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Yet they’re so important to the overall outcome. No matter what your position is today, we’ve all had the wonderful job experience at some point in our life (maybe now) where you felt uninspired, lacking in confidence, confused, stressed, tired and more than anything frustrated every day! And didn’t know what you would do about it. You probably spent far too much time in this ‘gray zone’ and wasted valuable personal time, plus your company’s time. I’m talking specifically about when the person directly responsible for your results (your manager or supervisor) was seemingly ‘against’ you every day, always just riding your tail to force productivity from you, and never agreeing with your thoughts or ideas. When you desperately needed improved results but they just are not coming.
Did you know, that probably wasn’t your fault at all? (Ok the time you took a quick nap during your work hours was your fault). But no person that is being ‘coached’ properly in their job would ever dream, or need to take a nap…or consider any other obvious productivity waster.
Managers are largely unsuccessful in their jobs because no-one has ever explained to them the importance of ‘coaching’ their team to success. That’s right ‘coaching’! Standing with a whip and screaming and yelling at tigers to make them jump through a ring of fire might work in the circus, but that’s where it belongs…and certainly not in today’s workplace. Monitoring the height of your plants or amount of seeds that sprouted each week, and then adjusting the triggers that make them grow (water, light, heat, soil, etc. . ) works in the garden, but NOT with human beings. Empowering the people on your team, or those you are directly responsible for, is KEY to attaining any level of success. To prove this point think of a time right now where you felt very important to an outcome. When inside you felt like the leader. You had so much to give and it was bursting out of you. You were excited and eager to get going. You were enjoying yourself tremendously and time was flying by. You were using your strengths and knew that any positive outcome was based on your participation. Whether it’s playing on a beach volleyball team, singing in a choir, playing in a team golf tournament, completing a research project on time, attracting customers at a company booth, selling a car, helping a neighbour put up his Christmas lights, analyzing a report, fixing a computer, leading a meeting…whatever. That wonderful feeling existed because you were empowered. You were naturally using a strength of yours and were connected to the effort. You were giving it 100% easily. Now imagine for a few seconds that feeling existed in all employees in your company, existed within you every day at work, existed within your team…. what do you think your results would look like?
And this is absolutely what Managers are directly responsible for today, and moreover, absolutely have the power to accomplish. Creating that ‘feeling’. -2-
A recent 2004 study in the UK showed that over 70% of managers spoke less than 30 minutes a day cumulatively to their team! And a staggering 30% less than 30 minutes a week! And our North American results are not far behind. Now I don’t know about you, but how someone who is responsible for my productivity is going to understand me, my strengths, my weaknesses, and my goals without regularly talking with me…is just crazy! They don’t have any chance of tapping into that ‘feeling’ of mine where I could give 100% easily. Unfortunately for them they probably do not have any possibility of reaching their targets or the company’s targets successfully either. Managers primarily need to coach not monitor. Yes, understand what their team’s results are…. but spend ten times that amount on understanding, encouraging, and positioning each employee that reports to them. How much time does your manager(s) spend understanding their team individually? Do they talk with you once a year for goal setting and then once again before review time, and hardly anything in between? How much time do they spend writing reports vs making their team’s strength’s come alive and weaknesses diminish? How much time do they spend fixing employee problems and spats instead of encouraging their strengths and positioning them to allow them to use these?
But the most exciting part about this new Coaching approach is…. IT’S EASY. Yes many managers might have to do a severe mind switch, and some egomaniac managers might have to be let go, but overall we’re not talking rocket science here. For those managers reading this; it’s a commitment to understanding what your real role is, and a commitment to your team that you will individually position them for the best results possible. If your company needs results for any reason, this is an area that when given attention, will pay HUGE dividends.
Managers need to think of themselves as the Coaches of professional sporting teams and not as the General Managers. Let their directors, executives & owners do the bulk of the analyzing, monitoring and company movement…. and use their time to concentrate on their players (their staff) and how to get the best results from them daily, weekly and monthly. Without these individual player and team results…no amount of fancy marketing, new inventions, slick processes, visionary goal setting, etc will spell success.
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