Help Everyone Be Their Best

We can learn a lot about the importance of coaching from this cautionary tale.

Kevin was a young, aggressive hockey player. He’d played for years and was pretty good, but he was still nervous when he approached his first big tryout. He gave it his all—and was thrilled when he was picked for the team. He showed up on his first day, enthusiastic but nervous, knowing a lot would be expected, but eager to be part of a winning team.

His first day was a surprise. He showed up for practice and found that some of the players were really good, whereas others were not only unskilled, but downright cranky and difficult. They were constantly complaining about how other teams had better uniforms and easier practices. The issue was never addressed, though. Everyone got the same amount of ice time, and nothing was said by the coach in the locker room between periods.

Kevin’s first game also brought plenty of surprises. To Kevin’s mortification, the other defenseman on his line scored a goal on their own team. But the real shocker was that the coach didn’t even notice. Nor did he notice when Kevin scored a hat trick—three goals in a single game—all while playing defense. This was his personal best. A couple of close friends on the team congratulated Kevin, but it turned out that the coach wasn’t in the arena at the time, and apparently nothing got back to him, so nothing was ever mentioned.

By the end of the season, Kevin was totally confused by the team. Furthermore, three of his best teammates had left—recruited by a different (better, the gossip said) league and replaced by other, average players. Over the summer, Kevin started to question whether hockey was the right sport for him. Or maybe even sports, in general.

Such is the power of an ineffective coach.

Now let’s look at some examples of stellar coaches. You’ve heard of Muhammed Ali, but probably not his coach, Joe Martin. Nonetheless, Ali would not have been a champion without Martin. The same goes for the Green Bay Packers without Vince Lombardi, the Chicago Bulls without Phil Jackson, or Michael Phelps without Bob Bowman.

Coaching is an indispensable tool. It speeds the progress and heightens the trajectory of a star. With the right coach, significant growth may not take five years; rather, it may take five months, or even five weeks. In short, coaching works. In fact, no team or athlete becomes exceptional without exceptional coaching.

Why Traditional Performance Evaluations Don’t Work

Many companies still go through the yearly process of formal performance evaluations. I can tell you with authority that this process is hated by managers and employees alike. Both spend a lot of time dreading it and procrastinating around getting it done.

For the manager, it’s a major time drain and a process with potentially unpleasant conflict coloring the edges, but the imaginary business professor in her head tells her that this is something that good leaders do. Managers do performance evaluation mostly out of guilt. For the employee, it’s a once-per-year, all-or-nothing report card, often with financial gain on the line. Their palms sweat as they think about it, and their mouths turn to cotton. The ugly side of performance evaluation is that it was, in part, designed as a way to fire people with cause without having to pay severance.

Today, the old performance review structure is tottering. It just isn’t very effective. Focusing on coaching for better performance gets results, creating an environment where people step up into the star box.

The 2 Key Criteria of a Successful Coach

If you’ve ever played sports, you already know that coaching works. And any successful coach demonstrates two key criteria: He expresses care and has standards.

Care

Think about a person who was influential in your life before you were 20. Did he care about you? The answer, of course, is yes, every time. If your motivation to coach someone is to hammer her, don’t bother starting. It won’t work. If you dislike her, it probably won’t work, either.

It’s too easy to single out the person you have a problem with and begin to focus on her negative attributes. She will feel it, her confidence will erode, and her performance will get worse. As her performance sags, it will prove to you that you were right to begin with. She will feel your laser beam focus, her confidence will erode further still, and her performance will hit bottom.

If you don’t think self-confidence affects work performance, consider the case of Tiger Woods. Woods was unbeatable in golf, the number-one ranked player in the world, until his many extramarital affairs were revealed. This was followed by a humiliating public apology and an eventual divorce from his wife. Over the next several years, Woods’s play was highly inconsistent, dropping to a #992 world ranking at the time of this writing.

It’s worth asking yourself if you are contributing to this sort of downward spiral by expecting the worst. Are you addressing poor performance because you care, or because you’re fed up? When a person feels that you’re down on her, her performance is going to suffer, and your prediction of her failure becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because you subconsciously did all you could to make it happen. Before you have any reality conversations, change your own attitude. You are there to be a career advocate and a coach. Coaches care.

Standards

As leader and coach, you must insist on non-negotiable performance standards.

This formula (sincere care enhanced by high standards) was likely used by every person who has made a significant difference in your life. Think about it—a teacher, coach, boss, or parent. First, they demanded more of you than you thought you were capable of. Then they made it clear that they were demanding this because they wanted you to be your best. It was for your good, because they cared! That combination is incredibly fertile ground in which young leaders are able to grow.

When I was a young teenager, I got a job working on a local farm. I was a city kid and knew nothing about anything important. I was a bit lazy, utterly unskilled, and, although I had held other minor jobs, this was my first time working with an owner who cared about how things were done, was ferociously committed to keeping his word, and stressed the supreme importance of doing a good job.

One day, Jim announced that he had some errands to run, and told me to complete my list of jobs—but whatever I did, to make sure that I unloaded the hay bales from the wagon into the loft of the barn before going home. So I did a few happy jobs around the shop, where it was nice and cool and the radio was playing. And once I finished those I reluctantly began stacking the hay.

Stacking hay in a loft in midsummer isn’t a happy job. It’s really hot in there, and super dusty. The dust sticks to your sweat; the dusty sweat rolls into your eyes, making them sting. The bales are heavy, and the hay gets under the neck of your shirt and itches, and sometimes the bales poke through your pants, stabbing you in the leg. It’s a hot, sweaty, dusty, dirty, itchy, pokey job—not at all what a young, entitled urban sophisticate is looking for.

So when quitting time rolled around, I was all too happy to take off my gloves and call it a day, leaving the job half done, with one end of the conveyor leaning up against the barn and the other end on the half-full hay wagon.

I went home, had my dinner, and thought nothing more about it. I was puttering around in my room when the phone rang. My dad answered it, and when he called to me, saying that Jim was on the line and wanted to talk to me right away, my heart sank. Jim was a man of few words. Our conversation went something like this:

Jim: “What did I tell you to do when I left the farm today?”

Me: “Hmm? I’m not...”

Jim: “I told you to unload the hay wagon. Did you?”

Me: “Well, ah, it’s interesting that...”

Jim: “Come out here right now and we’re going to finish this job like it should have been done in the first place.”

So I got on my dirt bike and rode out to the farm in the dark. Jim was waiting at the wagon. We loaded the rest of the bales on to the conveyor in silence and stacked it in the loft. Then Jim said, “Sit down.”

He proceeded to chew me out. He wasn’t going to put up with my lackadaisical attitude toward my work. From now on, I was to run, not walk, from job to job. I was to complete everything I was told to do—thoroughly and without complaint.

I felt pretty low, and rightfully ashamed of my behavior. But then he pivoted, and talked about how much he cared about me, and what he saw me doing beyond the farm in my very bright future, provided I engaged in some attitude modification, and fast. Like immediately. Without delay. He finished by asking me if I would work as hard as I could and with my whole heart for the rest of my time on the farm. I responded with an enthusiastic and heart-felt “Yes!”

I ended up working on the farm every summer through my college years. My work ethic was formed there, and I learned that doing my best was not good enough. I was expected to do whatever it took to finish the job. Jim cared enough to have performance standards. He didn’t hesitate to hold me to those standards for my good—because he believed that I was capable of doing more than I believed I was. This was more than just a job to me: it was a foundational life experience.

Care without performance standards equals chaos. Performance standards without care equals rebellion. But care along with clear performance standards creates an environment in which employees can flourish and reach goals they themselves never thought possible.

How the Coach and Connect Method Works

You really don’t have to coach your employees. The law doesn’t demand it. Your business will function (somewhat) without it, so why invest the time? Well, frankly because the Coach and Connect system works. Here’s what it will do for you.

Provides Frequent Feedback

We live in a world where anyone born after 1980 is used to instant feedback about everything. I dropped Facebook after about two months, once I realized that it was actually a part-time job where I was expected to immediately respond to pictures and requests and a deluge of other cyber-detritus. However, I was born before 1980.

I read recently about an app called Snapsure that allows you to take a picture of a piece of clothing that you’ve tried on in a store, send it to friends from the dressing room, and receive their instant opinions about whether you should buy or not buy.

Younger people are used to constant feedback, whether they are posting pictures, adding their comments to YouTube videos, or critiquing online news stories (but doesn’t my opinion about geopolitics matter, too?).

Hiring an employee and letting him work for a year before he gets some feedback in his formal performance review isn’t terribly effective anymore.

Generates Opportunities for Reality Advice

We all have blind spots. To see them, we need a reality advisor who can step in and kindly inform us about what’s really going on. It’s an invaluable service. People issues emerge when reality, and perception of reality, begin to drift apart. This problem is most common with non-stars, those on the bottom half of the Star Chart. Often, your best people will rate themselves lower than you would, and your weakest players will rate themselves higher. It’s ironic that the people who you would lose first if you had the chance, think that you and the organization would die without them.

A reality advisor can help with a kind and honest discussion about areas in which an employee is doing well and where he needs to grow. Growth only comes during times of discomfort; growth stretches us. When a teenager grows, she suffers growing pains. In fact, when we stretch ourselves in any way—speaking in public, working out, saying sorry, moving to a new job or a new town—it isn’t comfortable. Reality stings, but growing self-awareness enables us to become better people.

Offers Encouragement

If you’re a leader with high standards, there’s a good chance you don’t often tell your staff when you’re happy with them. This is yet another benefit of the Coach and Connect system. Your stars will leave each of your Coach and Connect sessions beaming.

A real star will do whatever it takes to stay in the star box of the Star Chart and will take a lot of healthy pride in being recognized as a star by you. She will take seriously any suggestions you have for improvement. A real star loves being recognized as a high achiever.

Builds Relationships

You may work closely with a person and yet never discuss things that are most important to you both. Although you may work together all day, you may only be interacting on a very superficial level.

A one-dimensional relationship involves the exchange of texts or email. It’s only useful for passing data and information. A two-dimensional relationship involves hearing a voice on the phone or seeing a face by video. A three-dimensional relationship involves sitting together in a room and talking face-to-face.

But even face-to-face working relationships can lack depth. Employees are most engaged when they feel personally known and understood by their direct supervisor. This means taking time to understand their career goals, obstacles they may be encountering, and things about their job that they most enjoy and most dislike. These issues are all addressed during Coach and Connect sessions.

Fosters Career Advice and Mentorship

A Coach and Connect session is your chance to give back, helping others by sharing advice and stories. There are two simple ways to approach this.

First, make a list of the skills and lessons you had to learn to get to where you are today. Share the list with the person you’re coaching and start to discuss each item in turn.

Second, when you sit down to talk, ask about the problems the person is encountering. Then talk about them, and share the wisdom you’ve learned on your career journey.

Sometimes Leaders Need a Coach, Too

You as leader aren’t immune from this, either. You’ve got blind spots just like everyone else, and you need a reality advisor, too. It’s okay that you don’t know everything. Everyone starts out as an amateur, and no one is an expert at leading people. It’s both an art and a skill that you can learn and improve upon. It’s better when you acknowledge this fact and seek help from your own coach, paid or unpaid. The Coach and Connect process gives your direct reports an opportunity to give you suggestions about how you can grow, too.

Seeking Reality Advice

I recently went to Mexico with two friends I do business with, and we spent the better part of a day talking about our blind spots—the weaknesses that are obvious to others that we don’t see in ourselves. Theirs were easy, and as we talked about each of them in turn, I spoke pretty openly, but kindly, about what I saw as each of their blind spots. They did the same with each other.

Then my turn came. Understand that I’m older than both of them. I teach regular workshops on personality and self-awareness. I’m a coach, and basically I’ve got it covered. Not that I’m perfect, but I’ve long ago scoured my psyche clean of any blind spots that may have once been there—or so I thought.

They started in on their lists, and I felt like Muhammad Ali playing rope-a-dope with George Foreman, taking one unanswered hit after another and doing my best to cover my vital organs. Turns out that I still have plenty of blind spots to work on. I humbly wrote them down and pledged to get back to work on controlling the negative parts of my personality that hurt my credibility with others.

When I got home I told my wife that every person on earth should get to go through the same experience. Although it made me wince, it was incredibly valuable, and, of course, they were right about everything they said. Do you have friends who will go through this exercise with you? If so, seek their advice!

Being Savvy to Ulterior Motives

Most employees don’t understand how hard it is to be the boss. It isn’t easy to walk into a room, knowing that all kinds of things are being discussed that they aren’t privy to. The boss is usually the last to discover things that are common knowledge to everyone else.

Bosses can never be completely sure who their “friends” are, because everyone stands to get something from them. The boss holds the key to their income, their possible perks, their opportunities for promotion, and their pecking order in the organization. Who can be trusted?

When you’re the boss, there are three personality profiles you need to be on the lookout for:

1. Spin doctors.

2. Political operators.

3. Flatterers.

Spin Doctors

“Spinning” is re-shaping the perception of an event in a way that advantages the spinner. This happens all the time in politics. When a politician is caught having an affair or spending outrageous amounts of money, his “spin doctors” invent a way to explain this to the world in the best possible light, subtly shifting the blame away from the politician and directing it somewhere—anywhere—else. Spin doctors function the same way at work. All sorts of issues can be “spun” to the boss. These conversations are usually undertaken behind closed doors, where the spinner can exercise maximum control over his message.

Political Operators

Some people excel in the black arts of political dirty tricks, and some of these operators will find their way onto your team. You know that your workplace is becoming political when people state their opinions so they can gain allies, hurt enemies, and advance their own careers. Political work cultures are terribly inefficient, because they waste money and time playing these games. This stuff doesn’t help customers or add any value to anyone. It just makes the culture abhorrent. By contrast, in healthy work cultures, people just say what they believe to be true and in the best interests of the company.

Flatterers

Flattery is taking advantage of the fact that bosses are human beings who need encouragement, too. The typical M.O. of a flatterer is to hide his poor performance by ingratiating himself to the boss. We’ve all seen this guy. He’s a suck-up and a “yes man” looking for ways to curry the boss’s favor. Every worker in the company knows who this guy is, and they all hold him in contempt. Some bosses, however, are heavily influenced by the flatterers, and can lose the respect of their team by listening to him.

Like most people, the boss wants to be liked and have his efforts appreciated by the team. This makes him especially prone to spin and flattery. Couple this natural human tendency with the reality of having to make calls that are right for the business and unpopular with some team members, and you have a potent environment for politics to take root.

• • •

As leader, you can do a number of things to protect yourself from spin doctors, political operators, and flatterers. First, find a coach or mentor who you can trust outside of the business to be your confidante. This can be a paid coach, or just someone that you know and respect who is willing to have an occasional coffee with you and provide objective insight and counsel. Second, conduct group meetings whenever possible. Spin doctors and flatterers in particular hate meeting in groups, because they know that, while the boss might be deceived, their coworkers and subordinates won’t be fooled for a second. For this reason, they’re much less likely to try employing their spin in a group context.

People Action Steps

• Ask two trusted friends to tell you your greatest strengths, and your blind spots, too.

• Ask yourself if you bear some blame in the incubation of your underperformers by eroding their confidence and putting them into a downward spiral.

• Stop using email as coaching tool. Real communication happens face-to-face; email is only useful as a tool to pass along information and data.

• Hold group meetings to neutralize the dark arts of the spin doctors, political operators, and flatterers.

In Summary

Traditional employee evaluations don’t work because they’re too infrequent, and are used as a report card, not a coaching tool. Coaching works when it incorporates two elements:

1. Care. Coaching will only be effective if you sincerely care and want to help. If you’re down on the person you’re coaching, you’re wasting your time.

2. Standards. You must uphold non-negotiable and clear standards and expectations with employees.

If you care but have no standards, you’ll be viewed as weak and ineffective. If you have standards and don’t care about your people, you’ll be viewed as mercenary, and your voice will have little effect. But when you combine care with standards, you create a powerful environment where your growing leaders will thrive.

Why use the Coach and Connect method? The law doesn’t demand it. Your business can run without it. You do it because it:

1. Provides frequent feedback. Employees (especially younger ones) live in a world where most feedback is instantaneous. They expect it and will wilt and underperform without it.

2. Generates opportunities for reality advice. We all have blind spots—weaknesses that we don’t see in ourselves—and reality advice helps your employees to grow in self-awareness.

3. Offers encouragement. Strong leaders often forget to praise and encourage those who report to them. Coach and connect provides an opportunity to encourage your team.

4. Builds relationships. Even though you may work together all day, you might not discuss the most important things that motivate your team members. Coach and Connect sets the stage for those discussions to happen.

5. Fosters career advice and mentorship. Coach and Connect is the time when you can pass on what you’ve learned to someone else, helping them grow to be better employees and human beings.

You need a coach, too! A coach gives you the reality advice you need, points out blind spots, and provides a safe place to talk about your business issues. A coach helps keep you immune from:

• Spin doctors: Employees who find a way to point blame away from themselves.

• Political operators: Employees who state their opinions to gain allies, punish enemies, and advance their own careers.

• Flatterers: Employees who take advantage of your need for support by flattering you, thereby eroding your credibility with your team.