Great People Works

Many managers are happy when they become managers because they feel they are no longer responsible for the business results directly. They believe that if they simply maintain a good atmosphere for success, ensure everybody has the tools they need then they can sit back and evaluate the results. They think their job is only to direct, control and evaluate workers, send them back to training, reward or punish their performance and promote or fire those people who don't seem able to achieve quotas.

Unfortunately, that's only about 30% of their job. By definition, a manager should also "succeed in accomplishing or achieving organizational goals". In order to do that he or she needs to personally take an interest in the success of each of their direct reports, especially those who interface with the customer in whatever form such as sales people or customer service to ensure they have the skills, behaviors and consistently use them to make the results happen. A great manager coaches his people according to their level of competency, adjusting feedback and delivery to have the maximum positive impact on the unique individual being coached. A great manager cultivates and develops his people to be successful high achievers who are competent and self-assured because they have gotten the right feedback, advice and prodding to achieve their potential. Every great sports athlete has a coach, often several and maybe a mentor too. The athletes and the coaches both know it pays off and is needed.

All too often I hear employees, usually sales people tell me that nobody gives them effective developmental feedback, rarely do they have someone accompany them on sales calls or listen in and give them advice on what they did exceptionally well and what skills need improvement. Many of them have no one to reinforce training skills or practices they learned when they joined the organization. Why is this I wonder?

It is so easy for a manager to coach employees because many of the same communication skills use to be a great manager are also used to be a great coach. The biggest difference is that to coach effectively, a manager has to assume a new role for a short period of time. He is not delivering an intermediate performance appraisal and for the most part is not even delivering performance feedback. He is focusing instead on skill usage; listening skills, probing skills, closing and presentation skills. He is seeing if the employee was adequately prepared, did the necessary homework, gained the interest of the customer and their permission to ask questions or present information. He is listening to see if the sales person missed buying signals and closing opportunities and whether the call ended with an agreement on the next follow-up actions to be taken by the parties involved. The manager then demonstrates his shared-goal of seeing the employee succeed, by providing constructive criticism and proposes a plan to assist the employees development. He does not need to build a unique coaching agreement with the employee because it is his job to help his employees succeed. When they win, he wins too. He demonstrates this by helping the employee improve his skills, understand his strengths and how to improve those areas where he needs to build more strength. It's a Win-Win, and I find it amazing more companies are not following the example of recognized great companies by emulating their behavior, and training their managers to coach. I can help with that.