Welcome to Back in Your Leadership. I'm Chris Lorenzo and Lorenzo. In this
episode, I want to talk about something that I discussed with Jim Harder in
our guest interview that we've published last week on Wednesday. If you haven't listened
to that yet, please go back and do so. He's the chief data
scientist at Gallop and the book he wrote recently is really kind of puts together
a lot of the discussions that we've had over the last two years on kind
of the decisions leaders make when it comes to the work from home versus in
office versus hybrid stuff. There's a lot of implications on all three and because
Gallup is such a data driven organization, there's not a lot of, you
know, emotional opinion. It's just literally, this is what the data says.
Kind of you make your own decisions because of it. Really great interview,
Please go back and listen to it. But one of the things that
you talked about in terms of the effectiveness of leaders in this process, regardless
of what your organization decides to go with or has the policies of, is
this idea of the importance of coaching when it comes to your people like,
how do you coach your people? And the reason why this kind of jumped
out at me is something we should talk about is that I've had conversations with
people where I've talked about the importance of being more of a coach as a
leader, if you lead people, you want to be more of a coach
to them, And the response is from a lot of people is really deer
in headlights, almost to the point where they almost believed, to that point
in time, that the words leader and coach were almost synonymous, like you
just changed the word to something, but it's the same thing, and I'm
already doing that, or I believe I'm already doing that. And what that
is leading me to believe is that a lot of people out there don't actually
know what the differences are or what it means to level up your leadership into
the area of where you could actually be considered a coach, or what it
means to coach people ver suggest lead them. And so I think this is
really important. I think a lot of our listeners might be struggling with this
if they lead people, and it's something I think we should we should get
into a little bit. Yeah, I think it's a great conversation because I
think that there is obviously a lot of elements uh that like that kind of
like crossover when it comes to leadership and coaching and a lot of things that
are you know, people, it's easy to say it's pretty much the same,
Like I can see where a lot of people will say that, but
I think that as we walk, as we talk through it and kind of
define it. And again we talk a lot of the podcast about like you
have to have common language and you have to have agreed upon definitions, yes,
because I think that's where we tend to have some of this, like
you know, where people have a different way of looking at it, but
we never talk about what is the way that we want to look at or
how do we want to define it? Because you know, coach at its
simplest definition is just someone whose job is to teach people to improve it something,
whether it's sports, skill, whatever the case is. But like that's
what that's what the coach job is. So to be to be a leader
who's coaching people. There's a lot in there that comes with performance management,
follow up, accountability, teaching, training, skill building, like whatever you
want to call it. But I think think that it's important that we start
in a place of like, what what do we mean when we say it's
and how is it different or how was it a skill within leadership that just
because you are a leader, you are not good at it by default.
I think that's the real conversation that we have to have, is that true,
really good coaching in a leadership context is a very specialized skill for it
to be long term effective and for people to want to enjoy the process of
learning and growing as they are being coached, right right. I think you
know you mentioned sports, and I think you know I'm not a huge fan
of sports analogies, but the very essence of the word coach when it's used
in most places is in reference to sports. If you think about whether it's
at the the kid level or the professional level, it's still called a coach.
There's still the coach of the team, the head coach, the assistant
coach, you know. And and yet not all leaders, necessarily, I
think, are good coaches. I think there are leaders out there who have
effectively gotten people to do better at things, but they did not do it
through effective coaching or through being a coach. They did it through other methods.
And I think one of the reasons this is important to know is that
as the expectations of leaders change, because the expectations of employees of what they
want from their leaders are changing, the skills of coaching become more important to
leaders than they were in the past. And so if I think about some
of the most you know, kind of effective coaches in sports, you know,
people like Vince Lombardi, or you know, you get like Phil Jackson
who has like six rings, and you know, I'm not saying that that
at one point they couldn't play, but when they did the majority of their
coaching, it could be argued that the people they were coaching were a lot
better at executing that thing than they are. Right, there's a reason why
they're on the sidelines and not on the field of the court or whatever that
is. And there's something about a person who is a leader, who actually
can effectively do the job of the people they are leading, that I think,
in some cases can set them up for failure with regard to how good
they have to be at coaching, because the fact that they, in their
own mind think I can do this job as good or better than the people
I am leading it means that I don't necessarily have to coach them effectively.
I can just tell them this is how I would do it. Now do
it this way. And if you look at coaches that are very effective in
sports, because a lot of them can't necessarily just go out and do it.
They have to get that skill and that ability and that improvement out of
people in a way that doesn't say, hey, watch me do it,
and then just do what I'm doing. There's a difference there, and it
might seem subtle, but I think it drives the essence of what it means
to be a coach versus what it means to just lead by doing. Yeah,
I'm glad you brought it up that way, because recently, I would
probably say over to last I don't know, maybe maybe six months or so,
I've had a odd of conversations around the idea of coaching and helping for
people to improve, building skill, And one of the things that I do
in that conversation is I say, hey, what is you know, what's
your favorite you know sport player in the world. You know, and pretty
much everybody, even if you don't necessarily have a favorite, you know of
somebody somebody will say Michael Jordan, Lebron Jay and somebody say Messy or you
know, like they'll say Joe Montana or Tom Brady or whatever. And I'll
say, okay, so now number one, do you know who their coach
is? Right? And for the sports people, they know who the coach
is. And I'm like, was that coach when that player was out like
practicing and going to the gym and working on their skill set? Was the
coach with them all of the time? And they're like, well no,
And I'm like, right, why is that? And they're like, well,
because that person, that athlete, like they they personally wanted to get
better. They had an intrinsic motivating kind of behavior to want to practice and
get better, like they were obsessed with becoming the best they could be.
And I said yes, And I was like, so, let me let
me share with you kind of how I see that. Like some of the
greatest coaches in the world are really great because they understand how to fine tune
and help that athlete or that player get better by watching, by observing,
by by asking them questions, by helping them to think about their approach or
the way that they're doing things. A little bit differently. Those are they're
really good at fine tuning. And I'm like, because there's this assumption that
to be a great coach means you have to have great players on the field
or on the court or anywhere. They have to have that intrinsic motivation to
want to do better for themselves. So, in my mind, great coaches
understand that there's a time that you help somebody refine the skill, and then
there's the time when you have the players that just don't want to go to
practice. They're not always in it, they're not doing the things that they
should be doing over and over again to get better at the thing. And
in my mind, that's not really coaching. That's like follow up and validation,
elements of kind of like accountability of training, like like you're spending time
with somebody to get them to the expectation of something versus refining their skill set
as a coach should do. And in certain industries you're gonna have that mixed
bag. You're gonna have one conversation you'll have with somebody it's refining the skill.
The next conversation is just helping somebody to just do the basics of what
the thing is, and I'm like, but in our we have to shift
that mentality, and it's tough if you blend those two together. So I've
been having a lot of that conversation. So I appreciate you kind of bringing
up like the sports analogy coach like and where it came from and kind of
who those people are, because that's what I've been trying to help leaders think
about this differently, to say, like, we're not necessarily coaching somebody if
they're struggling with the basic expectations of the work. You're actually training them.
You're validating the behaviors, You're making sure that they're doing what they're supposed to
be doing. And then once they show you that they're down that path,
which they show you that they're looking to improve themselves and get better and they're
investing in their skill set, then you can walk in as a coach and
really then spend time differently to help them refine versus be over their shoulder,
like you know, Phil Jackson's not over Michael Jordan's shoulder the whole time being
like, all right, a little bit to the left, next time to
the right, and no, no, like he's not you bend your elbow
a little bit more. He's not doing that right. And so like,
those are things that I think I think are important when we look to define
what it means, When when you look to define what it means for you
and for your team, uh that you are coaching and training, figuring out
what that definition really is, I think will be really helpful. You know,
I think that's perfect because they're there. And this is where leaders,
I think have a hard time. You know, when I hear somebody in
a meeting and they're like, you know, this person has a difficult time
getting to work on time. And you know when they when they talk to
clients or customers, it just seems like they're phoning it in or they're just
like kind of going through the motions. There's no there's no passion behind it.
Okay, well, you know, let's let's see we can do to
coach them. It's like, no, you clearly don't know what coaching is
because that person doesn't need coaching. That person needs to have basic expectations set
and then when they show that they are they are bringing something to the table
that is deserving of being coached, then you coach them. You know that
that's how you get that kind of you know, up to that next level
of performance. The other thing that I think is important to remember too is
that you know, and this is the reason why why talking about politics online
doesn't ever work, is that no one. No one ever changes their mind
by being told that they believe something that's wrong. You know. They change
their mind by coming to their on their own. And what what coaches do
effectively is they ask questions in order to make people kind of get there on
their own. Because the people who are already bringing that level of heart to
whatever it is they're doing, the people who want to succeed, they are
open to that change, but they aren't necessarily open to being told that what
they're doing is wrong. They're just open. They have an open mind in
general. And if they can get there on their own by just hearing the
right questions and answering those questions to themselves, that is a much more effective
way of getting that change because it will be lasting change, not just a
person who's like, oh, okay, you'll have to I have to change
what I'm doing because this person's watching. That just means you get the change
when you're watching, and then when you go away, the change isn't there.
You can watch the athlete at the gym, and they're gonna work hard
when you're watching them at the gym, but then you go away and then
they just phone it in. The way to make sure that they're working hard
at the gym when you're not watching over them is to make them, in
their own mind, get to a place where they not just understand the importance
of working out hard, but that they see the potential of doors opening for
them. And then they become bought into the process, not because of what
it did for you or for the organization, but for what it did for
them. And when coaches can ask those types of questions, that's what really
unlocks that in people. But that's like the Maslowian hierarchies self actualization part I.
If you're struggling for basic needs, you're not worried about that part of
it, Yet you still have to have that first part of getting the person
bought in and making sure that they're meeting basic expectations before you can roll that
out. So, yes, both things are important as a leader, but
they are not both coaching. No. I think that that's that's a great
point. I think it's a coach coaching and coaches like these are now these
terms that kind of again are just really muddy, like it's it's it's like
sometimes we use the word coach, I think as a means of not saying
performance management when when we're just managing performance. But because of the negative the
negative connotation with the performance management, it's the sameing we talked about it with
accountability. Yeah, we change the word because we don't like the word performance
management, so we're gonna call it something different, right, But it is
something different when done appropriately, right. And I think that's that's the conversation
that has to be had with leaders and with people to understand that concepts.
And you know that that's something that we I think leaders have to role model
what that is. And you sometimes have to sit down with your team and
say, hey, let's talk about what this is. What what is performance
management? When you hear the word, what does that mean to you?
Can we all agree that most of us think that it's negative, has a
negative connotation. Now, can we talk about what it means to actually manage
performance and expectations of the job and things like that. And you kind of
brought up like the attendance thing type of deal like like, I'm not coaching
attendance, like either you come to work or you don't. And and if
and if you if you choose not to come to work when you can come
to work, then that's a different conversation to have than saying, like,
how can I help Chris get up earlier in the morning? Chris? Can
I can I offer you some type of a better alarm clock system? Is
there something that I can do for you? Like, that's not We're not
coaching the refinement of Chris's ability to get to work when he's supposed to be
there. No, We're simply saying you're not a work like first and foremost,
like, is everything okay? Right? Is there anything that you need
something we should be aware of that that may be causing this? And if
the answer is no, I just need to leave early or no, I
just you know, sometimes I you know, a lollygag and I don't get
like okay, and then let's have that conversation. That's not coaching, right,
But I think that we have to have that conversation with with people with
teams. We have to say what is by our own definitions, what is
performance? Management. What is coaching and how as your leader, how do
I approach these two things? And what are examples of these two things?
And like, you know, here's my goal as a leader. I want
everybody to be over in this coaching space, right, I want to spend
most all of my time talking to all of you about helping you get better
things that you want to focus on, and not spend any time over here
in performance management where I feel that I'm having to follow up with the basic
expectations of the job. Like, that's my goal too, right, So,
like, I think those conversations are so critical though, yeah, you're
you're right. I think one of the reasons why I think many leaders have
a hard time with this is that they're not used to leading in a way
that doesn't allow them to use their their title, or their authority or their
position as part of the reason you should follow. Right. So if I
don't mean that in a negative way, just a factual way, Like if
you if you have a title and you have people report to you, there
is a certain element of that people people are going to do what you say
because you've said it and you're the boss. That just is what it is.
And because that's a very easy transactional thing to do. A lot of
leaders fall back on it, and the reality of it is that that can
work for certain things. But when it comes to those refinements that we're talking
about, when it comes to taking a team from not poor performance but just
kind of like, yeah, they're getting done, it's fine to really unlocking
something that allows it to be a symbiosis of high performance amongst the people on
a team. To get from that kind of mediocre level to that high level
is going to take more than just relying on your authority as boss to be
able to get it done. And and because leaders are so used to being
able to do that, and I say lead with with their authority, I
don't mean by yelling and screaming. I just mean with authority. That's not
coaching, and it's okay to do that, but you're not going to get
people to that next level without that other layer of coaching. And if you're
so used to doing it that one way, it comes becomes very hard to
flex the muscle of coaching because it actually looks like you're taking a step backward
from your position or a step backward from your the authority that you have because
it is you are taking a step back from it. You're the coach,
is the person that wants you to succeed, not that thinks that they're the
only one who can make you succeed, or that without them you wouldn't succeed.
And that that's a key mindset shift right there. If you think that
you're needed in order to make a person succeed, then you've already failed as
a coach. Your goal as a coach is to just plant the seeds of
things and if the right person is listening, they will grow. If the
wrong person is listening, they won't. And then you step back from coaching,
and that's when you go into performance management. Absolutely, and with that
it brings us to this episodes one minute hack. But first a few words
from our sponsors. All Right, this episode's one minute hack is about the
difference between coaching and performance management. Performance management is about basic job expectations.
It's about making sure that the person actually still has a job and is allowed
to be at that job, and that you want them to still be at
that job. Coaching is about unlocking potential. It's about taking people who already
have that buy in, who are already doing the things that are needed in
order to remain employed, and you're trying to maximize what their potentials are for
themselves. And so when you're doing one, don't do the other. When
your performance managing, don't ask questions about helping to bring out the best in
people. This is about making sure people are very clear on what those expectations
are. They don't need to get there on their own. You're going to
help them get there. When you're coaching somebody, it's about helping them get
there by asking the questions that they need in order to unlock those doors for
themselves. And so keep the separation between the two. Know that certain people
on your team will need both of those things depending on the issue, and
certain people on your team will only need the coaching versus needing the performance management.
As a leader, you want to move your time to as much about
coaching as possible and as little about performance management as possible. Performance management is
crossing your teas and dotting your eyes, making sure that everything is done right
from a paperwork standpoint, so that you can spend the majority of your time
actually bringing out the best in people. The more you can do that,
the less you'll see the kind of blurring of the lines between those two things,
and the more you'll be able to make sure that you're clear on where
you're spending your time with your people. Yeah, I think it's a great
woman at hack and I want to be clear about two things. The first
thing is that you've got to spend the time in performance management if you want
to have a successful coaching culture within your team, Because if you're not able
to hold people accountable for the basic minimum expectations, if you're not able to
have the conversations needed to make sure people clearly understand what they're responsible for,
then the coaching that you do with those that are doing the work and those
that are looking to refine skills, they're just going to be frustrated because other
people are not doing as much work or they're not meeting the expectations and they're
still here. And I think the second thing is, and I appreciate you
kind of walking through this is like finding the time that you need to spend
to really define these terms for yourself and then for your team. And I
think it's it's really good when teams hear from leaders and they say things like
I want to spend my time in this space. I would like to spend
my time with all of you in this space of coaching where we are really
spending our time talking about your goals, your skills, the things that you
want to work on, the work that you want to get done, and
how does that help you, you know, with your career, with your
progression, with whatever that might be. I would prefer to spend all of
my time in that space. But please understand that there's going to be performance
Management's going to happen when we have those and that are not meeting expectations,
and so like you're kind of helping your team and your people to also understand
that, Like you're having both the conversations, and that's important when you're looking
to really build that culture where where people know that there is both a good
amount of recognition and developing happening along with the accountability needed to raise the floor
and have your team be able to show up and do their best body of
work without feeling like others are not putting forth their best effort. Yeah,
that's so true. I think it brings a kind of an important thing to
the surface here, which is that you don't get to be a coach just
because you are going through these actions and doing them the right way. You
have to earn the right to be a coach. Your people have to say,
I'm willing to follow this person as a coach, I'm willing to listen
to what this person has to say, and they won't do that unless you
have the basics in place. And one of those things is they have to
be able to rely on you as a leader. They have to be able
to know that you are consistent and that you're holding people accountable. And if
you can earn that right to coach them, they will be much more likely
to listen to the questions you're asking and the coach and you're doing and have
those doors open. If they don't think that you are you know that you
have their best interests at heart, they don't view as a coach to begin
with, and you might as well not even start down that path until you
get those things, those basic things right. Absolutely, and with that it
brings us to the end of this episode. This is hacking your leadership.
I'm Lorenzo and I'm Chris, and we'll talk to you all next time.