 (see Dx archives). Renamed and reconfigured in October 2010, the Dx is now designed to stimulate a discussion of current events that is illuminated by Peter Drucker’s timeless teachings. It is a blog for people who want to get informed, involved and inspired to convert ideas into action.”

To check out the wealth of resources available and sign up for a weekly newsletter, please click here.

*     *     *

The traditional industry model is built on institutional loyalty. The new “free agent” model is built on individualism. But neither of these, according to an article in the latest issue of Harvard Business Review, “creates the conditions for collaborative trust that business today requires.”

And so the piece — by Paul Adler, Charles Heckscher and Laurence Prusak—calls for a “new type of organization that excels at combining the knowledge of diverse specialists” to create “a collaborative community.”

Successful examples of such collaborative communities, the authors say, can be found at IBM, Citibank, NASA and Kaiser Permanente. What these places have in common are, among other things, an “ethic of contribution,” a “shared purpose,” and an “infrastructure in which collaboration is valued and rewarded.”

While Peter Drucker rarely wrote about “collaboration” per se, he certainly captured its spirit. “The modern organization,” he wrote in his own HBR essay 19 years ago, “cannot be an organization of boss and subordinate. It must be organized as a team.”

Beyond that, Drucker hit on many of the same components of collaboration that HBR highlights. For instance, the ethic of contribution, as we’ve noted before, was one that Drucker frequently stressed. “The question is not: ‘What do I want to contribute?’” Drucker declared. “It is not: ‘What am I told to contribute?’ It is: ‘What should I contribute?’”

Likewise, imbuing an organization with a sense of shared purpose was also something Drucker considered to be essential. “Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals and shared values,” Drucker asserted in The New Realities. “Without such commitment there is no enterprise; there is only a mob.”

And Drucker devoted a lot of thought to how organizations should foster what HBR calls the “infrastructure of collaboration.” “The knowledge worker. . . is usually a specialist,” Drucker wrote in his 1967 classic, The Effective Executive. “By itself, however, a specialty is a fragment and sterile. Its output has to be put together with the output of other specialists before it can produce results. The task is not to breed generalists. It is to enable the specialist to make himself and his speciality effective. This means he must think through who has to use his output and what the user needs to know and to understand to be able to make productive the fragment the specialist produces.”

The #1 Leadership Problem

Margaret Heffernan

Here is an article written by Margaret Heffernan for BNET (January 27, 2011), The CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the BNET newsletters, please click here.

*     *     *

When I meet with CEOs, I like to find out what keeps them awake at night, what intractable issues or opportunities disturb their sense of confidence. Of course, each one has industry-specific or company-specific challenges and they’re fascinating.

But there’s one problem common to each one of them. They all know it. Only a brave few will talk about it openly: Ignorance.

It doesn’t matter whether the company is large or small, old or young, high tech or blue collar manufacturing. The reality is that no leader is fully informed of what is happening on his or her watch.

Ignorance Isn’t Bliss

Of course in theory, this shouldn’t happen. The chain of command should ensure that information reaches the top. Daily reports should flag critical issues. Balance sheets should indicate significant trends. And they all do – up to a point. The problem is that none of them works quite well enough.

That’s why BP can run unsafe plants and still be taken by surprise when they blow up.

It’s why music labels could be blind-sided by the rise of digital downloads.

It’s why soft drink companies were surprised by the popularity of vitamin drinks.

It’s why Lehman Brothers and Enron and Citibank and Merrill Lynch had no idea actually how much money they had.

It’s why companies are so anxious about what Wikileaks will publish next.

It Can Happen to You

The most tempting thing in the world is to look at that string of business disasters and argue: that was them, not me. It couldn’t happen here. They were just bad leaders, a few bad apples. But the minute you say you don’t have this problem is the minute you know you do.

The problem is willful blindness: the human propensity to ignore the obvious. It isn’t just a business problem, of course. We do it in our private lives when we leave those credit card bills unopened or take on a mortgage we can’t afford or insist that tanning salons really won’t cause us any harm.

There are numerous social, structural, organizational and neurological reasons for willful blindness and I’ll be blogging about them over the next few weeks. But in the meantime I’d like to hear from you:in your company or department or industry, where are your blindspots?

Please click here to see the video, courtesy of Lindsay Nicholson and music courtesy of Nick Bicat.

*     *     *

Margaret Heffernan worked for 13 years as a producer for BBC Radio and Television before running her first company. She has since been CEO of five businesses in the United States and United Kingdom, including InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation and iCAST Corporation. She has been named one of the Internet’s Top 100 by Silicon Alley Reporter and one of the Top 100 Media Executives by The Hollywood Reporter. Her books include The Naked Truth: Female Entrepreneurs Are Changing the Rules for Business Success, and the upcoming Willful Blindness. She has appeared on NPR, CNN, CNBC, and the BBC, and writes for Real Business,The Huffington Post, and Fast Company.