How to Lead Remote Workers During the COVID-19 Crisis (Or anytime)

In (important) ways, leading is leading, regardless of where you and those you lead are located. In all cases, as a leader, you are moving toward a goal, and are moving in the direction of that goal with and through the efforts of other people. And yet for all the ways that leadership is the same, there are nuanced differences that need to be understood and acted upon if you want to get great results and have people who feel good about their work and the working environment.

One of my mentors borrowed the quotation from W. Clement Stone – “little hinges swing big doors.” This idea is a profound truth in life and applies directly to us as leaders of people located elsewhere. This article is about some of those nuanced differences – differences that like a hinge, can make a very big difference in your results.

Intentionality
One of the things the proximity and frequent face-to-face interaction provides is the chance for serendipity. When you see someone in the parking lot, when you pass them in the hallway or on the shop floor, you are reminded of and provided with opportunities to say or ask things of others -and they will have that chance as well. When your team member is in Sioux Falls or Singapore and you are in an office in South Jersey, none of that happens.

As a long-distance leader, you must be more intentional about the things you want to share and need to share with your team members. You must also be intentional about providing time and space for your team members to share with you, too. Remember, they can’t see your office door open, so they may not know you are available, or they “don’t want to bother you.” This is just one example of the need for greater intentionality as a leader at a distance – to be intentional about creating space for conversations.

The need for intentionality extends to the other four ideas that follow too. . .

Communication
When you are face-to-face with someone you have the full complement of cues and clues to improve the chances for communication success. You have body language, posture, and the fullness of “how people look” as they communicate with you. At a distance, unless you are using a webcam (which I recommend, but isn’t always practical), you lose the richness of the body language, and must rely on the words and the tone and intonation or “how they say it” to receive the message. Of course, if you are only sending email, you lose some of that too. The bottom line is that when you are leading someone at a distance, not only might there be fewer chances to communicate (as noted above), but the chance for miscommunication grows significantly. As a remote communicator, you must be aware of these risks and make sure you are using the best communication medium for the situation you are facing. Chances are, you need to move past email or instant messaging more frequently and more quickly than you might do naturally.

Coaching
As a leader, you have a responsibility and opportunity to coach those you lead. It is a critically important part of your role. Doing it with a virtual or remote team member can be a challenge. Time must be set aside, care must be taken, and the communication challenges mentioned above must be considered. While most leaders don’t do enough (or frequent enough) coaching to start with, this is typically truer when coaching remotely. While everyone wants to know how they are doing and how they can improve, often those working apart feel even more disconnected and are wondering how they are doing or how what they are doing is being used and appreciated by others. Long-distance leaders must take their coaching role more seriously and put that seriousness into action – by scheduling more coaching with their team members.

Clarity (the need for it)
One of the biggest things missing in the workplace today is clarity. We need more clarity on the goals, on the expectations on the policies and procedures, on nearly everything. In my work with employees everywhere, they typically feel in the dark about more than one thing necessary for them to be fully successful. Do you somehow think those who are remote will be more clear than everyone else?

Hardly.

In fact, chances are the clarity that is lacking for everyone is exacerbated for those at a distance. You must work hard at creating clarity on the work, the work outputs, and all of the expectations you have about how people work, when they work, and what success looks like.

Relationships
Fact: People choose to follow those they know like and trust. Building “knowing,” “liking,” and “trusting” is harder when you don’t see people. Sorry Hallmark, absence, at least in this case, rarely makes the heart grow fonder.

Leaders of remote teams must spend more conscious time working to build their relationships and trust with those they lead. This is important work, made far more important by the distance.

Do you know about your team members’ passions and interests and family? Do you know where they want to go with their career and how they see you helping them? Can you both comfortably talk about more than just the work and the weather? If not, start here – it will start to help in the other areas mentioned here (and others unmentioned), too.

After reading these five things, I am sure you further agree with the premise in the first paragraph – all five of these things are important as a leader of a team just outside your office door too; and yet, each takes on a different and more important meaning when you don’t see your team members regularly and/or on the way to the coffee or break room.

If you are a leader of a team (or team member) at a distance, think about these ideas, determine which could help you improve, and get started. Notice that the first idea is intentionality. Get intentional, take action, and you will start to get new and better results.

Successfully Leading Remote Workers Part II

Six Tips for Managing Remote Workers

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your organization's culture, employee engagement and leadership capability? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

“CATCH OF A LIFETIME” By James P. Lenfetsy

He was eleven years old, and went fishing every chance he got from the dock at this family’s cabin on an island in the middle if a New Hampshire lake.

On the day before the bass season opened, he and his father were fishing early in the evening, catching sunfish, perch and worms. Then he tied on a small silver lure and practiced casting. The lure struck the water and caused colored ripples in the sunset, then silver ripples as the moon rose over the lake.

When his pole doubled over, he knew something huge was on the other end. His father watched with admiration as the boy skillfully worked the fish alongside the dock.

Finally he very gingerly lifted the exhausted fish from the water. It was the largest one he had ever seen, but it was a bass. The boy and the father looked at the handsome fish in the moonlight. The father lit a match and looked at his watch. 

It was 10:00 PM—two hours before the season opened. He looked at the fish, then at the boy.
“You’ll have to put it back   son,” he said.
“Dad!” cried the boy.
“There will be other fish,” said the father.
“Not as big as this one,” cried the boy.”

He looked around the lake. No other fisherman or boats were anywhere around in the moonlight. He looked again at his father.

Even though no one had seen them, nor would anyone ever know what time he caught the fish, the boy could tell by the clarity of his dad’s voice that the decision was not negotiable. He slowly worked the hook out of the lip of the huge bass, and lowered it back into the black water. The creature swished its powerful body and disappeared. The boy suspected that he would never see such as great fish 

That was thirty-four years ago. Today, the boy is a successful architect in New York City. His dad’s cabin is still is still there on the island in the middle of the lake. He takes his own son and daughters fishing from the same dock. And he was right. He has never again caught such a magnificent fish as the one he landed that long night ago. But he does see the same fish—again and again—every time he come up against a question of ethics. 

For, as his father taught him ethics are simple matters of right and wrong. It is only the practice of ethics that is difficult. The decision to do right lives fresh in our memory. Not about how we had a chance to beat the system and took it, but how we did the right thing and were forever strengthened.

Integrity: The Supreme Quality of Real Leaders

Integrity is the ante into the game of real leadership. Integrity is easy to put on a company poster, coffee mug, tee shirt or PowerPoint slide. It's harder to put into practice.  

Integrity acts as a moral compass. Just as a ships’ crew used the Sextant to navigate the high seas, leaders use integrity to guide their conduct with others. Integrity is vital for forming and sustaining healthy and profitable professional and personal relationships.

Integrity reflects a person’s true character and is their best friend. The esteemed nineteenth-century American playwright Nathaniel Hawthorne offered this insight: “No man can for any considerable time wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which is the true one.”

Anytime you compromise your integrity, you do yourself an incredible amount of damage. That’s because integrity really is your best friend. It will never betray you or put you in a compromising position. It keeps your priorities right. When you’re tempted to take shortcuts, it helps you stay on the right course. When others criticize you unfairly, it helps you keep going and take the high road of not striking back. And when others’ criticism is valid, integrity helps you accept what they say, learn from it and keep growing.

When people around you know that you’re a leader with integrity, they know that you want to influence them because of the opportunity to add value to their lives. They don’t have to worry about your motives.

One of the reasons people struggle with integrity issues is that they tend to look outside themselves to explain any deficiencies in character. But developing and sustaining integrity is an inside job. Psychologist Sheldon Koop asserts, “All the significant battles are waged within self.” Integrity is not determined by circumstances and it is not based on credentials, it is governed by the choices we make. And the choices we make—make us.  

Wendell Phillips said, “The price of integrity is everlasting vigilance.”  

The following questions can help assess and elevate your level of integrity:

1. Do I consistently treat people that work for me with respect even when I am under pressure?
2. Am I the same person when I’m in the spotlight as I am when I’m alone?
3. Do I tell half-truths because the whole truth is uncomfortable?
4. How well do I treat people from whom I can gain nothing?
5. Do I quickly admit wrongdoing without being pressed to do so?
6. When I have something difficult to say about people, do I talk to them or about them?
7. Do I act consistently in what I say and do?
8. Do I have an unchanging standard for ethical/moral decisions, or do circumstances determine my choices?
9. Do I make difficult decisions, even when they have a personal cost attached to them?
10. Do I seek personal gain above shared gain?

The bottom line when it comes to integrity is that it inspires trust in you. And without trust, you have nothing. Trust is the single most important factor in any relationship. It is the glue that holds people together. And it is the key to being a leader that exerts positive influence on those around them. When you earn people’s trust, you begin to earn their confidence, and that is one of the keys to influence. 

President Dwight D. Eisenhower expressed his opinion on the subject this way: “In order to be a leader, a man must have followers. And to have followers, a man must have their confidence. Hence, the supreme quality for a leader is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible.”  

When people trust you, your level of influence increases. And that’s when you will be able to start impacting their lives. But it’s also the time to be careful because power can be a dangerous thing. As Abraham Lincoln said, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test the man’s character, give him power.”

C.S. Lewis remarked, "Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is watching." Click here to read a short story related to Lewis' quote called "Catch of a Lifetime." 

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your organization's leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement ? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

A Resturant Manager Who Taught a Young Waiter How to Choose His Attitude

Jerry was the kind of guy you loved to hate. He was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say. When any one would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, “IF I WERE ANY BETTER, I WOULD BE TWINS!”

He was unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason why we waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there listening to the employee and telling them how to look at the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, “I don’t get it! You can’t be a positive, up person all the time. How do you do it?”

Jerry replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, ‘Jerry you have two choices today. You can chose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.’ I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be victim, or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes complaining to me, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can help them create a solution, I choose to help them see the positive side of life.’

“Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,” I protested.

“Yes it is,” Jerry said “Life is about choices. When you cut away the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good or bad mood. If you find yourself with an attitude that is not what you want, you can choose another one. You can’t choose a positive attitude everyday. True. But you do choose some type of attitude everyday. 

The bottom line: It’s your choice how to live your life.”

I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter I left the restaurant to go to college at an out of state university. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in the restaurant business: he left the back door open one morning and was held up at gun point by three armed robbers. While trying to open the safe, his hand shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local trauma center. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body.

I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, "If I were any better, I’d be twins! Wanna see my scars?” I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place.

“The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door, Jerry replied. “Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live, or I could choose to die. I chose to live.”

“Weren’t you scared, I asked?” “Absolutely,” Jerry replied.

Jerry continued, “The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read, ‘He’s a dead man.’ I knew I needed to take action.”

 “What did you do?” I asked.

“Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me,” said Jerry. “She asked if I was allergic to anything. ‘Yes,’ I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘BULLETS!!’

 Over their laughter, I told them, “I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.”

Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his nurses and doctors, but also, because of his incredible attitude. I learned from him that every day we have a choice to live fully.

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your organization's leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement ? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

What "Professional" Managers Do that "Amateurs" Don't Do

“All the world’s a stage, and most of us need more rehearsals.”
                                                                                  --Harvey Mackay

Professionals in any field realize that when they practice their skills they increase their chances of winning. Consider Andy Papthanassiou of Hendricks motor sports. Hendricks fields four competitive racing teams for thirty-six events for each NASCAR season. Their drivers include Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Andy oversees the recruiting and training of Hendrick’s pit crews. Winning is impossible without fast and consistent pit stops.

Andy had no racing experience when he started working on pit crews. As a former Stanford football player, he was surprised that most crews didn’t practice and even the best made numerous errors. Andy viewed a pit stop as much like executing a football play, so he organized crews to practice and worked with them to perfect tiny details. 

The teams that Andy led and coached started discovering many little ways to speed up stops, like coiling the air hose in a figure eight rather than a circle because it uncoiled more reliably. These practice sessions along with advances in car design and driving technique, have enabled Hendrick to become the most consistent winner in the business.

The difference between an amateur and a professional is that the professional practices and gets paid very well to perform his or her skills. In the world of management, there are pros and amateurs. Both play the game, but what distinguishes the professional more than anything else is the practice he or she does routinely to improve his or her game. Both management amateurs and  professionals may recognize their need for much improvement, but where amateurs wallow in their mediocrity, pros strive to be the best. They pursue excellence through practice.

We all believe that if you really want to improve at playing golf, you have to regularly practice. Some people will even tell you that you need a professional trainer or coach. Everyone recognizes the importance of practice, even if we don’t think its importance applies to us. 

Leaders need to view their profession a craft that they are seeking to master. The master craftsman always keeps their tools sharpened and well-maintained. They are always on the look out for new tools that well help them create masterworks or perform in a way that second-to-none.

Leadership requires habits of mind, heart and body: respect, emotional strength, people skills, discipline, vision, organization, resilience, planning, momentum, time management, the list goes on. As you can see, many factors that come into play in leadership are intangible. That’s why leaders, at any level, require so much seasoning to be effective. Everyday, a leader is either developing these habits or losing them, either getting better or getting worse. There is no remaining static when it comes to skills.

The greatest mistake most experienced managers make is thinking that just because they have been supervising for a number of years, they know it all and have no need for training or practice.

Why does leadership require practice? Because all skills require practice. If you stop practicing a skill, you lose that skill. A skill is particular kind of habit or what the ancient athletes called a virtue. As such, they have to be cultivated through practice, or else the habits are lost. If you’re not in the habit, you’re out of it.

Regardless of your how long you’ve been in management, there is a practice program that will work for you, but you must want one and not just say you want one. The reason being is because it is really easy to say, “Yeah that might work in other industries, but ours is different so it won’t work.” Well, that is nothing but a BIG 'Ole excuse!

Personal growth and by extension, leadership growth, does not happen automatically because people are living or necessarily because they have experiences. Leadership development must be planned, deliberate and consistent. In other words, if we want to realize our true leadership potential we have to practice it daily.

Here’s a simple, yet practical program that you can adapt to your situation

• Share a best leadership practice once per week with other supervisors in your organization.
• Start everyday with by listening to a podcast, reading from a book or blog about leadership. 
• If feasible, rehearse and practice an important conversation during your drive time.
• Actively participate in a weekly practice session with your a learning buddy.
• Once a quarter allocate a couple of hours to teaming, learning and working next quarter’s  plan.

You might find that you only implement one or two these ideas right away. That is fine. Any time you increase your practice, you will increase your influence as a leader. In many cases, though, a leader can do all these things in less than two hours per week. Many managers say they can’t afford the time to practice. Actually, you can’t afford not to practice.

Be coachable. So many times, leaders love to say they want to learn or be coached, but down deep inside feel that because they’ve been managing so long and have attended many management classes, they’ve got it all and really don’t need any more coaching. Feeling this way is the biggest disservice you could to yourself.

Check out our post: Tom Brady's Coachability and Lessons for Leaders
                                                                        
Also, we've designed a Leadership Development Assessment to help you and your team create a leadership practice plan.  

1) Click on the following link:  Leadership Development Assessment

2) Download the file to your computer.

3) Complete the assessment (Which is a fillable PDF file.).

4) Review the results with your one-up manager, a trusted adviser or colleague.

The assessment is really an inventory of best practices that will make you and your team better leaders. We encourage you to take each of them to heart. How you choose to practice these is up to you—pick one a day if you’re feeling up to, or one a week. Whatever your cadence, do your best to take the practices off the pages of the assessment and into your real-world leadership roles.

While you should be proud of being a leader, the ego is an expensive liability, so get rid of it, and start investing in getting better.  

Practice! Practice! Practice!

“Everyone wants to be on a championship team but nobody wants to come to practice.” 
                                                                                          ---B. Knight

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your organization's leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement ? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Great Teams Help Build Great Cultures

"An organizational culture is a collection of deeply held attitudes, entrenched habits, repeated behaviors, latent emotions, and collective perceptions of the world. Culture is the shared set of assumptions we all bring when we work together—our unspoken expectations of one another."   --John Katzenberg, author of "The Critical Few"

So, what does it mean to have a “great” culture? A great culture is your organization’s brand. It helps your organization attract and retain top talent. It nurtures employees so that they are more engaged and productive. And, it helps make the entire organization be more capable of achieving its business imperatives.

How do teams fit in? Great teams are built on personal bonds. And, it’s personal bonds that increase each team member’s engagement within the organization. When you cultivate great teams that work together and collaborate with other teams, you have the building blocks you need to create a great company culture.

A Deloitte study says: “It’s a more effective model for operating in the dynamic, unpredictable business environment typically seen today. In the long term, we believe there will be no leading organization that does not work primarily based on teams.”

Having your employees share the work in a team based on their strengths increases productivity, morale and ultimately business results. According to this paper, groups outperform individuals in situations where neither have any expertise on the task they’ve been asked to do. This is called the “effect of synergy”.

Many managers mistakenly assume that if you have streamlined work processes and have skilled people that will be enough to achieve superior results. Process and skill are important, but they are not enough to attain and sustain top performance.

In the 2004 Olympics, the USA basketball team was the strongest in terms of individual skills and reputation. Yet, Argentina won the gold medal, and Italy won the silver medal. All three teams had streamlined processes (plays) that they all practiced prior to throughout the competition. 

So, what was the difference between these three teams if it wasn’t skill and streamlined processes? 

Performance execution. 

Improving skills and streamlining processes are only a part of how teams win and why teams practice. They practice to improve their performance execution as a team, which ultimately is the most important factor in winning ballgames.

They practice to refine how they function as a team. Even the best ballplayers on the best teams must improve their linkage with each other. This involves improving their communication, fine-tuning their coordination, and adjusting their timing in order to develop the highest performance possible. Ultimately, their execution is what determines how effectively they score and avoid being scored against.

Leaders often streamline their technical and business processes but not their team processes. Leaders neglect to assess the linkage and accountability among Employees and functions. This lack of focus on performance execution results in rework, the duplication of resources, the breakdown of projects and the existence of conflicting priorities between employees.

Here are two steps you can take to get your teams to a point where they can have a powerful impact on your company’s culture:

1) Assess your team’s strengths and development opportunities. Growth as a team requires ongoing reflection as well as development.  As you and/or your team uncover needs you can move to step 2.

       Click on the following link to download the SMART TEAM Assessment.

    2) Select a team development topic from the following menu of coaching modules.

        Click on the following link to download the SMART TEAM Menu Of Modules.

Developing your employees as a team encourages teamwork, increases productivity, creates positive relationships and produces greater results.

There’s no doubt about the fact you stand stronger together and ultimately can do more as a team than an individual in the workplace.

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your teams' effectiveness, strengthen your culture and elevate your leadership capability? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, wealth management services, real estate services, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

You Can't Be A Great Leader If You're Not Coaching Your Team

"Leadership happens one conversation at a time. So be mindful with each one."

If you have room in your head for only one nugget of leadership wisdom, make it this one: the most powerfully motivating condition people experience at work is making progress at something that is personally meaningful. If your job involves leading others, the implications are clear: the most important thing you can do each day is to help your team members experience progress at meaningful work.

To do so, you must understand what drives each person, help build connections between each person’s work and the organization’s mission, values and strategic objectives, provide timely feedback, and help each person learn and grow on an ongoing basis. Regular communication around development — having coaching conversations — is essential. In fact, according to research, the single most important managerial competency that separates highly effective managers from average ones is coaching.

Strangely, at most companies, being coach-like isn’t part of what managers are formally expected to do. Even though research makes it clear that employees and job candidates alike value learning and career development above most other aspects of a job, many managers don’t see it as an important part of their role. Managers think they don’t have the time to have these conversations, and many lack the skill. Yet 70% of employee learning and development happens on the job, not through formal training programs. So if line managers aren’t supportive and actively involved, employee growth is stunted. So is engagement and retention. When this happens business results suffer as well.

Can you teach old-school, results-focused line managers to coach their employees? Absolutely. And the training boosts performance in both directions. It’s a powerful experience to create a resonant connection with another person and help them to achieve something they care about and to become more of who they want to be. If there’s anything an effective, resonant coaching conversation produces, it’s positive energy. Hundreds of leaders have shared with me that helping others learn and grow is among the most rewarding experiences they’ve had as managers.

Starting today, you can be significantly more effective as a manager — and enjoy your job more — by engaging in regular coaching conversations with your team members. By the way, these conversation do not need to be long. As you resolve to support their ongoing learning and development, here are five key tips to get you started. 

• Listen mindfully. Consider what it feels like when you’re trying to convey something important to a person who has many things on his mind. Contrast that familiar experience with the more luxurious and deeply validating one of communicating with someone who is completely focused on you and actively listening to what you have to say with an open mind and an open heart. You can open a coaching conversation with a question such as “How would you like to grow this month?” Your choice of words is less important than your intention to clear your mind, listen with your full attention, and create a high-quality connection that invites your team member to open up and to think creatively.

• Ask more, tell less. As a manager, you have a high level of expertise that you’re used to sharing, often in a directive manner. This is fine when you’re clarifying action steps for a project you’re leading or when people come to you asking for advice. But in a coaching conversation, it’s essential to restrain your impulse to provide the answers. Your path is not your employee’s path. Open-ended questions, not answers, are the tools of coaching. You succeed as a coach by helping your team members articulate their goals and challenges and find their own answers. This is how people clarify their priorities and devise strategies that resonate with what they care about most and that they will be committed to putting into action.

• Create and sustain a developmental partnership. While your role as a coach is not to provide answers, supporting your team members’ developmental goals is essential. Let’s say that your employee mentions she’d like to develop a deeper understanding of how your end users experience the services your organization provides. In order to do so, she suggests accompanying an implementation team on a site visit next week, interviewing end users, and using the interviews to write an article on end user experience for publication on your firm’s intranet-based blog. You agree that this would be valuable for both the employee and the organization. Now, make sure that you give your employee the authorization, space and resources necessary to carry out her developmental plan. In addition to supporting her, you can also highlight her article as an example of employee-directed learning and development. Follow-up is critical to build trust and to make your coaching more effective. The more you follow through on supporting your employees’ developmental plans, the more productive your coaching becomes, the greater your employees’ trust in you, and the more engaged you all become. It’s a virtuous cycle.

• Focus on moving forward positively. Oftentimes in a coaching conversation, the person you’re coaching will get caught up in detailing their frustrations. “I’d love to spend more time building my network, but I have no bandwidth. I’m at full capacity just trying to stay on task with my deliverables. I’d really love to get out to some industry seminars, but I can’t let myself think about it until I can get ahead of these deadlines.” While it can provide temporary relief to vent, it doesn’t generate solutions. Take a moment to acknowledge your employee’s frustrations, but then encourage her to think about how to move past them. You might ask, “Which of the activities you mention offer the greatest potential for building your knowledge and adding value to the company?” “Could you schedule two hours of time for developmental activities each week as a recurring appointment?” “Are there skills or relationships that would increase your ability to meet your primary deliverables?” “How could we work more efficiently within the team to free up and protect time for development?”

• Build accountability. In addition to making sure you follow through on any commitments you make to employees in coaching conversations, it’s also useful to build accountability for the employee’s side of formulating and implementing developmental plans. Accountability increases the positive impact of coaching conversations and solidifies their rightful place as keys to organizational effectiveness. If your employee plans to research training programs that will fit his developmental goals, give these plans more weight by asking him to identify appropriate programs along with their costs and the amount of time he’ll need away from work, and to deliver this information to you by a certain deadline. (And then, of course, you will need to act on the information in a timely manner.)

What will coaching your employees do for you? It will build stronger bonds between you and your team members, support them in taking ownership over their own learning, and help them develop the skills they need to perform and their peak. And it also feels good. At a leadership seminar I led recently a manager said the coaching exercise he’d just participated in “felt like a bungee jump.” As the workshop leader, I was delighted to observe that this man, who had arrived looking reserved and a bit tired, couldn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day. He was far from the only participant who was visibly energized by the coaching experience.

So go ahead and take the interpersonal jump. You will love the thrill of coaching conversations that catalyze your employees’ growth.

Check out these related posts: 

Helping Managers Reap the Benefits of Becoming More Coach-Like

Getting the Most Out of 1:1 Coaching

SMART Coaching Works. Here's Proof

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

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Interested in learning how to develop your organization's culture, employee engagement and leadership capability? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

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Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

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