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Ever heard of the Knowing-Doing Gap? Many of today’s leaders are looking to close this gap. This month’s issue of the Coaching4Business Leaders newsletter addresses this challenge and offers practical helps in closing this gap.

All the best to you!
Val

A question that I am frequently asked is “What is the biggest challenge that today’s leaders are addressing?” My answer is simple, IMPLEMENTATION. Almost every person that I coach begins the coaching process with something like the following:

• We’re stuck! We’ve had great planning meetings, but nothing is happening.
• We’ve overcome tremendous hurdles and made some great decisions, but nothing has really changed.
• Our agenda and action items are the same month after month after month.
• I’m a big-picture person. I don’t seem to know how to move people forward.

The challenge for many of today’s leaders is the issue of implementation. IE. Shifting from intention to action. Getting things done. Consistently achieving clearly defined objectives. Maintaining forward momentum.

John C. Maxwell, in “Leadership: Promises for Every Day”, addresses this when he identifies two areas of leadership emphasis: Designer (Thinking it up) and Developer (Following it up). Stanford researchers Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton call the implementation challenge the Knowing-Doing Gap and pose the following question: Why does knowledge of what needs to be done frequently fail to result in action or behavior consistent with that knowledge?

What are steps that you can take to close the KNOWING-DOING Gap? Click here to find out...

Coach Yourself with POWERFUL QUESTIONS

1. Why does knowledge of what needs to be done frequently fail to result in action or behavior consistent with that knowledge?
   
   
2. What is unproductive busyness costing you?
   
   
3. What can you eliminate, delegate or systematize right now?
   
   
4. What’s stopping you from CUTTING BACK?
   
   
5. What is your current definition of success?
   
   
6. On a scale of 1 to 10 how are you doing at closing the Knowing-Doing Gap? (10—great!, 1—nothings happening.)
   
   
7. What is your next step as you seek to move from INTENTION to ACTION?
   
   
8. If you decided right now that you were going to be intentional about closing the Knowing-Doing Gap, what kind of support and accountability would you need?
   
   
9. Who can help me close this gap?

How Defensive Are You?

Sharon Ellison, in her book The Art of Powerful Non-Defensive Communication, estimates that we use about 95% of our communication energy being defensive.

Imagine how much more effective our communication would be if we learned how to respond non-defensively and also learned how to avoid provoking defensiveness in others!

Hit the Ground Leading
by Angela Mondou

Know-How: The 8 Skills that Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don’t
by Ram Charan.

A Bias for Action by Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghoshal

The Art of Powerful
Non-Defensive Communication by
Sharon Ellison