Patti Cotton

Executive Coach & Career Strategist

executive coach

Five Reasons Your Team May Not Be Candid With You

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Five Reasons Your Team May Not Be Candid With You
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How engaged is your team? Do the team members come in every day, energized, committed and excited about the work you are doing together? Are they huddled in groups brainstorming and coming up with new ideas?

Or do you get the feeling they need a vitamin shot? Are they sitting around with a second cup of coffee waiting for you to direct them?

What’s the problem?

If your team engagement is low, or its creative juices have dried up, your team members may have decided they just can’t be candid with you.

Why would they think that?

Here are some chief reasons employees aren’t candid with their leader:

1. You suffer from one-way thinking.

Are you really open to other perspectives, or do all your meetings end with your ideas as the only sound ones? If you aren’t open to encouraging and appreciating the ideas of others, people will quickly detect this and shut down. After all – why contribute when it doesn’t ever go anywhere? You will eventually surround yourself with people who simply agree to your ideas, and lose out on the brain trust you have in the room.

2. You don’t do feedback well.

If you don’t genuinely listen for the “gold” in growth opportunities, you are missing out. Your team members may have tried to give you helpful criticism in the past, but if they were met with defensiveness or denial, they will back off and stop trying to work on a better working relationship with you.

3. You’re a self-perceived super hero.

You don’t allow others to contribute. Your mantra is, “I need to start delegating more,” or, “When I ask others to help with X, Y, or Z, I get sub-par work back. It’s easier to do it myself.” If this is you, you aren’t developing your people and taking advantage of their ability to contribute. This will absolutely kill motivation in others.

4. You don’t include them.

You don’t bring others along in the process. If you don’t provide regular and meaningful updates to developments in the company and team initiatives, you aren’t empowering your people to stretch their critical thinking skills about how this affects what they are doing. If you find yourself simply telling people what to do all the time, you are probably guilty of this.

5. You’re a perfectionist.

Do you tend to come across as critical or judgmental, or demand perfection the first time around (ask your spouse or significant other if you don’t know – he or she will tell you!)? If so, you aren’t leaving room for your team to consider failures as learning points, and creative ideas as possible innovation for your company. Your team will tend to play safe and play small, so that you get smaller, safer work that appears perfect. But you will lose out on the new and innovative ideas and work they might bring. Consider this: Life, work, and leading are not about you and everything else being perfect. It’s about all this being exceptional.

If you suspect that your team is holding back, not being genuine, have a conversation with them. Ask them what they need in order to be more candid – and be prepared to receive their feedback as your own point of learning.

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Five Reasons Executive Coaching Experiences Fail

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Five Reasons Executive Coaching Experiences Fail
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You realize that developing your leadership and that of your team gives you a competitive advantage. After all, behavior is what drives your company’s strategy, structure, culture, and systems.

You are also starkly aware that what got you to this point won’t carry you into the future. In this complex world, a commitment to developing talent at all levels of the enterprise is not a nice idea – it’s a necessity.

Where do you start? You’ll want to model from the top, and so you are probably thinking that a first good step would be to hire a coach for you and key members of your executive team.

Executive coaching has been highly recommended to you as leader as the best answer to your development.  You’ve read the statistics and they sound promising. The ROI for executive coaching has a healthy average of 7 to 10 times the investment, with some even reporting up to 49 times.

But you have a nagging doubt that has kept you from making a move to start the process. What if it doesn’t work for you? You’ve heard of a couple of stories where another decision-maker’s coaching experience didn’t meet expectations. Wasted time, energy, and money.

How can you make sure you get the same great results you keep reading about – and move confidently as you meet the future, now?

Here are 5 reasons that executives might not get the kind of return you read about – and how to start out right so that you can make an investment that pays off well for you.

Five Reasons Executive Coaching Experiences Fail

1. You don’t know what kind of coach you need.

Opening a coaches’ directory will reveal different kinds of coaches, and the choice can be overwhelming. Here are the three primary types of coaches so that you can see the difference:

a. Life coach – focuses on the whole person, personal and professional goals, aspects of life such as health, wellness, personal finances, life direction, and more.

b. Business coach – brings processes, tools, and concepts to team and enterprise growth (business coach and business consultant are closely related with quite a bit of overlap). Works on a variety of goals, including strategy, marketing, overall performance, and more.

c. Executive coach – helps unlock leadership potential, facilitating change in someone’s personal behavior that will ultimately result in achieving business goals. Executive coaches are typically hired to help C-suite, VPs and other executives with setting, supporting, and achieving personal improvement goals. Examples of focus can include developing greater leadership skills, managing staff, improving communication, managing conflict well, increasing productivity, increased agility, decision-making, and more.

2. Your coach doesn’t have the formal training and certification to be most effective.

Has your coach had the benefit of a robust accredited coaching program that utilizes proven methodologies for best adult learning and development?  And are they certified with the International Coach Federation or similar accrediting body so that you can be sure they meet highest standards in ethics and in practice?

3. Your coach doesn’t use a solid model and framework for results.

Unless your coach can use a solid model and process that keeps you focused on the goals you set with them, keeps you moving forward, allows you to assess progress as you move forward, and has the ability to truly measure outcomes, then you will not be able to bank on best results.

4. Your coach can’t meet you at your level to provide the support you need.

Coaches vary in their own levels of personal development and leadership experience. A coach does not need your industry background, or to have held the same position you now hold. However, they need to be able to help you navigate your growth and understanding where you are in your development and how you meet the world is vital to their asking the right questions to do so. The coach’s own leadership background, as well as their past client roster and client testimonials should be helpful indicators as to whether they can support you well in this regard.

5. You aren’t willing to do the work.

Change is challenging, and it requires great courage and vulnerability to look at one’s own “growing edges.” Many clients have hired coaches, only to go through the motions and not give the initiative the focus necessary to truly develop self. If you recognize that you are ready to step into a higher level of leadership, make the commitment to do the work. The results are life-changing when you give it 100%.

In order to manage well in an ever-evolving, complex world, having an able thought partner who helps you to see the landscape and navigate well is priceless. The ROI of executive coaching can be a game-changer for you, your team, and the company, if you are confident in how to go about selecting a coach, and if you make a strong commitment to change.

Is Your Compassion Hurting You in the Workplace?

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Is Your Compassion Hurting You in the Workplace?
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Is your ability to have compassion for your colleagues hurting you?

Some of you have told me that when you show you care for others in the workplace, you become drained of energy. You discover you are the “go-to” person when problems arise or when people need a shoulder to cry on.

Others have told me it is hard to make tough decisions that could negatively affect others, and still feel compassionate.

If either of these situations hit close to home, don’t blame it on compassion.

Blame it on poor boundaries and a misunderstanding of what compassion really is.

Do you need to stop showing others you care? Not at all.

But when I talk about compassion in the workplace, a lot of people bristle and throw words like “soppy,” and “gutless” around.

“We had a ‘fluffy’ CEO,” said one manager. “Everyone loved him. But he could never make the tough decisions we needed in order to hold people accountable.”

Others roll their eyes and tell me that when they show compassion, an endless stream of needy people line up at the office door for counseling, advice, and a sympathetic ear.

“I’m absolutely spent,” said Jan. “People have so many problems and see me as a mentor. I can be there for them because I listen well and really care about the people here. But it seems like when one problem disappears, another arrives, and they are back at my door the next week with something else.”

However, compassion is anything but gutless or fluffy. And it is not being the “therapist on call.”

True compassion takes great courage to embody – and it’s vital to good leadership.

Compassion means to hold others with positive intent, to feel concern for their well-being.

It does not mean to be on call to fix others’ problems. And it doesn’t mean avoiding making the right decisions even though some may not like how it affects them. It simply means that you need to care about others and hold them in positive light.

So what does compassion really look like in the workplace? And how do you practice it?

Here is a quick checklist for you to sharpen your ability to show compassion and keep healthy boundaries:

1. When others bring you their problems, ask yourself the following:

a. Am I the right person to address this problem?

People may come to you because you have an ability to listen and sift through problems. However, the issue they bring to you might belong in another office. Is the problem of a work nature, and if so, who is the right decision-maker that can help them resolve it? Is the problem of a personal nature, and thus better discussed with those parties directly involved, or with a counselor? Begin to triage in this way so that you can redirect as appropriate.

b. Is the person bringing me the problem asking for help in solving it?

Sometimes, people just want a sympathetic ear. However, if you have someone who continues to come to you about a particular problem because you are good listener, you may want to ask them what they want to do about the situation. People can develop a chronic need for sympathy.

c. And finally, fixing others’ problems for them when they should be stretching their problem-solving skills doesn’t help them to grow.

Allow your employees and colleagues to “adult” by taking a coaching approach. Learn to ask them questions, such as, “How do you feel this should be handled? What possible solutions have you thought about?”

Then, if they are still stumped and you are the appropriate party to help them address the problem, help them to brainstorm with more possibilities, if needed.

2. Holding people accountable is compassionate and, you might say, the ultimate way to love others.

Confronting the tough stuff that holds your employees back will allow them to grow into more of their potential, be a greater contributor to their team, and thus support the enterprise more effectively. And that means that everybody wins.

3. Making tough decisions that may adversely affect some of your employees doesn’t mean you don’t care about them.

It means you ultimately care about everyone. Supporting a healthy enterprise provides good and meaningful work for the people who work there. Pleasing some people to the exclusion of the current and future health of the organization means hurting everyone.

Where in your practice of compassion do you need to recalibrate?

HOW MUCH

DO OTHERS REALLY TRUST YOU?

​Learn the two vital parts to trust and how they can help you become a more highly effective leader.

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