9

KNOW, GO, AND SHOW: How Great Leaders Become Great Coaches, Too

THIS CHAPTER IS ABOUT THE qualities in leadership and coaching that provide positive, lasting change. The title comes from something author and speaker John C. Maxwell said: “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” Even that succinct definition includes the connection of leadership to coaching.

To this point we have generally focused on the things that people need to know about their message and messengers, including the most powerful words to use, ways to turn complex and technical information into engaging stories, and the inherent strengths most people naturally have for conversation. Yet message leadership is about more than knowing the right information or identifying efficient processes. It must also include some “go” (modeling the right behaviors for others) and some “show” (equipping others with the tools and confidence to do it themselves).

The CEO of a Fortune 500 company had a reputation among employees for his communication skills, including a provocative elevator pitch. I asked one of the senior vice presidents how much of the CEO's message she used herself. “None at all,” she said. “That's his pitch. He talks to different people than I do. And I could never do it the way he does.”

This CEO was a great messenger, but he wanted his executive team to step up as well. We had to work on ways of taking the best of what he did, translating and tailoring it for different executives, and getting them comfortable.

At least that CEO was visible and consistent with his message. Every time he did so, he sent a strong signal that conversational fluency was vital to executives' performance. He also spoke all around the company and its many locations—demonstrating through his deeds that it was important to have your story at the ready, regardless of your tenure or status at the company.

“DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO” DIDN'T WORK FOR OUR PARENTS, EITHER

I often smile when I think of how my parents—indeed, how much of their generation—went about their parenting roles. Both of my parents smoked; they got hooked while teenagers and could not kick the habit until late in life. Our family vehicles tended to be the big sedans or wagons (with bench seats covered by vinyl). My mom readily admitted that, if my brother or I were in the front seat, her right arm was the predominant seat belt. There was no liquor cabinet, just an easily accessible shelf in the pantry (although I would never have dared to try sneaking a sip . . . my dad would surely have noticed). As teenagers are prone to do, on occasion I might have asked my parents something like, “Why is it that you tell me not to smoke, when you do it yourself?” The answer, said with a straight face, was “Do as I say, not as I do.”

My parents did well by my brother and me (probably better than we deserved). Still, there is an important point. In most settings, subordinates pay at least as much attention to what an authority figure does as they do to what he or she says.

If you're in an influential role, make sure your visible behaviors are consistent with stated priorities. Many of the professionals I've met who made good message leaders considered themselves pretty average at communication. Still, they understood that everyone in the organization would look to them for cues as to whether this new initiative on consistent messaging was really a priority. They got out of the office, got away from too many emails and memos, and engaged with people directly. As one said, “It was important to have real conversations about our most important conversations.”

PUT ON THE UNIFORM

Dad was a military man. It began for him when he was just a kid, going out of state to a military boarding school. Following college and active duty, he went into the National Guard. He loved it. He even seemed a little different when he wore his uniform. Perhaps it was his cue for good posture and bearing. I remember how impressed my friends were when my dad—a major at the time—donned the uniform for “career day” at my school.

In later years, well after he had retired from the National Guard, I was standing near Dad when he was about to be introduced at a reception. When the person called him “General Karrh,” I swear that he stood up two inches taller, reversing years of posture decline.

There is no uniform for a message leader, of course, but it might help some people to imagine that they have one. There are times when we need to symbolically put on the message leader's uniform. It's for the benefit of others, not just to make you look or feel better.

If you are part of a larger organization, there is an internal audience you need to engage that holds the key to change.

MEET THEM IN THE MIDDLE

Does middle management matter anymore?

That question was posed to me during a podcast. The subject of middle management and its future has been in debate for many years now. As industry after industry has felt the effects of consolidation and disintermediation, the ranks of middle managers have, in many cases, dwindled. Even the culture and language around middle management have changed. “Middle manager” is not generally viewed as a desirable role to have on the way up, but rather as someone who is stuck in a bureaucracy, with some accountability but little control, and facing an uncertain future. Yet, there's plenty of reason to believe that middle management itself is not going away completely any time soon (nor should it).

I see lots of organizations that need effective middle management. They might have operations that are geographically dispersed, are subject to high turnover rates, or require consistently great “high-touch” customer service in order to stay competitive. That's difficult to pull off without a cohort of managers to get new colleagues up to speed, contain tribal knowledge, and keep processes running efficiently. Middle management is also the ranks from which future leadership still tends to come.

If your company is under pressure to change, evolve, and grow, then middle management is likely the key to success. Dr. Behnam Tabrizi of Stanford studied large-scale change and innovation efforts in fifty-six companies across nine industries. The bad news is that most of the change efforts failed. But there was some good news for middle management. In the 32 percent of change efforts that succeeded, a primary success factor was “the involvement of mid-level managers two or more levels below the CEO.”

What is the key for getting the most from middle management? Can they be the champions of a new growth message? As companies tend to be leaner and need to be more dynamic, I find that the role of manager needs an amendment. Managers need to learn how to become effective coaches to their direct reports.

I worked with the marketing and sales teams of a company that sells a medical device and services across the United States. Like other industries built on research and technology, this one is changing all the time. As the company's marketing and sales strategies evolved, the leadership team began to see the need for a coaching framework tailored to the needs of its sales managers. Those teams were hearing plenty from the top about the company's vision and “why” of its strategy. What they needed to know was the day-to-day “how.” Middle managers are the indispensable link.

In this particular case, the “how” included best practices for prioritizing accounts, initiating conversations, following up, and troubleshooting. Just as with a coach in sports, the role of a manager/coach in business is to extend the culture, build skills, help everyone prepare, and provide specific guidance.

IS YOUR HELP JUST-IN-TIME OR JUST-IN-CASE?

We can't blame managers for feeling frustrated at times. Some spend a lot of time on check-ins and reminders. They wonder why their team members appear to ignore advice and gloss over information presented to them. The right conversations are not happening, and business results suffer. As one exasperated manager put it, “Why don't they get it?”

That is a big question, of course, one that cries out for discovery. But in general, if your team is not accessing the right information or doing what you believe to be the right things, there are some likely suspects:

• They never knew the information in the first place.
• They didn't understand that the activity was actually part of their job or role.
• They didn't feel comfortable.
• They thought that someone else was likely or better suited to handle it.
• Or just maybe . . . they had the right intentions but did not have the right information or guidance at the point they needed it.

Messaging opportunities come our way all the time. Some are predictable and even scheduled; you know when they are going to occur and what the setting will be (e.g., a speech, a customer meeting, or a presentation to a community group). But most are less predictable. They might present themselves during work hours or outside of them. They might happen in a hallway or next to a soccer field. That puts more emphasis on planning and consistent practice.

Many organizations have, over time, built large repositories of information. These can feel like smaller-scale Libraries of Congress, containing product information, operating manuals, coaching and scoring systems, case studies, brand guidelines, sales collateral, and on and on. They fit a “just-in-case” model, meaning that there is one central location where you can find everything you might need—just in case you ever need it.

Increasingly, just-in-case messaging information fails to match the way people work and what they need. Everyone is trying to be more agile in their work; they need a slimmed-down, flexible, “just-in-time” alternative.

I recommend a playbook approach because it drives consistency and agility at the same time. Playbooks—the good ones—are built for specific conversations. Users don't waste time combing through less relevant information, and managers can coach to (meaning they can “show”) particular competencies. As is the case with the types of playbooks that sports teams use, managers and their teams can practice together efficiently.

Playbooks also seem to fit the coaching patterns of the most effective managers. A 2018 Gartner report identified four categories of managers, according to their coaching styles:

• Teacher managers tend to coach their direct reports according to their own knowledge and experience.
• Always-on managers provide continual coaching (comparable to so-called “helicopter parents”).
• Cheerleader managers take a more hands-off approach, allowing employees to direct their own development.
• Connector managers give targeted feedback in their area of expertise, but otherwise connect employees to other members of the team or organization who are better suited to the task.

Cheerleaders are the most common type of manager but not the most effective. That honor goes to the connectors, whose employees are three times more likely to be high performers as are subordinates of the other three types.

A good playbook works particularly well for connectors, because it clarifies and consolidates other sources of messaging information—freeing the connectors to monitor progress without having to teach everything themselves.

THIS ISN'T HIGH SCHOOL: HOW ADULTS LEARN

As organizations strive for an environment of continuous learning, they look for ways to best engage today's worker. One guideline is clear: we need to get learners out of a strict classroom environment.

Those of us who are in business—and have also taught in multiple environments—know the difference. My favorite teaching experiences were probably those in an MBA program where the students were also working full time. They came to class, one night per week, typically straight from their jobs. It could be grueling at times, but these professionals were consistently taking the ideas we discussed about marketing management and applying them on the job each week. The immediate applicability of new knowledge was key. Again, it was “just in time” over “just in case.”

Immediate applicability is one characteristic of professional learners. Another is their mindset; adults on the job are not generally learning for the sake of learning. Malcolm Knowles, an adult education expert, developed theories of “andragogy” (which he defined as “the art and science of helping adults learn”). The result was six principles of adults when it comes to their learning:

• They are internally motivated and self-directed.
• They bring their life experience into learning experiences
• They are goal oriented.
• They look for relevance.
• They are practical.
• They like to be respected.

When it comes to playbook content and coaching practices, keep it practical and allow employees to bring some of their interpretation and experiences into the mix.

DO THEY REALLY WANT YOUR FEEDBACK? YES, THEY DO

In order for messaging coaching to work consistently, several things need to happen. There should be a sound framework for coaching activities, for example. Managers and employees need that playbook so that everyone has clear, concise, updated information at the right times. Managers should adopt a “connector” mindset to every degree possible. Oh, lest we forget, the employees must be coachable! Many managers wonder whether that is true, especially where younger workers have become the majority group in the organization. They might assume that Millennials want autonomy and do-it-yourself options, as opposed to coaching sessions with their supervisors.

Well, there is good news. Millennial workers are not only open to more coaching and feedback, they are asking for it. A global survey of 1,400 Millennials revealed some surprises concerning their desire for coaching:

• Millennials want more feedback than what they are getting now. On average, Millennials want feedback at least monthly. Unfortunately, only 46 percent agreed that their managers were meeting their expectations for feedback.
• Millennials want feedback 50 percent more frequently than do their more senior counterparts.
• The environment for coaching Millennials might need some adjustments. Although Millennials are asking for more feedback, they aren't looking for controlled messages or scheduled performance reviews. They prefer private coaching in real time. And they value authenticity from their supervisors.

Got it, Coach?

NOW YOU'RE READY!

Let's summarize a few of the considerations you have seen when it comes to your new growth message and how to spread it. First, there are many reasons that organizations might feel compelled to get more strategic about their everyday messaging. Typically, something important is changing in the business and/or its operating environment. The messaging needs to work for the strategy going forward.

The traditional way of approaching new messaging has been to treat it as a sort of short-term campaign. That typically leads to disappointment. A lot of time and money might be poured into message development, collateral, events, training, and a motivational kickoff, but the story fizzles out after a few months. There's no competitive advantage to be had.

A more strategic approach—one that increases the likelihood of achieving growth targets—is not a promotional campaign but rather a new competency, spread across the organization, designed to stick for the long term.

Here is an example of leadership and coaching that hit its intended mark. A client company needed help with communicating a series of product launches. Many of the new products represented substantially different types of solutions or pricing models for the teams. Responding to changes in competition and in customers' needs, the company's management team was determined to not only bump up revenue but also to drive some long-term, internal changes at the same time.

This client follows a change management model popularized by Harvard Business School professor John Kotter. The logic and sequence of the model matches those situations I've seen over the years when leadership was able to drive some positive change that lasted for years.

Kotter's model follows this eight-stage sequence:

• Create urgency. According to Kotter, the first step is also the most difficult. Most of us resist change. To overcome that inertia, the teams need to both get the change imperative intellectually and feel the urgency in their guts. Kotter suggests that at least three-quarters of the leadership must truly buy into the need for change. Which leads to . . .
• Form a powerful coalition. You'll need a team. Change champions might not always be in the most obvious or highest places on the organizational chart. In our team's consulting engagements, we typically select a team of high performers (with “street cred”) from different units and with different tenures in the company.
• Create a vision for change. Everyone needs to know more than just “the status quo isn't working anymore.” (By itself, that tends to induce anxiety.) They need a simple, achievable, and compelling view of your destination, something the leadership team and change champions can be comfortable in sharing in two minutes or less (a PowerPoint deck is decidedly not the answer here).
• Communicate the vision. Your champions should be sharing the vision at every opportunity—not just at kickoffs or regular meetings. The group will need to compare notes along the way.
• Remove obstacles. The barriers to change may be human, structural, informational, and/or embedded within incentive systems. For human obstacles, the leader's role is twofold: get key current employees on board, and bring in change instigators as needed.
• Create short-term wins. People will look for evidence that the change initiative is going to succeed or fail. You'll need one or more early wins that are fairly easy and inexpensive, and that don't depend on the involvement of internal critics.
• Build on the change. Some will declare victory prematurely. The natural temptation is to take a long, deep breath and move from discomfort to comfort again. Savvy executives will over time bring in fresh change agents who don't own the initiatives that worked well yesterday (while still celebrating the contributions of that original team).
• Anchor the change in your organization's culture. This includes sharing success stories as well as embedding lessons learned into onboarding and training activities.

Not long ago, I spoke with a senior manager at another company that had introduced new messaging internally. At first there had been some heartburn; the leadership wondered whether they could avoid the comfort roadblock, especially with employees who had been around for years. “You know, Jim, it just gets easier as we go,” he said. This was good news. I attribute it to good leadership.

The new message itself wasn't pushed from the top or farmed out to an agency. It was instead developed by people from across the company.

When it was time for training, people weren't herded into a classroom. They went through the experience as intact teams, learning together and planning to apply the message as soon as they returned to work.

Managers coached. They led practice sessions in teams and individually so that people could build their skills and confidence.

Managers shared insights and successes so that no one felt as if they were going it alone.

When you begin to manage your message, you might have a little heartburn as well. But know that it will get easier and feel more normal. After a while, you won't even have to act as the message leader all of the time; your messengers will begin to manage themselves.

In the final chapter, you can see how several professionals and organizations, in varying degrees of change, have all managed to make theirs work.