“But why?”
“Because she would be damaging our ability to do business.”
“And she’s not now?”
Stella grew very quiet. Finally, she started nodding her head.
“So I just fire her for being angry?”
“No, you coach her. First you see if you can help her find herself so she can be happy and very proud of her work.”
“And if she refuses?”
“You decide what’s next. But don’t leave it like this. Remember, nowhere is it written that you have to put up with unhappy or angry people. It’s not in the Bill of Rights.”
Stella was even tougher than I expected her to be. The next day that Rosie showed up angry and cursing, Stella sent her home and told her to take a paid week off, and when she came back next week they would talk about her future with the organization.
Rosie was stunned, shocked, and a little frightened. She had just been thrown down a flight of stairs.
The hands-off manager is not a coward.
The ultimate level of coaching
Are you willing to take a risk? Are you willing to coach from outside the norm, and make a dramatic swing in your thinking?
We have discussed two types of coaches thus far. One is the mentor within the organization, the other is an outside consultant, as I am. Both types of coaching can have a dramatic effect on your people if you will use them.
There is a third approach that incorporates both of the first two but at a much different level. It cannot even begin to be executed by an old-school hands-on manager or micromanager. So if you cannot give that up, do not attempt to go to this level; it will not serve you.
I will call this level “Coaching so you are no longer needed.”
Many managers are afraid of this very thought. They are so attached to their insecurities and egos that it’s the last frontier they want to travel to. But if they could get there, it would reveal its astonishing power.
What if your goal with everyone on your team was to help them find such greatness within themselves that they no longer needed you to oversee their work?
The first step in this process is to shift your worried mind. You must give up the limiting belief that your people are inherently weak or lazy. Those deficiencies only exist when people let their fears interfere with their potential. So your biggest job becomes replacing fear with love in the hearts of those who work for you.
We have talked about tough love in this chapter and it may seem contradictory to see how that idea combines with “replacing fear with love.” But they go together. And that just might be because they are both in alignment with mother nature.
Nature, like a good coach, is selective. If you are not prepared when you venture into the desert without water, you will not survive. Does this mean that nature is cruel? Hardly. It means that nature is honest! Nature is reality. Plants and animals give their lives that we might survive and prosper, but we as managers do not want to honor the same universal system with our people.
We want to promote someone to a higher position because we like them. Or because we owe them a favor, or because we don’t want to disappoint them. The rationales are endless. But the practices are unnatural. Nature would never do this “for” you. And yet nature has created the most beautiful world that anyone can imagine.
Nature gives its offspring everything it has. Nothing is withheld. And yet if you do not get in harmony with it, you will not be allowed to continue in its presence. The response is sometimes slow, so we imagine that we have escaped the consequences of the law of nature when we have not. If we continue to use oil the way we do now, one day we will have no more oil. If we over-fertilize our fields, one day they will no longer produce a harvest. If we continue to pollute our air, one day we will no longer be able to breathe without becoming ill. Nature is absolute in its commitment to sustainability. Nature will always ultimately choose the good of the whole over the good of the individual.
But will you?