Dangerous because you can lose your business or have your team fail miserably thinking this way.
Linda didn’t realize it, but she was trying to run her team on emotion alone. If her people had a bad month, she would get angry and subtly intimidate them. If they had a good month, she would become overjoyed and take them all out to a champagne dinner filled with promises and mindless joy.
When we sat down together for our first session, I wanted to have Linda see the importance of accountability.
“Business is a logical process run by emotional beings,” I told her, paraphrasing my favorite small-business millionaire Sam Beckford.
“How does that apply to our team?” she asked.
“Your team is on a roller coaster, up one day and down the other, based on your mood. You are teaching your people that their only real job is to win your approval.”
“Well, yes, that’s right. I want them to sell more and know that I’ll approve of them for that.”
“Not logical,” I said.
“How do you mean?”
“You’re basing the mission on emotion. They can’t perform well if they are constantly trying to anticipate your mood. That takes them back to dysfunction. Like little girls living in a household with an alcoholic mother. No one knows when it’s safe to talk to Mother.”
“What’s the alternative?” she said.
I told her that the alternative was to return her people to their work. To let them love their work, and make it better every day. To measure their progress. But not to strike fear into their hearts.
Linda was stunned by my assessment of her leadership style, but as I worked with her she began to see the value of holding her people accountable to themselves and their own best possible performance. She was opening up to a new way of seeing her business. She hadn’t always been this open!
“Why do I need coaching?” she once asked. “Why can’t I be fiercely self-reliant?”
This myth of isolation is just about the most painful thing any of us experiences—all day thinking, I’m all alone—lost and afraid in a world I never made.
Reaching out for help is not weakness, it is the ultimate in strength. It is a commitment to something other than looking strong. It is a commitment to something beautiful, a mission beyond the ego.
Doctors coach us on how to get well, teachers coach us on how to become knowledgeable, parents coach us on how to grow up, so why is this not just the most beautiful, natural way of it? Why is this not the most powerful way to grow?
It’s certainly the fastest.
Which is why the hands-off manager learns to become a masterful coach.
The great business management author and advisor Tom Peters says the manager in today’s workplace cannot be like yesterday’s boss. He tells managers, “Stop giving orders. Being the boss is no longer—if it ever was—about issuing mandates from on high. ‘Ordering’ change is a (stupid, stupid, stupid) waste of time.”
Your own humility will allow you to win the support of your people. Because you value them at the same level that you value yourself. Humility is not low self-esteem—quite the opposite: humility is exceptionally high self-esteem. It demonstrates a self-confidence that is so unshakable that you never have to put someone else down in order to make yourself feel better.
Coaching that helps bring a person “into alignment” with their true talent (passion) is not some goofy New Age narcissism. It increases productivity; hard numbers and profitability are affected. The growth curve and real dollar profit margins of the company Duane works for can only astonish competitors and onlookers who are reduced to guessing that they must have made some lucky land acquisitions in a prime market with good timing.
Well, yes, timing is everything. Especially when we notice that the time is always now.
What to do when coaching doesn’t work
If you have an unhappy employee who is under-producing, coaching is always your first option. Coaching can do so much!
Except when it can’t.
Yes, there are times when even the most masterful coaching will not change an employee’s poor attitude and inconsistent performance. Some people are just not open to it.
It is at this point that we like to remember the words of Harvey Mackay, chairman of the Mackay Envelope Company, who said, “It’s not the people you fire who give you problems; it’s the people you don’t fire.”