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Coaching for All Levels! 

Executive coaching is not just for the top level anymore.  Middle managers and other rising executives are also engaging with executive coaches to elevate their leadership skills and proactively prepare for bigger roles within the organization,  

I know what you are thinking … I can’t get budget approval for that.  Here are some ideas that will make coaching more economical for your boss and budget, but still gain great coaching that will provide you with an experience to achieve higher leadership results. 

1. Don’t 360, just 180.  For a c suite executive, it is critical to conduct a 360 degree feedback assessment either through interviews with the coach or an online assessment.  For middle managers, you might be able to skip this expense if you and your boss are aligned on your developmental goals 
2. A three month engagement.  For a c suite executive, I highly recommend a six month coaching engagement as the challenges to shift leadership behaviors can take time to overcome.  For middle managers, a three month engagement can provide clarity and tools that can set you on a path to development.
3. Offsetting expenses.  After recent coaching engagements, some of my clients have decreased employee turnover, decreased overtime, elevated employee engagement, or have recommitted to the organization.  Replacing an employee costs on average 200% of their salary. Coaching is way cheaper than that!

Many companies are reinvesting in middle management development.  Some are hiring consultants to build customized leadership development programs.  Others are focused on individual development through executive coaching. Don’t miss out on these opportunities to develop and advance your career.  Have a conversation with your boss today!

Don’t Be Too Tired to Influence a Better Life

In a recent article in Forbes, the article quoted studies showing that 45% of U.S. workers consider themselves to be modern workaholics. And a recent Gallup study of nearly 7,500 full-time employees found that 67% of employees reported feeling burned out at work sometimes, very often or always.

Many blame technology which allows our emails, texts  and phone calls to always tether us to work. Others blame the executive leadership teams who are demanding more work on faster timelines. Others mention the challenge of semi-recent headcount reductions that have decreased staff but not decreased workload.

Stop waiting for someone to fix these.  I believe the real cause for the modern day workaholic epidemic is a lack of the ability to influence change.  That is something you can actively do to defeat the workaholic epidemic!

Influencing change is about identifying when a project, a person, or an organization are headed down a bad path, and being able to redirect to a better path by partnering with others effectively.  

Think about it.   If you are an Exhausted Hero who is a workaholic:

• Have you courageously had a conversation with your boss about your exhaustion?
• Have you prioritized the work and adjusted due dates?
• Have you asked your team for their ideas or have you taken it on by yourself? 
• Have you delegated work appropriately or are you hoarding work?  

Through many executive coaching engagements at companies of all sizes, I have come to the following conclusion.  Corporate Exhausted Heros tend to try to take it all on. But Strategic Managers take time to influence change. Corporate Exhausted Heros tend to act as fire fighters, reacting to the challenges in real time.  Strategic Managers tend to act as fire chiefs, as they plan for the fires, prevent fires through inspections, and mobilize their teams to effectively fight the fires as they appear.

Tell your boss you are exhausted

I spend a ton of time in executive coaching sessions helping people practice having these conversations with their boss. It’s intimidating to say, “I need help to do the role you think I’m doing. I’m not doing well. I’m struggling.” Those are not great things to say to your boss, but sometimes they need to be said. And when a boss hears them and sees the exhaustion, they usually open up and meet the exhaustion with support.

I’ve coached a few individuals who’ve asked for that conversation, whose bosses pretty much said, “Dig in and just make it happen.” Within six months, those people tend to leave the organization, because that’s not the kind of organization they want to work for. They don’t want to work for a boss that isn’t going to support them. They ended up leaving.

It’s important to note here that no matter what type of boss you have, at least have the conversation. Sit down with your boss, share your exhaustion, and give them the opportunity to help you come up with a solution to elevate you to strategic manager. 

In the corporate climate of 2020, a lot of people are jumping jobs right now. There’s a theory that the job-hopping is because the recruiting market is so strong, and you can pick people off with just a little bit more money. I have a counter-theory: I think more folks are leaving jobs because they’re not feeling the support that they need. Instead of having a hard conversation, it’s easier to just walk out the door—with a little increase in salary as the cherry on top.  And the job hoping continues as individuals find themselves in the Exhausted Hero trap again at the new company. The grass is not always greener!

Companies experience turnover when their employees are leaving looking for more support, more ability to find balance, more resources to be able to do their job, and more reasonable timing. If you can give them all those things, you can rescue your exhausted people, and you can save your company thousands of dollars in costs just replacing that one individual.

Exhaustion is a shared decision

Let me make sure there is NO confusion:  Building Strategic Managers and eliminating Exhausted Heroes is the responsibility of both the individual leader and the senior leaders of the organization.  In the workplace, it’s common for everybody to look at somebody else to solve any given challenge. Stop pointing fingers and start working together to solve the problem!

When you look at executives, they look at the high potentials or those people stuck in an Exhausted Hero role, and they say, “Well, they’ve got to figure it out.” If that’s the case, then the executives aren’t taking responsibility for their own development.

Go online and read the Glassdoor reviews page of any company out there. If you find comments from tenured employees saying something to the extent of “these young people need to suck it up, this is business, not a playground,” then that’s a sign the company culture and senior leadership are out of touch with their own responsibility.

At the same time, because Exhausted Heroes are so exhausted, they’re more likely to look for an outward cause, rather than inward. They’ll wonder, “Why am I not getting help? Why am I stuck here? Why does my boss not understand this?” They likewise have a projection out, for somebody else to take responsibility for their exhaustion.

Both sides aren’t taking responsibility. We can really look at this situation as an opportunity for better professional development. When it comes to an individual’s development, executives and Exhausted Heroes must sit down together and say, “Okay, what is our intention? Where are going? What are we trying to do? How are we trying to get there?”

It needs to be a mutual responsibility, because it’s really hard to do without both parties actively participating. The executive who says, “Hey, middle manager, figure it out,” is now putting responsibility on somebody who might not have the resources do it, and will then leave. If you are the middle manager who’s saying, “I need the boss to figure it out,” you may get really tired of waiting and leave. Those are two ways to really quickly create employee turnover with future leaders with high potential within your organization. Instead, sit down together, show your engagement, show your investment, and execute a game plan together.

This approach of mutual responsibility creates higher retention within these leaders. It creates better leaders who are going to be able to take on more work, continue to take on more responsibility, and continue to lead their teams in a way that will continue to grow profits for the organization.

How to Hire Strategic Managers?

When interviewing and recruiting, we must ask ourselves, “What does somebody need to have to be a director? Or a VP? Or an executive vice president?” Most look for experience in operations, or in finance, or in marketing. Then they describe a list of technical experience requirements, like “need to have managed a large P&L,” and the description ends there. Technical experience is good enough, right?

We are missing a huge opportunity if we don’t hire someone with experience in the four big-ticket items that make a strategic manager:

1.      setting a vision,

2.      driving change to achieve the vision,

3.      influencing others, and

4.      coaching and developing their team.

When you bring on a director or VP to run a team, you’ll create another Exhausted Hero if you’re exclusively looking to hire only based on technical experience.

Instead, hire the Strategic Managers who can tell you how they set a vision for their team, drove the transformation to achieve the change, influenced other stakeholders outside their team in the change, and developed their team members as they went along.

We must prioritize these four qualities when we interview candidates. The question is no longer, “Do they know how to technically make us more money, technically improve this product, or technically drive the sales organization?” The most important question is: Do they know how to lead?

Coach Your Team

One of the core behaviors to focus on is “coaching your team.”  Many supervisors, when they think of their responsibility to coach their team, think that’s outside of their job description—“I’ll just delegate coaching and providing feedback to HR,” they think.

Many executives, as they’re looking to develop their high potential talent, hire an external coach or someone to build a high potential program so they can simply check “develop my team” of the to-do list, because those experts will take care of it. Unfortunately, that’s the same thing in my opinion as throwing a high potential employee into the deep end and seeing if they’ll swim.

There is a benefit to external coaching and workshops. But on the job, how they actually complete their work is the responsibility of their supervisor. And it always will be. The supervision part of supervising has more of an impact on learning than even an executive coach or a leadership program can have. Together, these integrate into the Game Plan that makes sure that an individual elevates successfully.

Yes, it’s important to have an executive coach to help you. Yes, it’s important to have a leadership program that helps teach new leadership skills. It is the responsibility of the individual and their supervisor to implement these learnings on the job for practical purposes.  This partnership and sponsorship—from the executive team to really make sure that their executives are going through the elevation zone, and that they truly are helping them on a day-to-day basis, giving them feedback and reinforcement to help them be successful.

The reality is, outside coaching can only get your direct reports so far. You can’t delegate your role as a supervisor.  At the end of the day, you have to continue to coach them as well. 

New Year, New Hope, New Choices

January.  A New Year.  A new decade. 

Do you have new year’s resolutions that look something like this?  

• More time with the family
• More time at the gym or yoga
• More time reading
• More time on vacation

All of these goals are about finding better balance.  But I believe these goals create more exhaustion. All are requiring more of your time, which is something you don’t have!  By adding more tasks to an already busy schedule, will it really create balance?

If you want these resolutions to stick,  it is also important to add the leadership goal to “elevate from Exhausted Hero to Strategic Manager”.  First, delegating individual contributor work to create space for more strategic work. Next focus on getting ahead by managing your team, not managing your tasks.  You should spend over 50% of your work week focused on planning for the future by setting a vision for the months ahead, planning to avoid future roadblocks, and positively influencing the change for your team.  

As a leader, you need to get ahead and stop feeling like you are always reacting.  Choose to lead. Choose to delegate. Choose to create a path forward for your team to follow.  Choose the proactive leadership approach that will create more time for family, your health, your development, and your being. 

If you’re an executive, ask yourself:

• How did you learn to become a strategic manager?  One who spends most of your days in leading others, and little of your time in executing.
• Where did you learn the skills and tools necessary to focus on managing and leading your team, rather than getting mired in the day-to-day fires?
• Did you have a mentor or former boss who demonstrated for you the essentials of being the foremost leader and not the foremost do-er? Did you learn by shadowing them or through other forms of osmosis? Or did you participate in a management or executive level training program?
• Did your current or previous employer invest in your future by providing you training? Or workshops with a consultant? Or 1:1’s with a coach? Or all the above?

As executives, we’ve likely had formal leadership training beyond that of our direct reports. Which means if you are supervising an exhausted hero, a leader trying too hard to do it all, then a dose of formal training could help them to avoid burnout.

Today, corporate America doesn’t invest in leadership training and coaching like it used to. Think back to the heydays of GE and IBM management training, when corporations equipped generations of leaders with the skills and tools they’d need to manage teams, and some day rise into the company’s executive senior leadership.

Nowadays, once supervisors and executives identify a high potential person, the common practice is for them to say, “Let’s just throw him/her in the deep end! They’ll figure it out.” But “figuring it out” isn’t always the case. Burnout is usually the outcome.

McKinsey cited “74% of US leaders and 83% of global leaders think they are unprepared for their new roles.” John Ryan, the President and CEO of the Center for Creative Leadership wrote in an article that nearly two thirds of new managers never received any leadership training, so they don’t know how to shift from standing out as an individual to leading a team.

A little bit of training and coaching can go a lot further than just the bottom of the deep end. Rather than making our high-potential employees sink or swim, the onus is on all of us to get these individuals the training they need to overcome their exhausting habits.

Executives today must fully understand their responsibility to nurture talented subordinates in a way that avoids burnout.

This Thanksgiving week, I hope many are taking the time to be with family. But I also know this is a week to stop, process, and find new perspective on work life integration.

Through all my executive coaching initiates this year, there is a common theme, exhaustion! Leaders are working hard to drive change, maximize transformation, and deliver results. But as timelines are shortened, resources are conserved, and priorities continue to multiply, these leaders continue to take it all on themselves. The superhero mentality to try to “save the world“ doesn’t last long. Soon, the superhero is replaced by the exhausted hero. The firefighter that is scurrying from fire to fire trying to put out fires, but not seeing the big picture of how fires start.

And it is taking a toll on the American workforce. Exhausted Hero’s are taking less care of themselves and their balance. Check out this data from the U.S. Travel Association, Oxford Economics and Ipsos found that out of the 768 million vacation days in the U.S. were left unused in 2018. 236 million vacation days were completely forfeited with $65.5 billion in benefits lost. More than half of Americans (55%) failed to use all their time off in 2018. Are you one of the many Americans this week who is taking the minimal time off because “there is too much work to do?”

As you enjoy the Thanksgiving break, take time to evaluate how you are spending your time. Are you driving results, completing tasks, and serving as a technical expert? Or are you spending time managing your team, creating vision, and influencing change? If you are a leader of people, don’t be an exhausted hero. Be a strategic manager who delegates, influences change, sets vision, and most importantly coaches your people. It isn’t about achieving less. It is about using the team strategically to accomplish more.

The role of a Corporate Exhausted Hero is not a life sentence. It isn’t even decided by others. It is a choice you make: to lead or to do.

If you are lucky, you have leadership role models. For me, I have a few. And one of the best is Lynn Morris Wiggins.

I worked at a large national retailer that was implementing a whole new supply chain system. In that supply chain system, there was a new forecasting tool and a new replenishment process. Both were important for getting the right product, to the right store, at the right time.

Lynn Morris was a senior vice-president overseeing the project, and one of the best leaders I’ve ever worked for. She was a truly Strategic Manager. Lynn inherited and elevated a team of about twenty team members participating in this big change, with two expert Working Managers reporting to her. The first knew everything about forecasting in that organization, and then became an expert on how to use the new tool in forecasting as well. The second Working Manager worked on the replenishment side of things, on how to manage the supply chain.

Structuring her team in this way gave Lynn the ability as a Strategic Manager to step out of the details of execution. She was able to focus on influencing senior leadership and communicating what was coming next in the project. She got decisions out of them them early because she presented all ideas to them early. She was able to set a clear vision for the team of what they were trying to accomplish. She did this through monthly meetings, where the team collaborated together and reviewed, “How are we doing in our work to achieve these goals? Is there anything we’re doing that is against these visions?” Lynn did an excellent job leading change. She was always six to eight months ahead identifying and removing roadblocks.

In addition, Lynn coached her team. She did not get into the details of replenishment and forecasting, but instead coached those two Working Managers to truly own their projects and make decisions themselves. She didn’t tell them what to do, but she helped them think, and through that she was able to really make them empowered leaders who stood up for what they were doing and how they were doing it for the organization.

To this day, if Lynn Morris (now Wiggins) were to call anyone from that team and say, “Hey, I’ve got a job for you,” we would move our families to go work for her. Because she built trust, understanding, and excellence!

I asked Lynn once how she became a great Strategic Manager. She said she was a strong Working Manager who just kept taking on more and more responsibilities. She started thinking more strategically and became overwhelmed. She wished executive coaching was available, but was thankful she had multiple mentors who were able to provide advice. Over time, Lynn learned how to delegate and trust others. This gave her time to focus on strategic planning. Then, she learned to coach. As she became a senior leader, she spent time coaching her direct reports in becoming better leaders. And she supported their participation in executive coaching and leadership development programs.

Hopefully you have an example of a great leader like Lynn in your work history.   Take time to reflect on what characteristics and behaviors you need to display to be a strong Strategic Manager.