Like The Show “Mad Men”? Here Are 86 Things Managers Need To Become Better Leaders

Shows like Mad Men make the lives of managers seem appealing, but we know it isn't...

Shows like Mad Men may make the lives of leaders and managers seem appealing, but we know it isn't always the glamorous portrayal it appears to be. Here are 86 things managers need to become better leaders.

Set Smart Goals

As a leadership coach, I would start by assessing the employee’s baseline: their current strengths and weaknesses, as well as their perception of their work. From there, we reinforce positive actions, then work with them to develop a personalized plan for improvement. This might include things like setting specific, measurable goals; identifying areas for skill development; overcoming fears; and creating a support system for feedback.

It is also important to work on building an employee’s self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and resilience, as well as creating a positive and productive work environment.

Here are five key ways that leaders can be more effective coaches, and coach employees to perform at their best level possible.

1. Establish a baseline and learn their perspective.

One of the first things we need to do when we’re coaching someone, especially on a task that’s new or perhaps out of their comfort zone, is to establish a baseline. How we do that is through asking questions and learning their perspective.

Many years ago, a client asked us to coach a family member, a young woman who had never sold anything in her life, to be their lead sales rep for a new brand they were launching. This young person was willing to learn but felt very unprepared in communicating with high-ticket buyers.

With coaching, sales scripting, and role-playing, along with a system for support, she was able to go from no sales experience to selling large contracts in less than a year’s time.

2. Find ways to give evidence-based reinforcement versus just praise.

As in sports, every coach wants to praise an athlete who’s performed well. But misplacing praise before someone has performed a task correctly can backfire. To encourage someone to continue to improve, focus on efforts instead of achievements. Then, reinforce good behaviors through acknowledgment and evidence of effort.

Back in 2018, our team was hired to coach a national sales team who had fallen very much ‘out of love’ with one of their products-a 26 SKU product portfolio. The brand had gotten into distribution, but after years of no marketing support, neither internal sales more buyers were interested in the line. Incentives had not worked. Neither had monthly sales meetings, which were intended to get staff excited and energized. Sales for the brand had nearly all but stopped.

Training hundreds of salespersons individually was impossible. The determination had to be made, where could we make the most impact? Management decided on group training for regional sales managers.

First, we polled managers to find out who, if anyone, had taken the time to read the new sales materials. A few key regional managers had made the effort to do so and were selected to represent the group as a whole. These were acknowledged for efforts made to date, and then asked a series of questions about what they liked and disliked about the new direction.

Although most concerns were no longer valid, we listened, and remained objective and confident, sharing data that supported the direction.

After approximately three months of coaching and support, total company sales started to rise. One year later, the brand was up over 145% in the US market and had more than doubled sales overseas. Their sales team was reinvigorated and were once again excited to sell the line.

3. Allow employees to collaborate on solutions.

The next step is to work with the employee to identify the performance issues or challenges they need to work on. This can be difficult to see, especially in today’s virtual and remote working environments. To learn more, ask them where they are having their biggest success, and their biggest challenges. Then find out what they feel they might need to get past that challenge. The goal is to allow them to find the answers, instead of telling them the answers or solutions.

One example of how to do that would be through the use of a short, three-question framework.

After working on a task or project, employees can learn to ask themselves:

1. Which (strategy, objective, or target) worked the best?

2. How can I verify that this is true? (what is the data or evidence)

3. Why do I know that this worked? (what data points to success)

One small business owner we worked with used this process to analyze sales data, reposition his entire marketing direction, and recapture over $300,000 a year in lost sales.

His Chief Revenue Officer also discovered which employees were losing customer leads, relocating some to other departments while others were asked to exit the company. The results transformed how and who they chose to do business with.

4. Help them to set SMART goals.

After you’ve identified what an employee needs to overcome a challenge or meet a task, it’s time to help them set SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based.

A good coach leans on questions to help the employee understand not just what needs to be done, but why. This also creates a more impactful long-term result, as the employee becomes more teachable, or ‘assessment capable’, a term coined by educator and author, Dr. John Hattie. This process helps the employee to check his or her own personal progress toward a goal by creating a feedback framework. This allows them to make more informed choices.

We can break this process down into three primary coaching questions that employees can learn to ask themselves:

Where am I going? (as it relates to the task or goals).

Is what I’m doing going to get me there? (how is my performance when measured against goals).

What steps should I take next? (related to future goals).

5. Write out an implementable action plan.

Leaders can coach employees to create an action plan by first helping them to identify their goals and objectives.

Once the goals and objectives are clear, the leader can then help the employee to break down the plan into smaller, bite-sized steps. This might involve creating a timeline or schedule, identifying resources needed, or identifying support that the employee may need to successfully implement the plan.

For example, when working with one very large national sales team, we found that there was a need to improve their presentation skills.

Buyer presentations were dated and lacked information buyers would need to make an informed purchase.

Working with key department leaders, we were able to coach them to identify what areas first need improvement; in this instance, their visual aids for the presentation.

We then worked with their team to help them write out an implementable action plan and identify resources to review competitors so that as their needs changed, they could stay up-to-date. The results were a successful presentation to the US Navy, as well as numerous travel retail buyers and sales growth. - Cassandra Rosen

Teaching Effective Leadership

I am still determining if I have five ways, which can be highly challenging. If you want to be a great coaching leader.

You first need to make sure you have a system to teach. If you ever listen to a press conference, the players always talk about following the coaches’ system. It is the same way in business; as a manager, you must have a document and teachable system.

You need to have an internal emotional check. No matter what people say, business is extremely emotional, and the simplest things can feel very personal. You need to make sure you have a mantra or a process. I like to use the forgiveness framework. For instance, when I was running my second summer camp, I used to have staff come up to me and ask me what are they doing next. This, to me, was a stupid question because I provided them with that information in the form of a schedule. Many managers would scold their employees; however, I instead thought about why they felt they needed to ask; 9 out of 10 times, it was insecurity, so they were looking for reassurance. Therefore, I had to cater my response to them.

This leads to my third tip coach each employee differently; make sure you cater your leadership style, approach, tools, tactics, etc., to that individual’s personality. Again, this might feel counterintuitive, especially after talking about systems, but if systems are 80%, helping your employees to adapt is the next 10%.

The following 10% is stepping back and letting your employees fail. This can be hard, but it is much easier to coach someone after they have acknowledged their mistake and taken ownership. - Doogie Levine

Be Genuinely Curious

I coach people to do their best work by first getting a clear understanding of what is and is not working for them and contributing to their professional success. Then, I complete a deeper investigation into what is causing both. Once I discover the root cause of the challenges standing in people’s way, I can guide them into understanding creative, sustainable solutions. Additionally, when I find out which tactics are leading individuals to success, I work alongside them to amplify their strengths in other areas of their work.

Coaching for peak performance in the current context requires adaptability. Leaders are required to see solutions and adapt rapidly when challenges or changes arise because this occurs more commonly and quickly than ever before. So, we remind leaders to see solutions without becoming caught up on problems because embracing these challenges results in higher-level performance and more impactful work.

The top five ways that leaders and managers can be effective coaches:

1. Resist the temptation to fix.

Example: An employee comes to you about a challenge with a client who is unresponsive. They may come to you two or three times with a similar question, and in the moment you can choose to tell them what to do or ask questions about what they think could be effective, what worked in the past, or what might be suitable solutions. By probing employees with questions to guide their own solutions, they will learn the skills necessary to work through future hurdles rather than coming to you for everything, which would limit you as a leader and inhibit the development of their critical thinking skills. As the saying goes, “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”

2. Know how to ask great, open-ended questions.

Example: Leaders should ask questions that begin with “what” or “how” rather than those which can be responded to with a simple yes or no. This creates an opportunity for further contemplation and exploration of potential solutions which can train the brain to look for resolution on its own by reconfiguring how people look at challenges.

3. Listen attentively for what is and is not being said.

Example: Communication is not just composed of what someone says, but also how they say it. The ability to pick up on the social cues people demonstrate through paralanguage allows you to know when to go a bit deeper in the conversation of topics or subjects and see what might be below the surface.

4. Be genuinely curious.

Example: Employees can tell when you are just going through the motions or exercising genuine curiosity. When you showcase your interest, people feel as though ideas matter and they are more likely to be bold in sharing their opinions or ideas because they’ll feel as though the environment you’re fostering is safe.

5. Demonstrate that you truly care about your team members’ success.

Example: It is important to continuously show your appreciation. Studies have shown that the highest-performing teams have a positive reinforcement to corrective feedback ratio of at least five to one. Don’t just tell people what to correct but tell them more often about what they do well, reminding them that you have their back and want to see them succeed. This creates massive engagement, loyalty, and motivation for team members.

6. Understanding people’s motivation.

Everyone has a different definition of success on a large scale but also moment-by-moment. Leaders need to know what employees want in order to motivate them. Some people are extrinsically motivated — by money, title, or other opportunities for advancement– while others are intrinsically motivated –by purpose, fulfillment, or pride. Unless you understand what drives people, you may not fully connect with them when establishing strategies and future development plans. - Zach Smith

Eliminate Your Assumptions

Recognize that it’s not about you — people will do things differently. For coaching to be effective, it has to be about the person being coached … and they need to make the realizations.

Ask really good questions — you don’t need the answers. Most people don’t know the definition of a question, which is a request for information where you don’t know the answer and still want it. We need to eliminate our assumptions and ask really good questions

Remember — you can’t coach someone who doesn’t want to be coached. There is an excellent book called “Helping” by Edgar Schein — an academic book on how to help people. We need to understand the dynamics of bringing a person along and being helped. The first step in helping someone is to bring them up to your level and be open to being helped. That takes work.

Eliminate your assumptions. The past, while important to remember, can only inform today, but shouldn’t dictate our decisions. Using our questions will help us find new solutions, utilizing the best of all of those around us.

Drop your expectations, then raise them. Expectations are assumptions, and they can do damage. The best way to motivate other people is to raise your expectations of them, but you can only do so when you eliminate previous assumptions. - Jim Frawley

Be An Advocate

Listen loudly– stop telling, start asking, and genuinely seek to understand.

Get wildly curious — ask powerful, open-ended questions and remain open-minded and non-judgmental.

Demonstrate intellectual humility — accept that you don’t have all the answers and be willing to change your mind.

Be an advocate — empower and enable others; stop creating dependency and start creating self-reliance.

Create a psychologically safe environment — create a culture where people feel safe speaking up when there’s a problem, disagreeing with one another (including senior leaders), and challenging the status quo. - Gia Lacqua

Involved In Decision-Making

Over the past 20 years, Stamp & Chase has developed a comprehensive model that helps managers consistently improve engagement, assess employee performance, and coach for improved results. Using the acronym T.E.A.M., which stands for Teach, Empower, Align and Mentor, this framework is grounded in evidence-based leadership practices that improve overall employee engagement, retention, and success.

Inherent in our model are four key characteristics that make feedback more powerful. Effective coaching needs to be:

Frequent to capture instances of both positive and problematic behaviors as they occur,

Aligned with team priorities and goals for improvement,

Specific to reward positive individual performance and help employees develop the behaviors that lead to success, and

Two-way, reflecting the manager’s opportunity to improve his/her performance by encouraging input from staff and colleagues.

Following is more detail on the four elements of the TEAM model and the specific leadership practices embodied in each.

Teach — Providing Effective Leadership to the Team as a Whole

Staff look to their manager to establish clear priorities and direction, and then provide focused support for the team to successfully achieve defined goals. As a teacher, the manager offers the expertise and wisdom that shapes the course of the workgroup. Of course, a strong teacher also is a continuous learner, benefiting from the knowledge and contributions of individuals to make the team stronger as a unit. There are three specific leadership best practices in the Teach component of the T.E.A.M. model:

Integrated Rounding

Providing frequent visibility and support to the team.

Focused on meaningful conversations with all customer groups to better understand successes and opportunities for improvement.

Designed to check in on staff, not check up on staff.

Daily Huddles

Brief stand-up meeting lasting just 5 minutes.

Focused on immediate issues and helping staff be most successful today.

Emphasis on sending staff “on the field” inspired, not discouraged.

Inclusive Team Meetings

Most effective forum for meaningful dialogue among the team.

Leaders should strive for a 50/50 ratio of giving vs. receiving information and ideas.

Empower — Getting Staff More Involved in Decision-Making

Central to all contemporary performance improvement methodologies — including LEAN and Six Sigma — is the idea that better solutions emerge when you involve the people who are closest to the work. By coaching staff to be involved in initiatives that make the workplace better, great leaders give employees a voice and help them feel more connected to the success of the team.

Align — Establishing Workgroup Goals to Drive Performance

Most organizations have mastered the art of setting specific, measurable goals at the corporate level. But to influence behaviors and the performance of workgroups and individuals, more specific, tactical goals should be established at the departmental/unit level. Setting, tracking, consistently reporting and then discussing progress against these goals helps the workgroup strengthen a sense of purpose around priority initiatives to improve quality, service, and/or efficiency.

Another way to think about these more specific work team goals is as leading goals to achieve lagging goals. Using a common personal example helps clarify the difference. If your lagging goal is to “lose 10 pounds in three months,” you need a leading goal such as “reduce daily calories to 1,800 and exercise three times a week.”

Mentor — Providing Consistent Feedback to Individual Employees

The real power of the T.E.A.M. framework comes together in the Mentor. Focused on more frequent and meaningful positive feedback (which reinforces desired behaviors) and constructive criticism (which corrects substandard behaviors), three recommended leadership best practices provide a platform for continuous individual and team improvement:

Daily Coaching

In-the-moment comments on a job well done or areas for improvement.

Balanced positive and negative feedback, striving for a 5-to-1 ratio of appreciative vs. constructive comments.

Development Dialogue

More structured conversations regarding individual performance, held a minimum of twice per year.

Focused on both current performance as well as career development.

Tone: “You are an important member of our team. Working on these things will make you even more successful.”

Observation

Consistent, direct observation of employees in their environment doing their jobs, offering the most powerful opportunities for Daily Coaching and/or Development Dialogues.

Focuses on the how, not just the what. - Burl Stamp

identify The Shortcomings

1-Listen carefully and identify the shortcomings (emotional, skills, stress): The number one skill of every coach is to be a good listener and this can be learned with time and practice. It’s about listening to opinions, emotions and suggestions.

2-Identify long-term goals, mid-term goals and short-term goals: In order to support your team and hold a common vision, it’s important to identify together the goals the team is working towards. It’s about what I need to achieve and not how. I usually do this during kickoff meetings where all important milestones are identified to have a common understanding;

3-Put together a roadmap that included every day or week small steps of improvement. Steps leading to short terms concrete achievement and helping to march towards the bigger goals: Our brain needs to have digestible steps in order to understand that the bigger goals are achievable. Putting in place a roadmap that is done in a collaborative manner does make the work easier and paves the path for a common journey;

4-Put in place a system of accountability and continuous learning for improvement: All processes can be changed, adapted and corrected at any time if things are not going in the right direction. It is comparable to a GPS, if you change the route, or you see that you are not heading to the correct destination, it will recalculate and show you the best way the following from the new place you are at.

5-A regular check IN to identify what worked best and what can we improve the aspects that did not work as expected. Check IN are deeper than monitoring and continuous improvement, it is about the person and can be done during and after the process. It will give lessons learnt to improve the future process. - Donya Ben Mlouka

Lead By Example

Passion for Teaching — I recall a time at a previous employer when a business partner of mine announced her resignation during a team meeting. After getting over the initial shock of the announcement, I proceeded to have a private conversation with her in my office in hopes of getting the real truth behind her desire to leave the company. During this conversation, she did not hesitate to share her contempt for her current boss, with her most critical feedback being “I just accepted the fact that I was never going to learn anything from him.” These words always stuck with me. Regardless of our professional level, most of us desire to have a leader who we consider to be a trusted counselor and guide. The previous bosses I hold in high regard are the ones who I was able to take inspiration from. In order to be effective coaches, leaders must strive to be teachers of their craft.

Lead by Example — At one time or another, many of us have heard the saying “The further up the corporate ladder you go, the less work you should have to do.” Though as leaders we should be properly delegating workload to our direct reports, the task of coaching should always be on-going. For me, I regularly look for opportunities to offer up best practices with my peers and direct reports. Whether it is on a conference call, team meeting, touch base or administering a performance review, I always take advantage of the opportunity to share the strategies that have helped me succeed, in hopes it will help my team members succeed.

Ability to Make a Personal Connection — At one of my previous employers, the performance of our direct reports was evaluated based on statistical metrics. Those who were not meeting the statistical expectations of their role were put on counseling and eventually managed out if their performance did not improve. While evaluating one low performing employee in particular, I decided to take a different path and connect with him on a personal level. Instead of managing the employee out of the company, I proceeded to sit down with him in hopes of gaining a better understanding into who he is as a person. I asked one particular question that does not seem to get asked very often, “Generally in life, what makes you happy?” By making this connection, I was able to uncover his true passions and as a result, found a different job within the department that he was better suited for. Effective coaches understand that we should not be in the business of getting rid of good people.

Identify How Success is Measured — Throughout my career, I have managed for companies who measure the success of their employees quantitatively, qualitatively and for some, a combination of the two. Effective coaches are able to identify which evaluation method their company subscribes to and in turn, ensure their workforce understands this as well. Some employees may be convinced they are performing at a high level because their accomplishments can be seen quantitatively but in fact, are not meeting expectations because they are lacking in qualitative areas such as interpersonal skills or time management. In order for leaders to be able to coach their teams for peak performance, the leader and the team must understand how their organization measures success.

Elicit Feedback From Your Direct Reports — I have been a part of organizations who utilize “Employee Engagement Surveys” in an effort to gain feedback from their workforce on issues ranging from how employees feel about their job, their boss and overall feelings about the company. During my time at a previous employer, I recall one particular Department Head who was notorious for receiving poor engagement results from members of his department. His consistent response to this feedback was to dismiss it and as a result, the department became a revolving door of managers. One of my favorite quotes is “we do not see things in life the way they are, we see them the way we are.” Accepting feedback, especially from those whom we are responsible for leading, is critical if we as leaders expect our workforce to do their best work. Our workforce must have the peace of mind of knowing that their voices will be heard and their concerns will be addressed. If those concerns consistently fall on deaf ears, high turnover will become commonplace. - David Rey

Make It Right

My framework and goal for performance exists within my 5 ways that leaders and managers can be an effective coach. I’ll give some real world examples from each.

#1 Make it right — empower your team to satisfy an unhappy customer. In my retail business (brick & mortar mattress retail) we understand that rarely if ever do we have an issue or upset customer involving more than a $500 fix. As such everyone who is customer facing on our team is enabled to fix any issue up to that amount. No approval from their manager or ownership is needed. And most importantly no backlash will be felt. We may discuss the resolution to identify underlying problems but we never second guess.

Naturally, we have a robust system of checks and balances to minimize these “make it right” moments but when the issues happen we fix them right away. And we always start with an apology and immediate statement of “you’ll be happy with our resolution, because I’m empowered to make you happy, now how may I do that for you?”

#2 Encourage initiative — I’ll be more upset if we are stagnant as opposed to failing forward. Expanding on my prior thoughts I once left the store for our annual tradeshow only to come back to find how we merchandised the entire store upended and redone.

All of our price cards were reconfigured and enhanced to present every option in a concise Battleship® game like grid presentation. I won’t bore you with pricing details but we present our products a la carte and often customers have three, maybe four different vendors pulled into their final purchase. The issue on the front lines is that customers felt we might be doing math that was advantageous to us (it wasn’t) when giving them their final price.

This grid provided a simple cross section to the answer of “what’s the price”? It was brilliant and transformed this crucial part of the sales process.

#3 Train to affirm, and affirm the sale — no need for overt and pushy sales tactics to train to, nor to adhere by with customers. I educate the teams so they can affirm our customer is in the right place, we are the fit and they can do business with us.

I once worked with a Natuzzi® only furniture store. They were faced with stiff national chain competition moving into their market and were facing the very real reality that one sofa from their store carried the same price tag as the entire household of furniture from their new competitor coming to town.

I guided them to stop presenting just brown, gray and black sofas at a price and instead present rooms with how your customers actually use them. Affirm to the customer you know them, their struggles and have the answers they need.

The color of the furniture is secondary if you don’t enjoy using it.

We created avatars out of the furniture commensurate with how families and couples actually use their living room.

We had the “The Sacred Room” — modeled after my grandmother’s living room, a quiet peaceful place, no food or drink, and used for visiting and rest only.

We had “Grand Central Station ‘’ where everyone gathered, everyone ate, everyone did homework and all the items like tables, lamps, cup holders and powered options were presented to enable this situation while keeping comfort and durability in mind.

We had “His Room” and “Her Room” — corresponding rooms where a man cave was created for him and if she moved the She Shed into the living room it looked like and felt like where she could sit and relax.

None of this was selling, it was all by design to lead a different sales interaction — tell me how you use your living room as opposed to “we have brown sofas for $799.” Now imagine all of this presentation and prescription of fit, affirmed and backed up with quality materials and Italian craftsmenship only Natuzzi® can offer, it was a homerun!

#4 Clarify the outcome — in any given task or goal here is what we want to have happen. This is an important one I tie in with encouraging initiative. In a sense this is the guard rails and speed bumps.

Once I worked with a decking builder who took the guard rails and speed bumps away from his estimating team. Like my furniture store example we worked to create the same experience around how people use their decks, the problem was some of their avatar decks became very involved. Built in coolers for drinks and storage areas. Complex layouts and patterns. Inclusion of sports team colors. None of this greatly impacted material cost, but it did impact labor cost. Entering sales, ordering items, picking and staging materials and most importantly jobsite time all went up.

The lack of clarity in outcome was made by the owner (without my knowledge) telling his sales team that this process was to enable them to close more sales, rather than consider the full impact of cost. It was treated by the sales team as an added benefit as opposed to an affirmation of fit and enhanced user experience — which of course should be paid for.

So painfully we had to reconfigure the bidding process. The good news was they had a bunch of decks to refer to in pictures and amazing reviews speaking about the value and quality of their decks to back up their new pricing program.

#5 How your day goes — I don’t really care how anyone completes their day so long as the four items above have happened. For this example I’ll circle back to my own retail business.

We at times make our daily budget with one sale, and some days the one sale happened with just one door swing. Meaning there is often down time in our store. Naturally we have some tasks — vacuuming, dusting, stocking shelves after all retail is detail.

But even if someone were to tackle these tasks at once it’s about 3 hours of total work per week . Even beyond these tasks, selling and fulfillment of orders we still have time. Therefore I ask for that time to focus on how their selling stage can be better (initiative). How their customer experience can be enhanced (seeking to affirm), how I can better help their day be smoother and more enjoyable (clarifying the outcome).

Once we give time to these tasks it doesn’t bother me that some personal time is spent on social media or a video is watched on YouTube. This system creates a trust framework with one another and so how their day goes, the order in which it goes isn’t of concern to me because they know I appreciate them owning the day within the framework I’ve given them. - Jeff Giagnocavo

Identify Every Individual

Decide who you’re going to be. Originally, I wasn’t great at making decisions in business. I was challenged to over-think, over-question, and over-analyze everything I did, under the guise of learning to be a better leader. However, what I really needed to focus on was making a choice for myself — I am going to be a great leader. Everything starts with “I am.” For me, once I knew the end goal, it was then, how do I go about becoming a great leader? And that’s where I leaned on Bob Proctor’s wisdom in that it all stems from developing your skillset as an intelligent follower.

Invest in a mentor. I think it’s important for anyone looking to be a great leader or coach, to turn to, or even hire, someone they admire that is also a great leader or coach. It’s very common. Find someone who is truly “walking the walk” in whatever arena you’re looking to improve in (business, personal life, etc.) and see if they’d be looking to offer any sort of mentorship. If you emulate their daily practices, you will oftentimes see similar results/successes in your own life or workplace.

Become an earnest investigator. If we’re working together, I truly do want to understand what’s going on for you. I really want to get to know you. I’m very earnest about my interest in where you are currently in life, where you see your trajectory taking you moving forward, what you foresee as your biggest obstacles, etc. Frankly, a common challenge for many managers and leaders is the inability to see those individual stories and bring out success in each unique person. What has each employee faced in their past and been carrying around with them all this time? How do they truly see themselves and value their work? As Stephen R. Covey famously said, “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” We all need to listen to truly understand in order to break through to another level with those around us.

Identify every individual’s unique “gifts.” Once you get to know someone, it’s easy to see their strengths. Where they might shine a bit brighter than others in certain areas. This is an opportunity to let them know of this unique characteristic or ability that they have and why it’s such a powerful tool for them to utilize in maximizing their potential. Everyone has unique gifts to offer to the world and many don’t even realize. Help identify those traits and encourage those individuals to invest in themselves to grow in both confidence and skill.

Believe in your team until they believe in themselves. When I met Bob, he said to me, “Doug, I can tell you don’t really believe in yourself, but I believe in you. Borrow my belief in you until you believe in yourself. And do the same thing with other people.” Before I found my own footing, I did just that. I borrowed Bob’s belief in me and felt a change. I began to use that same strategy with others around me and provided them with so much positivity, that eventually they began to believe in themselves, as well. - Doug Dane

Have Good Teams

I believe if you have good teams, most people want to do good work, as they are human beings who want to feel that they’re accomplishing something meaningful. I believe the more you can help your teams see how they can combine their passion (what they like), with their skills (what they’re good at), to achieve a purpose (making a difference in the world), the more you as a leader will be able to inspire and motivate them to do their best work. One of the highlights in my leadership career was in the beginning of the pandemic, when the world’s supply chain was shut down. Our teams, together with our ecosystems of partners and customers around the world, rallied to quickly design and produce more than five million mission-critical healthcare applications in order to help healthcare workers and hospitals saved lives. This experience truly inspired and motivated the teams because they realized that their work, their contributions, mattered. I think it’s important for leaders to be able to link their teams’ work to how they’re making a positive contribution to the world. - Sonita Lontoh

Value Diversity

1 — Develop trust with team members. We cannot expect people to open or vulnerable if there’s not rapport or trust. This doesn’t happen overnight, but requires truly “seeing” every person in their wholeness who work with us.

2 — Be empathetic. Remember leaders weren’t always leaders. Empathy requires a bit of humility. If we don’t care and we don’t have a willingness to understand what our people might be feeling or experiencing, we will never take the time to coach them. Empathy causes us to slow down enough to relate.

3 — Know their strengths. This requires getting to know our team members, not just observing them. We can learn a lot in effective 1-on-1s. We learn what drives our team members and even the areas that are important to them to be coached. It’s worth noting that while feedback is excellent, sometimes coaching is a better alternative when we understand their strengths and opportunities to grow.

4 — Value diversity of thought and diverse people. Even leaders have unconscious biases where it is easy to pay more attention to high performers or to team members who think like us or remind us of ourselves. It’s important to understand how our unconscious biases work and mitigate them. When they are at play, we are less likely to coach some of our team members who would benefit most.

5 — Understand that change is process. There is a predictable pattern of change and reactions to change that when understood, helps us navigate our team with great support. Change is such a fitting entry to a coaching conversation, and the ability to navigate team members through change is a distinguished leadership competency. My co-authors and I discuss this in detail in FranklinCovey’s new book, Change: How to Turn Uncertainly into Opportunity, which launches April 18, 2023. - Marché Pleshette

Be Clear

Think about the best sports teams and the best coaches you’ve ever seen. They create a culture starting with a clear vision for what success looks like. They implement routines and processes that demand accountability for every player on the team. Every individual on the team knows the job required and is coached rigorously on the specific behaviors or techniques needed to succeed. In corporations it should be the same. Leaders and managers have to create an environment in which outcomes required are clear and every individual understands the what, the how and the why of every activity. Once you have that environment, leaders and managers can drive peak performance through great coaching. Over time, I’ve observed 5 key traits of these great coaches:

Listen: Great coaches have empathy for the people they are coaching and that starts with asking questions, observing behaviors and being a great listener. When you have an understanding of the situation and the context, it helps you coach more effectively based on whether it’s a will or a skill issue.

Be timely: I like the quote “coach someone while the sweat is still on their brow.” In other words, try to give people coaching in the moment so it will be memorable, and they will improve for the next time. Real-time feedback can go a long way in helping someone navigate more successfully in the next project.

Be honest: It can be easy to focus only on the positive and bury any constructive feedback. The best coaches are honest even when it’s a difficult conversation. At the end of the day, honest observations are going to encourage peak performance.

Be clear: It’s important that a coach knows what he or she wants and articulates exactly how to do it. The last thing you want to do is confuse someone.

‘Show’ rather than ‘Say’: Most people learn from observation or from their experience doing something, not listening to words or reading an email. Take the time to demonstrate your expectations to help people perform at their very best. - John Jordan

Listen To Hear

When people work towards their values and/or strengths, they will do their best work. Marcus Buckingham in this book, “Now Discover Your Strengths” says something like “I’m not good at algebra, I don’t like algebra, please don’t give me a job where I have to do algebra.” (I personally resonate with this).

I use the Hogan Assessments in my Executive Coaching. One of the assessments measures Motives & Values (among other things) When people are working with and/or using their values, they are working in their “Bright Side Personality” when those Motives & Values are challenged, they work in their “Dark Side Personality” But, not everyone has the same motives & values and if we only focus on ours, conflict can arise.

For example — one value that is measured in the Hogan Assessment is Tradition — valuing the history of the organization, the hierarchy, the rules/policies. I was working with a General Manager of a Country Club, who wasn’t getting along with the Board. The Board is made up of members. This General Manager had very low Tradition on his Hogan Assessment. We talked about this at length. This country club is known as one the first Country Clubs in Los Angeles that was open to Jewish members. The game of golf is based on Tradition, their website was focused on the history and tradition of the Country Club, yet this General Manager did not value Tradition. This was very eye-opening to this General Manager and we worked to help him listen and understand the value of tradition that the Board desired. While he may not ever value Tradition, he now takes a different approach to change, and uses the Club’s history with his messaging.

The Top 5 Ways that Leaders and Manager can be effective coaches:

Listen to hear, not to respond.

Ask compelling questions.

Understand that people are not broken and don’t need fixing.

Collaborate on development.

Understand where your coachee is coming from. - Jean Radeztsky

Trust Your Employees

Lead with Empathy: The employee/employer contract has changed. One of the biggest takeaways is to approach every situation with empathy. Listening and being open to change allows leaders to support their people and address barriers more proactively and creatively.

Trust your employees: One of the themes I’ve noticed around return-to-work conversations centers around leaders not trusting their employees. Especially as we navigate the complexities of hybrid work, leaders are worried their workers aren’t engaged, aren’t focused 100% on their company, and are generally “slacking off.” I believe winning companies increasingly rely on a management model based on trust and outcomes. When we trust our people, they perform better — and are happier doing so. If you trust your team and hold them accountable to outcomes, they’ll trust you and deliver.

Set clear expectations and ensure accountability: Developing a culture of active listening and accountability is critical. But it takes practice and effort. We have found that establishing a clear vision and strategy, defining measurable goals and holding teams accountable are key to growing high-performance teams. When we also act on employee feedback (via conversations, forums, pulse surveys), we can cultivate an inclusive, people-first culture we’re all proud of.

Communicate the “why”: If employees understand why a new initiative or change is important to the company, they will better understand their role within the organization and deliver strong results. Leading with intention paves the way to better results — both professionally and personally.

Prioritize employee well-being: It’s critical for leaders to value and support employees’ total wellbeing. For example, offering mental health and wellness benefits while demanding grueling schedules or not encouraging people to take time off would be disingenuous. At Synchrony, one of our core values is caring and we encourage our people to use free resources and benefits. This includes connecting with diverse wellbeing coaches and financial counselors, using Flexible Fridays where they can unplug from work in the afternoons and taking sabbaticals (employees can take up to 12 months leave while retaining benefits) or reducing their work schedules (for frontline employees). - DJ Casto

Ongoing Conversation

You need to have a conversation, and really it should be an ongoing one, in which you’re using your life and work experiences to help expand horizons for your employees. Helping them to embody possibilities that they may have preconceived notions about, or see ones that they’re completely unaware of. And to help them understand that by making a plan and executing on it, they can be more satisfied and have a more rewarding career that has a sustainable level of success. Effectively, it’s about teaching people how to plan and pivot. And when you have these conversations, as a leader, you’re prompting AND you’re listening. We believe a certain level of discipline in your work is a super important aspect of a successful organization. And to that end, we root everything in a project management framework. So we’re not relying on the individual to remember or to pull things out of their own experience. We’re providing them with a framework that supports the discipline and organization you need to succeed. This really hit home for me when we got a chance to meet up with our former interns, after they’d been off in corporate jobs, as recent college grads and post-internship. They were experiencing some Imposter Syndrome, being out “in the wild”, with all these new responsibilities, tasks, deadlines, and expectations. They all made the remark that having a project management framework and templatized resources, allows you to approach a problem in an organized and disciplined way, and it gives you a tremendous amount of confidence that you’ll be able to deliver. And they were really thankful that we had exposed that to, and ingrained it in them, because they truly felt like it gave them a psychological and practical edge. Ways in which you can “automate” various tasks or thinking processes, by offloading them to our reptilian brain, is quite the game-changer. - John F Bremer Jr

Make It Easy

Coaching someone to do their best work starts with ensuring the individual knows what their best work looks like. Offering this clarity to your team is a key responsibility of a leader. This simple but powerful task is often assumed away — “They know already…they have a job description…they have been doing this job for a while.” Get specific with the individual and use your coaching skills to help them uncover the path to high-performance for themselves.

A conversation could go like this –

When have you been most successful in your work?

What do you need to do in your current role?

What is the most important knowledge, skills, and abilities for you to leverage and develop?

How to you grow in these areas?

Encourage reflection and personal discovery first, then offer your wisdom where appropriate.

The current context is characterized by speed, decentralization, and risk. Such an environment requires a comparable response. The best way to achieve this is to hold more frequent, more focused, more forward-focused conversations. Extra credit for using your coaching skills in these conversations.

Coaching is a powerful skill for leaders and managers. While professionally trained and experienced coaches have extensive skills, every leader and manager can use coaching every day.

Here’s the top 5 ways to be an effective coaching leader and manager –

Make it easy for everyone involved — Many leaders get overwhelmed by the idea of coaching before they even begin. Keep it short, frequent, and hyper-focused on a single area.

Use consistent prompts and cues — Make your coaching conversations predictable. Don’t ad lib and stumble into them. “Would coaching through [this challenge or opportunity] be useful? What outcome are you looking to accomplish? What’s in the way of you doing that? How will you overcome it? How can I support?” Done. Every time.

Practice with your peers — Great coaching spend nearly as much time perfecting their craft as they do using it. Grab a cohort of your peers and coach each other. This allows you to grow from coaching and as a coach.

Learn how to coach better — There are many wonderful and useful coaching books out there. There are just as many resources like LinkedIn Learning and YouTube to see some examples of coaching in action.

Get to know yourself better — A large part of professional coach training involves self-reflection and gaining clarity of yourself. The better you understand how you show up as a leader and manager, the better you will be at supporting your team in doing the same. - Todd M Sanders

Ask Questions

Having a growth mindset is key. No one has had their best day yet and the path to better days involves two key and related activities: reflection and planning. This is true for us as leaders as well as for our employees. Coaching is the activity that forces the reflection (by asking three key questions) and enables the planning (as a conclusion to the coaching session.)

First, recognize that not everyone wants to improve, grow, or develop. And that’s okay. Some employees come to work, do their job, collect their pay, and are happy and we as leaders should understand that these employees aren’t our targets for coaching. I recall trying to explain to a leader in one of our training sessions that “coaching is for WILLING employees.” The leader repeatedly asked, “Well, what if the person doesn’t want to develop?” When I was assured that the employee’s performance was good, I said, “We have a saying in Minnesota (where I’m from originally): ‘never try to teach a horse to sing; it’s frustrating for you and it annoys the horse.” Or as Elsa from Frozen would sing, “Let it go, let it go…” There are more then enough employees who DO want to grow and develop; start with them.

Second, ask questions. We’ve gone over the three questions that serve as the foundation of our Coaching Conversations Model, so those are great places to start.

Third, ask questions. (Seriously, it’s that important!) Many coaching models focus on how leader-coaches should build the coaching relationship or how we should share our insights and pithy words of wisdom. The truth is that most employees (and most people) know what they did well and what they could do to be even better. And the only way we as leader-coaches can find out what the employee knows (or doesn’t know) is by asking questions. In fact, in the above list of the three questions, Entelechy’s Coaching Conversation Model, the coach asks questions #2 and #3 (did well and do differently) twice to dig a little deeper.

Fourth, make it regular. Coaching is best done when it’s done regularly and consistently. We recommend making the coaching conversation part of your regular one-on-ones which most leaders hold every couple of weeks or so. And since coaching is efficient (5–7 minutes max), it’s easily worked into the calendar.

Fifth, and back to John Maxwell, “show the way.” Ask for advice. Demonstrate that you want to develop and grow. Show that you value others’ input. In fact, when leaders ask, “How do I develop a growth culture — a place where we’re good about giving and receiving feedback?” we suggest, “ask for advice.” Asking the team for advice shows you’re an open leader. However, when you ask one employee what THEY think, you build a relationship. Don’t believe me? Pull one of your team members aside and say, “Estella, I’m looking to add more engagement to our staff meetings. What thoughts do you have?” You MAY get a good idea or two. But you WILL get a relationship boost; your question shows you value the other’s opinion. And that makes for a good leader … and a great coach. - Terence Traut

Start Listening

You have to walk the walk. If you want your team to work on self-improvement and growth, you need to demonstrate that first. Use that budget for learning & development. Take time away from work to attend that conference! If you show everyone that it’s not only okay, but actually good to go and work on yourself it makes it easier for others to try it on. Often our team members came from organizations that were only offering lip service around employee engagement, rather than doing it — so you may need to break the team out of following the “rules” from previous organizations. And maybe for yourself, too.

It’s about them, not you. Shifting from manager into coach means you’re focused on the individual’s goals rather than just your own. Of course, you have your own mandates of what you’re trying to accomplish as a leader, but, to shift into coach, we have to invite the team members into what they want, not what you think they should want. I had an incredible team member who I adored, but wasn’t happy in their role. Rather than pigeon–hole them in, we talked about their long-term goals and started to find opportunities that let them shine in the areas that were more aligned with their future plans. That’s good! It made them happy to be on the team, and more excited to commit to their work.

Communication is king. Or queen! Part of shifting into coaching is the way we communicate. People cannot read your mind, so it’s up to you to ensure that you’re sharing perspectives clearly, consistently, and candidly. Over and over again. Your communication needs to be direct, repeated, and shared with everyone equally. One of the fastest ways to be a troublesome leader is when you share some details with some team members but not others. If you want to be coaching the team to their highest potential, they need to trust you. Communication helps get them there.

Start listening. Our egos are loud and noisy. They want us to stand up and say listen to me! But to coach, we need to ask questions, listen to learn, and take time to truly understand those that we support. We think we listen, but we most often listen to speak. Listen to hear instead.

You can break the cycle. We tend to prefer folks that are just like us — they’re easier to manage and understand — low effort! But, for great work and amazing teams, we need to bring in diverse opinions. We have to open ourselves to being challenged, for trying things in new ways. At most organizations, there’s an inadvertent feeling of hazing, “I did this, and so you should have to, too.” That doesn’t have to be true. You can opt to consider new hiring, onboarding, training, recognition metrics, whatever it is. It doesn’t have to be what it was, and you don’t have to expect people to follow directly in your footsteps. It makes for better work. - Rikki Goldenberg

Be Confident

Let’s “Grow the Way,” shall we?

Clearly DEFINE the tasks on the cadence needed to ensure that each day is a step towards the ultimate goal. Role definition is paramount for any size team.

LISTEN to the needs, and support those needs in the best ways and means, emotionally, mentally, structurally, and financially. Be clear and upfront with what resources are and sometimes are not available to support the work. Allow for feedback to flow freely and unbiasedly.

SHARE the team’s success, and identify how we will WIN, which means, What’s Important Now. As a leader, don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty, but in a supportive manner to move forward, not to micro-manage.

ENCOURAGE in the discouraging times with a reminder that no one is perfect. Still, we can control our attitude and effort each time, and a setback of any magnitude is an opportunity to LEARN.

Be confident that you are coaching people, most likely better than you! Provide them with the stage to shine, and seek fulfillment in their success; there is no greater power than that of APPRECIATION! - Kerry Keating