Leaders Who Coach (to download this article, please visit our download center by clicking here)
When we think about leadership words such as vision, inspiration, strategic thinking, charisma … come to mind. The word coaching isn’t something that commonly appears on the list. Coaching is usually relegated to first line managers, not senior managers who have managers reporting to them.
The biggest fallacy about coaching is that the higher up you are in the organization, the less coaching you are required to do or you need for yourself. Actually, it is just the opposite. Coaching is a critical success factor at all levels in the organization.
Coaching is the most powerful tool available to senior management to improve performance, retain people, and help professionals reach their goals. Without manager, peer, and self-coaching there is no sales culture.
Last year, Richardson was part of a research team at a top business school on behalf of a global client. The objective of the study was to identify the characteristics of organizations with world-class salesforces. We analyzed 11 world-class organizations. One of the consistent elements that we found across all of the 11 best in class sales organizations was their commitment to and execution of sales coaching as a way of life. They credited sales coaching as a key factor in:
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1) exceeding goals,
2) retaining their people, specifically their high performers. |
They used a coaching culture to reach peak performance.
So it isn’t coaching to be “nice” — it’s coaching to be world-class, to be #1.
The strongest leaders have the ability to acknowledge and correct mistakes — and celebrate successes. And this is the essence of coaching.
Let’s focus on the three critical aspects of coaching for all managers including executive and senior managers.
As a leader committed to creating a sales culture there are three things you must do:
- Coach your direct reports. Managers who don’t get coached are likely not to coach.
- Insist your direct reports, the line managers that report to you, coach the salespeople who report to them.
- Get coaching for yourself.
The good news is there are really only three things to do. The bad news is few leaders actually do them.
Coach Your Direct Reports
You no doubt work with your direct reports when an issue arises. You also very likely lead performance evaluation sessions with the managers who report to you.
While both of these are essential, they simply aren’t enough. How much time do you spend coaching? How consistent is the coaching? How proactive as well as reactive? Whether for increased performance, motivation, or retention, you need your managers to coach and this starts with you and what you do.
As for what to coach on when you meet with managers who report to you ask questions such as:
- How often are you coaching your direct reports? Ask them to describe your coaching sessions.
- How often are you out with your people with their clients?
- How do you prepare for team calls?
- What are the strengths/areas for improvement you’re observing?
- What challenges are you facing in implementing our sales process? How well are salespeople following it as a discipline? When they are not, what are you doing?
- What do you see as the greatest opportunity for growth in your region?
- Where are you against plan? What are you doing to get on plan?
- What can I be doing more of?
- What am I doing that is getting in the way?
Coach by asking is a way to empower your people, especially your managers. Coach by asking means “they talk first” and that is empowering because:
Input increases buy-in so critical to getting their cooperation and energy
- You learn where they are on the learning curve
- You are more likely to work on the right obstacles and therefore have the best shot at helping remove the obstacles that are limiting their effectiveness. You are helping them help their salespeople.
- You can learn something to come up with a better solution
- You help managers become responsible for their own development
- You become a role model for them to coach their direct reports
If you think about the best coaching you have ever had, you’ll know what great coaching is. Many managers, when asked about the best coaching they ever experienced, talk about their days in sports or describe a special teacher — they were pushed hard, pushed relentlessly sometimes — but always with great support and the knowledge that the coach believed in and cared about them.
The second must is:Insist Your Direct Reports Coach Their People
One way to make coaching a requirement of the job is to make coaching one of the performance objectives that managers that report to you are evaluated and rewarded for. This is important but in fact it is not enough. It is equally important, if not more important, that you serve as a role model for them by coaching them and leading by example.
Also make sure your managers are prepared to coach and that they have the tools and metrics they need. Determine your managers’ competency in coaching and as needed provide coaching training and tools. Most managers come from the ranks of top performers. Most are doers by nature and experience not developers of others. Also what many managers are calling coaching is really performance assessment. The most improvement takes place with coaching, not assessment — if you wait until assessment time it often is too late to make corrections. Leaders must put channels of communication in place and coaching must be one of the channels.
The third must is: Get Coaching for Yourself
This can be very challenging and possibly the most challenging of the three “musts” especially the higher the level. Some of you may not have been coached very much and have arrived at your success with little coaching. Some of you may not get any coaching now. Some of you may feel, at your level, you don’t need coaching. But the fact is seniors do need coaching, too.
The source of the coaching you get isn’t the point, but getting coached is — whether you must ask your senior manager for coaching or agree with a peer to coach one another, or use an outside/internal executive coach, or ask for feedback from the people who report to you — the key is get feedback, get coached and use the feedback you get to keep improving and reaching your next level of excellence and success.
Peer and direct report feedback is invaluable in helping you improve and in role modeling openness to feedback. For example, one of our executive coaches works with a CEO who meets with his direct reports one time per quarter with the sole purpose of asking, “How am I doing?” Then the CEO takes that feedback back to his executive coach. Even if you don’t have an executive coach, having this dialogue with your peers and/or your people is a way to grow and role model and create a coaching culture that your competitors will find almost impossible to match.
Summary
Why coach? Coaching accelerates productivity. Coaching improves retention. Your salesforce needs it. It is fun and rewarding. Your best competitors are doing it.
Coaching is equal in importance to pay. Pay, of course, is a big deal, but it can also be fleeting. The #1 reason salespeople give for leaving their positions is their sales manager. I don’t think it is a stretch to say a key reason they stay is also their sales manager. Development is life-long. Most professionals very much want to get better at what they do everyday. They value coaching and they value the coach.
You are a leader. What you do matters. What you want from your people you can get. Culture trains and what you do sets the culture. If you want a coaching culture, all the models, rhetoric, and training won’t mean much without your coaching of your direct reports.
Each of you has so much going for you organizationally and individually. You’ve been recognized for your leadership abilities, for your accomplishments. You’ve hired good people. It is up to you. You have the power to make sales coaching a way of life. You can maximize your resources, help your managers’ stretch, and help ensure you don’t lose business to your formidable and increasingly aggressive competitors. Coaching is a win all around.