The Single Most Expensive Mistake a Manager Can Make

 

 

 

 

 

The single most expensive mistake a manager can make is buying into the management myth:

"There isn’t enough time to coach people."

This myth comes from the fact that there are only 168 hours in a week and you have zillions of demands on your time—you have your own tasks and projects besides your management responsibilities.

What is the reality? Since your time is so limited, you definitely don’t have time not to manage-coach your people. Managers who do not prioritize time coaching people always spend lots of time managing people anyway. That’s because when a manager avoids spending time up front in advance making sure things go right, things often go wrong. Small problems pile up. Often, small problems fester unattended until they become so big they cannot be ignored. By that point, the manager has no choice but to chase down the problems and solve them. 

In crisis, the manager is virtually guaranteed to be less efficient, a further waste of time. So, these managers run around solving problems that never had to happen, getting big problems under control that should have been solved easily, recouping squandered resources, dealing with long-standing performance problems, feeling even more pressed for time.

That means in all likelihood, they will go right back to avoiding coaching people, and the next time they’ll make time for coaching is the next time there is another big problem to chase down and solve.

Remember, that the time you spend coaching is “high-leverage time.” By coaching, you engage the productive capacity of your people. For every, say, twenty-minute coaching conversation you have with an employee, you should be engaging hours or maybe days of the employee’s productive capacity. If that twenty-minute conversation is effective, that twenty minutes of coaching should substantially improve the quality and output of the employee’s work for hours or days. That’s a good return on investment—that’s why it’s called “high-leverage time.”

When managers do not coach and proactively communicate: 

• Problems hide below the radar. 
• Problems occur that never had to occur. 
• Problems get out of control that could have been solved. 
• Resources are squandered. 
• People go in the wrong direction for weeks or months without realizing it. 
• Low performers hide out and collect paychecks. 
• Mediocre performers start to think they're high performers. 
• High performers get frustrated and think of leaving. 
• Managers do tasks that should have been delegated.

Also, your team should be getting more capable over time. Think about it this way. As a leader of a team, on day one, your team has a certain capacity. Your team can deliver a certain amount of work, in a certain amount of time, at a particular level of quality and complexity. They have a certain amount of knowledge and particular level of ability to perform. This is their capacity on day one.

If, after a year goes by, you have delivered everything you been asked, you have done part of your job. But if your team is not more capable in some way--if they can't deliver more, better, faster, or higher quality--or if they have no new knowledge, skills or ability to perform at a higher level, you have not done the second part of your job. You have not coached and developed in order to increase the capacity of the team.

The Secret of the 5% Solution

Many managers when exhorted to coach more and boss less will rightly say, “But my plate is already full. I can’t handle one more obligation. I rarely see my people because I’m so busy and they are scattered all over the place. There’s no way I can do all this.” 

You face a dilemma: Simple solutions don’t work for development, yet you don’t have time for complex solutions. So you need a coaching process that attacks the true challenges of getting a variety of people to change and yet is still manageable in light of available time and resources. That process is the 5% solution. 

You can be effective and efficient if you focus 5% of your energy and attention on coaching and development. Working smarter—not harder—helps you make the best investment of your time. The secret of efficient coaching is to know your priorities and then to create and seize coaching opportunities that arise in the course of your everyday work. If you are prepared, you can leverage a relatively small investment of your time into a walloping payback. 

There's a time management maxim that says, "We always find time for the things that we think are important."

Start scheduling time for One-on-One coaching and watch your people grow and and improve.

Research by the Gallup organization supports the notion that you don't have time NOT to coach your people. Gallup's conclusion is that Failing to develop leaders is the single most expensive mistake a leader can make. Click here to read the article.

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT

 

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