The Coaching for Leadership Case Study Workbook

By Laurence S. Lyons and Janet Schatzman

This book will change the way you think.

In this whacky world the best jobs go to the worst people. Careers fizzle out at the drop of a hat. To protect next year's budget you've got to waste whatever's left of this year's money. Matrix victims quietly go missing. Companies merge and frequently go bust. And everything's tightly controlled by a secret underworld Finance mafia.

Does this sound familiar? You've entered the rough and tumble realm of corporate business where crazy things happen and it's tough to survive. Welcome to the counter-intuitive playground of organizational life.

Come along for a white-knuckle ride through our organizational theme park. Your companion guide is the streetwise Dr. Fink— the world's expert on organizations. Allow this amiable practitioner to share with you the wisdom through which he consistently achieves corporate, client, and personal success as he demonstrates his magical methods for averting calamity before your very eyes.

Assisted by a cast of flamboyant characters—including Matilda the well-meaning but meticulously incompetent coach, Fat Sid in finance, Adrian his top enforcer, and Mort the undertaker who runs operations into the ground—join Dr. Fink on an illuminating journey down dark corporate alleyways to get the full low-down on what's really going on.

And if after the trip you should ever suspect an impending disaster surfacing in your organizational life—all you have to do is ask yourself one simple question: What should I ask Dr. Fink?

"An extraordinary work that will stand the test of time." —Marshall Goldsmith

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Apr 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781118237731

Book preview

CONTENTS

About the Author

Foreword by Marshall Goldsmith

Foreword by Sarah McArthur

Dedication

Launch Pad

Introduction

How to Get the Most Out of Dr. Fink’s Leadership Casebook

The Unguided Tour for the General Reader

The Guided Tour for Corporate Citizens and Students of Organizational Life

Theme Park Architecture for Educators, Teachers, and Trainers

Dr. Fink’s Leadership Casebook

Casefile-1: Critical Question

Personal Reflection

Buzz Group Topics

Breakout

Coaching Practice Exercise

Situational Question

Casefile-2: Musical Fish

Personal Reflection

Buzz Group Topics

Breakout A: Confidentiality

Breakout B: Ethics

Coaching Practice Exercise / Breakout C: Coaching Dialog

Situational Question

Casefile-3: Matilda’s Bitter-Sweet Taste of Success

Personal Reflection

Buzz Group Topics

Breakout A: Confidentiality

Coaching Practice Exercise / Breakout C: Coaching Dialog

Situational Question

Casefile-4: Fat Sid’s Big Problem

Personal Reflection

Buzz Group Topics

Breakout

Coaching Practice Exercise

Situational Question

Casefile-5: Corporate Citizen, Dearly Departed

Personal Reflection

Buzz Group Topics

Breakout

Coaching Practice Exercise

Situational Question

Casefile-6: No Mistake

Personal Reflection

Buzz Group Topics

Breakout

Coaching Practice Exercise

Situational Question

Casefile-7: Invasion

Buzz Group and Breakout Discussion Topics

Coaching Practice Exercise

Casefile-8: The Undertaker

Personal Reflection

Buzz Group Topic

Breakout

Coaching Practice Exercise

Situational Question

Casefile-9A. The Upside Down Logic Cost Center Management

Casefile-9B. The Inculcation Calculation

Personal Reflection

Buzz Group Topics

Breakout And Situational Question

Coaching Reflection Exercise

Casefile-10: It All Depends

Personal Reflection and Situational Questions

Buzz Group Topic

Breakout Coaching Practice Exercise

Casefile-11: Oh Happy Tuesday

Fat Sid

Pamela

Benny

Dr. Fink

Matilda

Personal Reflection

Discussion Questions

Coaching Practice Exercise

Situational Question

Casefile-12: Midnight Express

Situational Reflection

Epilog

Theory

Guide to Organizational Life

Practitioner Briefing

Appendix

About the Illustrator

Acknowledgments

Glossary

References

Index

Organizations are full of people—that’s what makes them so dangerous.

Hidden beneath the stimulating and thought provoking stories in Dr. Fink’s Leadership Casebook, Laurence S. Lyons offers us a refreshing leadership paradigm that is built on personal acuity and awareness of others.

The approach embraces important management topics we have until now ignored.

It allows readers to introduce the richness into their personal style of leadership that will help to transform organizations into responsible corporate citizens.

Frances Hesselbein, President and CEO, Frances Hesselbein Institute (formerly the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management) and former CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA.

This book marks a very special moment in management literature. It is an extraordinary work that will stand the test of time.

Marshall Goldsmith, executive coach and million-selling author of What Got You Here Won’t Get You There and Mojo

Read Dr. Fink’s Leadership Casebook. It is filled with just the kinds of insights we need in the twenty-first century, and it’s beautifully written. After reading one story, there is no way you will put down the book without reading all of them. Laurence S. Lyons has once again shown the power and humanity in coaching today’s managers.

Professor Nancy J. Adler, S. Bronfman Chair in Management, McGill University, Canada, Author of the newly released Leadership Insight Journal

At first, I thought Larry would need to have four or five meetings with our management team before he got up to speed understanding our business. In fact, everyone said Larry was up and running after the first ten minutes with him in their very first coaching session. Larry never writes anything down (which means he gives each of us his full attention), yet he never forgets anything! Larry has been very effective in helping us excel in a new matrix organization, developing leadership and business acumen across the team, and once in a while preventing a catastrophe.

He probably wouldn’t want to admit it, but Larry’s a lot like Dr. Fink.

Michel De Coster, Executive Vice-President EBU, Belgacom S.A., Brussels

Dr. Fink is wonderful wisdom wrapped in a pita bread of humor and folksy narrative. It’s very much like being there and watching a real dialogue between two people. Truly well written and very readable. Dilbert—move over.

Lawrence Levin, PhD, The Levin Group LLC

Larry is an excellent coach for a management team. He has a wealth of practical experience meaning that he can quickly recognize many situations and give an impartial view of how these situations can play out. I found him to be an excellent sounding board both for tactical situations and more strategic and career development issues.

Dave Rhodes, Sales Director, BT Belgium

One of the most compelling ways to generate discussions around coaching topics is in the creation of characters like Dr. Fink. What Larry Lyons does with his Dr. Fink stories is to provide a concise and funny platform for making serious points about leadership and organizations. What a creative and fun way to develop a workbook—I am greatly looking forward to hearing more from Dr. Fink!

James Goodrich, Dean, College of Business and Economics, CSU Los Angeles

Dr. Lyons has led workshops for Sasol O&S in three countries, with very different audiences and cultures. The acclaim which he received bears testimony to his ability to engage across cultures and languages to convey the key precepts of business acumen. His enthusiasm and energy have infected his audiences who have come away eager to make a real contribution to the profitability of the company.

André de Ruyter, Group General Manager, Sasol Limited

Laurence S. Lyons has done businesspeople a huge service in bringing his character, Dr. Fink, to life. Fink, who bills himself as ‘the world’s greatest organizational consultant and leadership coach,’ is funny and brutally candid. Most importantly, though, he dishes out business lessons and counterintuitive strategies that have a value and real-world application which is profound. If you need wise business advice, these Dr. Fink stories are strong medicine.

Mark Levy, Founder of Levy Innovation: A Marketing Strategy Company, and author of Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content

Beautifully crafted stories, which amuse and deliver the critical messages about effective business coaching. Laurence S. Lyons and Dr. Fink provide engaging and valuable messages for busy executives.

Anna Bateson, Consultant, Founder of business consultancy Cutting Through the Grey, and an expert on strategic change and leadership

Dr. Fink shows how a humorous tale can make your brain work harder than a complex theory. The stories are realistic, the storytelling engaging, and the meaning is as hidden as a Harvard case study . . ..but all that makes the learning all the more gratifying—and fun!

Seth Levenson, PhD, Seth Levenson Consulting Inc., expert in strategy consulting, executive education, software development, and change management

With Dr. Fink’s Casebook, Laurence S. Lyons has created a masterpiece! For anyone who has ever thought the subject of executive coaching to be ‘dry,’ this highly entertaining management novel imparts insight, wisdom, and learning through the hilarious exploits of Dr. Melvyn Fink, one of the best characters ever to hit the page. Get ready to laugh out loud! (While you learn of course.)

Sarah McArthur, founder *sdedit, former editor of Business Coaching Worldwide, and President, Dr. Fink’s Fan Club

Laughing out loud with your stories! Dr. Fink always hits the spot!

P. Alex Linley, PhD, CPsychol, Director, Centre of Applied Positive Psychology (CAPP), Visiting Professor, University of Leicester

Dr. Fink and his corporate adventures provide essential visibility into organizational and personality dynamics in a way that has never been done before! Dr. Fink’s unique, smart, and savvy interactions begin seemingly simple and then peel away the onion of human behavior in a way that is enlightening and unforgettable. Nothing quite appears at it seems — just as in real-life. Fink raises our awareness to illuminate what is right in front of us — before it becomes the next obstacle to what is truly important for success.

Karen Steadman, PhD, President, Leadership Futures

Larry has a wonderful understanding of the real nature of organizations and what makes them tick, rather than the official hierarchies so beloved of Human Resources personnel. This makes his advice to coaches unrivalled, since he is dealing with the real world of business. Highly recommended.

Ron Ardell, MCIM, Director, Magnolia Marketing

Thank you for your—delightful—stories. They make many good points. Better than research, scalar data.

John Stopford, Emeritus Professor of Strategy, London Business School

I fell in love with this wonderful resource book at first sight. I love the humor and easy style that offers very profound nuggets of wisdom that are easy to digest. And, one is able to take it all in with a big smile and light heart. How cool is that for the weary warriors among us!

Barbara Mintzer-McMahon, President, The Center for Transitional Management, and Managing Director at The Alexcel Group

Provides a new paradigm for non-finance people.

Geoffrey Fairfield, Managing Director, Spark Coaching Ltd.

Larry Lyons masterfully blends great humor with eloquent writing and splendid storytelling. Dr. Fink’s Leadership Casebook provides for us as leaders, coaches and consultants very practical opportunities to significantly expand and refresh our ability to make helpful interventions in the situations we encounter in our organizations. Thank you, Larry, for the gift of Dr. Fink’s way of thinking. I will recommend it to my colleagues and clients.

Carlos E. Marin, President, CE Marin & Associates

© 2007-2012 Laurence S. Lyons

Laurence S. Lyons identifies himself as the author of this work.

Illustrations ©2007-2012 Janet Schatzman & Associates, LLC.

The Dr. Fink characters including Fat Sid and Dr. Fink’s Leadership Casebook are proprietary to Laurence S. Lyons. All trademarks acknowledged.

Situational Intelligence™ is proprietary to Laurence S. Lyons.

Situational Intelligence Tetrad™ is proprietary to Laurence S. Lyons and Anna Bateson.

All rights reserved. Published by Pfeiffer

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lyons, Laurence.

The coaching for leadership case study workbook / by Laurence S. Lyons; forewords by Marshall Goldsmith and Sarah McArthur.

p.cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-118-10512-2 (pbk.)

1. Executives—Training of—Case studies. 2. Leadership—Study and teaching—Case studies.

3. Mentoring in business—Case studies. 4. Business consultants—Case studies. I. Title. HD30.4.L96 2012

658.4’092—dc23

2012003581

Acquiring Editor: Matthew Davis

Director of Development: Kathleen Dolan Davies

Production Editor: Dawn Kilgore

Editorial Assistant: Michael Zelenko

Manufacturing Supervisor: Becky Morgan

About the Author

Unlike Dr. Fink and his friends (www.AskDrFink.com), Dr. Laurence S. Lyons is a real person and an internationally renowned expert in organizational transformation and leadership development. He is Director of The Metacorp Group, a member of Leader to Leader Thought Leaders’ Forum (formerly the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management), and a Visiting Academic Fellow at Henley Business School, England. Formerly he was Senior Vice President at Executive Coaching Network in California, European Practice Director of The Alliance for Strategic Leadership and a member of the Worldwide Association of Business Coaches International Advisory Committee. In his early career Larry worked for start-up, small and large organizations, including Digital Equipment Corp (DEC), where he was Technical Director of European Hardware Engineering.

His clients include Agilent Technologies, Aventis, BAE Systems, BBC, British Airways, Belgacom, BT Benelux, Deutsche Bank, Lufthansa, Oracle, Pitney-Bowes, Sasol, SITA-Equant, and Unilever. Larry is co-author of Creating Tomorrow’s Organization (Pitman) and is founding editor of the Coaching for Leadership series (Jossey-Bass). A library of his work is available at www.lslyons.com.

Foreword by Marshall Goldsmith

More than a decade ago, Larry Lyons and I approached the members of a very special group of individuals called the Learning Network with an idea for a new book. This new book we envisioned would include insights and teachings about executive coaching from the world’s greatest thought leaders, many of whom just so happen to be members of the Learning Network. Now in its third edition, Coaching for Leadership is an extraordinary resource on the topic of executive coaching. As a matter of fact, it is considered the bible for those in the field and for those desiring to become executive coaches.

When Matt Davis at Wiley approached us about editing a third edition of Coaching for Leadership, Larry and I both felt strongly that we must offer something very special to our readers if we were to edit another volume of this wonderful resource. We met in London’s Heathrow Airport just about two years ago, and Larry shared with me his idea to offer a companion workbook to Coaching for Leadership. He had been working on a new writing technique—the learning story or management novelette—and Sarah was publishing his short stories as a regular column called Ask the Expert in the ezine Business Coaching Worldwide. Larry shared a few of the stories with me, and in an instant, I knew that this was a very special moment in management literature. The moment that I, touted by some as one of the world’s greatest executive coaches, was introduced to Dr. Fink—the world’s greatest executive coach!

The Dr. Fink stories are very special. In the most enjoyable of ways (through humor and story), Larry teaches us about management theory and situational leadership. He answers difficult questions that we have asked ourselves, and puts forth questions