By Dr. Randall P. White

Is God left-handed?

It’s a question I heard a few days ago during an NPR interview with the guy running the Mars Lander project. The interviewer asked a tough question, and the subject said, “That’s like asking if God is left-handed.”

That’s a phrase people use when they’re dealing with difficult questions. The current difficult question is probably, “What’s happening to my 401-K?” or, “When can I retire?”

Smart companies let people ask the tough questions. Even smarter companies address these fears and concerns with financial planning, counseling, even career training. Yet these programs are the first to go on the financial chopping block when money gets tight.

Most companies won’t ask the tough questions because it’s hard to say, “I don’t know.” Try this instead—say “I don’t know.” Then it’s not so worrisome when people ask the tough questions. You’ve already admitted you don’t have the answer. That’s human.

Even if you don’t have the answer, let people ask. Asking tough questions gives legitimacy to their concerns, fears, and frustrations. And for the first time, we need to get used to saying there might not be an answer; and what might be the best answer today, might not be the best answer tomorrow.

In the meantime:

• Accept the idea of not knowing
• Commit to trial and error
• Commit to learning from every possible source
• Trust your gut.

Do that, and you don’t have to worry about the answer, because you’re actually working toward a solution.

How do you develop people who don’t believe they need to be developed? According to Randall P. White, Ph.D., some of the business literature on the market is encouraging this mentality among organizational leaders by giving them the impression that they can improve themselves through a series of fast, easy and painless solutions.

Read more at Chief Learning Officer.

By Sandra L. Shullman, PhD and Randall P. White, PhD—

You will need to make a very significant behavioral change at some point in your career.

That’s not a fortune cookie, it’s a scientific fact that calls for a scientific solution: executive coaching.

Coaching is a science? It’s a social science. And a strategic approach to coaching in your business will benefit from a serious psychological perspective.

These days, anybody with a pensive gaze can be a coach, as more and more former CEOs, sports coaches, motivational speakers and real estate agents hang shingles and tout their skills as “confidante-advisor-antagonists” to hard-charging executives.

Read the complete article on www.execdecision.com

You’re bound to run into narcissistic bosses at some point in your career, because such personalities gravitate toward leadership.

“Most public leaders have a large streak of narcissism in them or I don’t think they’d be able to lead,” says psychologist and executive coach Randall White, a principal with the Executive Development Group LLC.

“They tend to be perceived as overly ambitious … [with] an ‘it’s all about me’ quality, becoming extremely harsh with employees.”

Dr. White, who works in the company’s Greensboro, N.C., office, says this self-orientation shapes a view of the world that colors everything they do and say. It also sets an agenda that is theirs alone. Most are task-oriented, “letting the crumbs fall down on employees to make the boss look good,” he says.

Read the full article in Mildred L. Culp’s syndicated column.

Many companies are missing out on a potential pool of customers — and workers — by not making their Web sites as accessible as possible to older adults and people with disabilities.

But, experts say, there are some simple things companies can do to make their sites easy to navigate for all visitors, whether they are consumers, vendors or potential employees.

Likewise, the same techniques can be applied to Intranet sites to give all workers access to the same tools and information.

Read the full story on the Triad Business Journal.

By Dr. Sandra Shullman

Anticipating long-term company goals is a good way to build a solid training program, said Sandra Shullman, managing director for Executive Development Group – Ohio, which is a national group that specializes in leadership and executive development.

“There are business goals the company is trying to reach and there are skill sets that accomplish those goals. One always needs to ask how is it going to help the individual and the company,” said Shullman, whose office is located in Columbus.

Training programs often fail, Shullman said, because companies don’t devote the necessary follow-up.

“The point is, even if a company is on track to do something, it’s not put into place,” she said, “and the higher up you go, it’s easy to make the assumption that someone else will integrate the function.”

Read the full article on the Columbus Triad Business Journal.

Global Leadership Training Programs
by John Rossheim
Monster Senior Contributing Writer

Whether you manage a workgroup, oversee a division or run a billion-dollar corporation, to lead in our global economy means to adapt continuously. That means successful executives with an international portfolio must view their own education as a career-long endeavor.

Employers have responded to this need with a growing array of global leadership training programs…

…Closed training programs are only as international as their instructors make them. “I can still get away with giving a lot of American examples and not be criticized for it,” says Randall White, an adjunct professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business who also teaches at Cornell University. “But my colleagues and I go out of our way to use examples from around the world.”

Read the full article on Monster.com

Executive coaching is a relationship in which a consultant helps a client achieve a mutually identified set of goals in order to improve his or her job effectiveness and job satisfaction. The focus is on effective behavior in a professional setting. If you’re thinking about using an executive coach, here are some of the common traps people fall into and some ideas for avoiding those traps. These are not, I’m sorry to say, the only misconceptions people can have about coaching, but they are 9 of the common ones. The traps are in quotes at the start of each section.

“I know what I need to work on.” Benjamin Franklin said “Three things are extremely hard—steel, a diamond, and to know oneself.” College students can predict the longevity of their roommates’ relationships much better than they can predict the longevity of their own relationships. Navy officers can predict which of their peers will be promoted early but can’t predict their own promotion.”

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