Not Knowing How to Coach
Dive into the thirteen blind spots many organization leaders will battle at one point. In this series, our president & CEO, Dave Mattson, will provide guidance on how you can overcome these challenges.
Today’s blind spot is, not knowing how to coach. Listen, one of the key things that we have to do as leaders is to coach our people. We want to coach them in order to become 100% proficient in their skills and the results and the experiences that they need to have to excel in that current job.
The problem is, most of us weren’t coached. So we don’t know how to coach. It’s not one of those things that have been passed on from generation to generation of management. Chances are it didn’t exist, if it did it wasn’t great up to this point. You’ve gotta start fresh.
Most managers will tell you that they coach all day long. Somebody asked for help, do this, this, this and this. We say to ourselves, no better coaching than that. Listen, I just did that in about six minutes. I gave them all the answers. But, you’re shocked when they go implement and it looked nothing like you what you just told them to do. Why? Because, they didn’t remember it. Why? Because, you told them what to do. It was your idea. And so you have to go from your idea to their idea.
And so coaching, ask yourself this. How often do you coach each individual person on your team? Can you answer these questions? How often do you coach? What’s the frequency, right? Do you have an agenda each and every time that you coach, that you send ahead of time?
Are you coaching to behaviors? Are you coaching to the top 10 Sandler behaviors, whether it’s sales behaviors, management behaviors. You can identify behaviors for every different department in your company. If you’re not, we’re in trouble. Are we actually coaching to the gap? Meaning once you identify the behavior, you have to give them a grade and the ones that we want to improve upon, what if it’s a C, how do I get to an A? When do I want to get to that A? And what’s the benefit to me and the organization if I do a better job? Let’s say at interviewing or selling. That’s the key.
If you don’t have all the components, then really you’re wasting your time. And wasting your time in coaching, that’s not great for you and it’s not great for the people below you. Because, coaching is one of the four hats of leadership. And if we’re going to spend between 30-40% in that hat, you’ve gotta make sure that every coaching opportunity that you have hits the mark because the ripple effect is horrific.
So, check out whether you have the blind spot. Till we see each other again, good luck.
The Road To Excellence, six leadership strategies to build a bulletproof business is on sale now at https://www.sandler.com/shop. Contact a local Sandler trainer to learn about more about our organizational excellence management training program or click subscribe to get notified about future management tips.
Up Next in the Series
Blind Spot #1: Not Having a Process for Hiring
Blind Spot #2: Improperly Onboarding People
Blind Spot #3: Failing to Tie Corporate Goals to Personal Goals
Blind Spot #4: Not Creating a Culture of Accountability
Blind Spot #5: No Common Sales Language
Blind Spot #6: Not Focusing on Lead Generation
Blind Spot #7: Not Capturing Best Practices
Blind Spot #8: Failing to Train and Coach Management Staff
Blind Spot #9: Not Building the Bench
Blind Spot #10: Not Knowing How to Coach
Blind Spot #11: Not Sharing the Vision with Those who Have to Implement it
Blind Spot #12: Fostering a Culture of Learned Helplessness
Blind Spot #13: No Methodologies and Systems
The Road to Excellence
The best-selling book by Dave Mattson helps you determine what, exactly, stands between your company and organizational excellence – and what you can do about it.
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