The Benefits of Coaching

High performance leaders are also coaches. There is no avoiding the need to give your team members feedback. The most robust way to develop a culture of feedback in your team is to coach - not just a little - but constantly. Coach, coach, coach! Lead with inspiration of course, and also lead with coaching by sharing deep conversations with your people about performance. Appreciate the good work. Redirect the sloppy work. Fine tune the vast amount of work that fits somewhere in-between.

It's good for your team, and it's good for you. There are so many benefits to coaching, including:

Better performance
More comfort at giving AND receiving feedback
Stronger relationships
More effective communication
Faster response time on urgent team needs
A closer, more cooperative team

You can probably think of even more benefits to coaching.

Any time we coach another we are also coaching ourselves -- and that is enough of a benefit to keep coaching no matter what. When you help others improve, you also improve. When you share feedback regularly and accept it as well everyone involved grows and gets better.

-- doug smith

Leadership Call to Action

Ask someone on your team to give you both positive feedback and feedback for improvement on how helpful you've been as a leader this month. Stay curious. Appreciate the feedback, and then find a way to positively use it.

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Be Careful About Punishment

It's tempting. It's right in front of you as a leader. Someone violates your trust, or misses a goal, or fails to respond to the promise of a reward, and the logical action seems to be to punish them in some way. Take away a perk. Deny a personal day off. Refuse a good assignment. Be careful. Every punishment brings about unexpected payback. Maybe it's immediate or maybe it comes months (even years!) down the road -- but payback is coming. It could be assertive, even aggressive -- or it could be so passive aggressive that you fail to see it coming. Oh, but it's coming. You may not like that payback. You may want to consider another path. What do you think? -- doug smith

No Excuse

Why do people make excuses? It does not dismiss their responsibility. It does not solve any problem. It simply delays the next step in the process. As one of my best leaders from my days with Whole Foods, Bruce Green, once said "Nobody cares about your excuses." An excuse is all price and no payoff. Why not let go of the excuse and get busy with the process? -- doug smith

Give Your Gift

What is your most powerful gift? What is that thing that you rely on the most, that people find most compelling about you, that sets you apart from others? Everyone is a customer for your most important gift. Are you giving it freely? -- doug smith

Keep Your "Yes" Ready

When we are frustrated it is tempting to say "no." When customers are unreasonable it is oh so easy to say "no." As a high performance leader and as someone who learns to balance clarity, courage, creativity, and compassion, you'll hold off on that "no" long enough to consider a useful "yes." A yes that will please your customer and you as well. A yes that builds a relationship bridge instead of constructing a negative wall of "no". Sometimes, instead of saying "no" we need to say what it would take for us to say "yes". You can always say "no" later if you need to. Keep that "yes" ready, though, and it will likely work out for the best. -- doug smith

Integrity and Belief

Does it ever feel like bad behavior is constantly rewarded? Maybe that's because in the short term, people can get away with behaving poorly and even seem to prosper. Justice is sometimes slow to react. Bold aggression bowls over good taste time and time again. It's not permanent. It won't last forever. Whether or not you believe in or call it some kind of karma, justice will find a way to even out aggression and malice. I choose to believe that integrity is not only important -- to do the right thing -- it is also inevitable. If you act with integrity, you will eventually enjoy the equity it brings. If you don't believe in integrity, that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, but it does mean that you may take longer to experience it. Unless you believe that integrity wins, it's hard to have any integrity. But all that means is that lacking integrity will mean lacking justice, too. Let's do the right thing. Let's treat people fairly. Let's enjoy t

Free to Negotiate

Is everything a negotiation? Can you make an offer without holding it so close that it locks you in? If everything is a negotiation, then nothing should offend. Make a better offer. -- doug smith

Service Secret

How do get your staff to provide the best possible service? It is complicated and yet also simple. Here's a good place to start. Hire people who like people and you won't need to beg them to serve. It's already what they do. -- doug smith

Blame Is Not Your Problem

'It's irksome to get blamed for a problem. That can raise emotions that make solving the problem even more difficult. If we can center ourselves first, breathe, and release the blame, maybe we can see what path to take. We can solve the problem. Getting blamed for a problem we didn't create doesn't prevent us from solving it. Let go of the blame, wherever it came from. -- doug smith Action Step: The next time you catch yourself blaming anyone for anything, just let go of the blame.

Here You Are

Leaders do need a vision, a focus on where to go next, and they also need the pragmatic determination to get the work done now. Look ahead, but live right here. Your goal may loom ahead, while the work is right in front of you. -- doug smith

Correct or Confused?

Thinking the best leaves less room for the rest. I'm a fan of unconditional positive regard. I can assume that people are doing the wrong thing on purpose when I don't like what they do, but it doesn't change what they did and it's not likely to make things any better. When I assume that people are doing they best they know how to do it's much easier to correct mistakes. Fix the process, not the person. Change the behavior, not the intention. People intend to do good things -- they just sometimes get confused. -- doug smith

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