a manager’s guide to coaching performance by: mark landiak
TRANSCRIPT
A Manager’s Guide to Coaching Performance
By: Mark Landiak
Mark Landiak is President of Corporate Dynamics, Inc., and for 17+ years has helped organizations just like yours transform business problems into profitable solutions. CDI is an innovative professional consultative selling
and training firm that specializes in sales, customer service and management of those functions. CDI helps you improve your processes, procedures, and employee performance, so that you can grow and secure your customer base profitably. If your company would like to learn more
about Beat Your Best!™, email Mark at [email protected].
As a partner of SalesDog.com, CDI is currently offering 20% off Beat Your Best!™: A Manager’s Guide to Coaching Performance (retail price of
$28.95). Please take the time to read the following chapter taken from the book and decide if Beat Your Best!™ is exactly what your sales managers need! To redeem this special promotion and order your copy of Beat Your
Best!™, please email Danyl Porter at [email protected].
. . . . . . . . . .23
RECALCULATING
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
WWWWWe start at Point A (where we are today) and
drive a steady, relentless course to Point B
(where we want to be). Simple, right? We’ve
known it since grade school: “The shortest distance
between two points is a straight line.” It’s what
conventional management usually uses for team
incentive and motivation.
Point A(Where(Where(Where(Where(Whereyou areyou areyou areyou areyou are
now)now)now)now)now)
�
Point B(Where you(Where you(Where you(Where you(Where youwant to be)want to be)want to be)want to be)want to be)
BEAT YOUR BEST!™ A Manager’s Guide to Coaching Performance. . . . . . . . . .24
You know the routine. You might’ve done it this way.
(I did.) It goes something like: “They’ve sent down the
magic numbers, guys. Here’s our big Point B. Go for it!”
When working one-on-one, often it comes out like this:
“Look, Larry, you’re not even close to Quota again this
quarter. Would’ja get on the stick and hit it, for a change?
You can do it. And we both know what’ll happen if you
don’t!” Point A. Point B. All numbers. Straight line. No
sweat. Except that business doesn’t work that way.
Because employees don’t work that way.
Point A(Where(Where(Where(Where(Whereyou areyou areyou areyou areyou are
now)now)now)now)now)
�
Point B(Where you(Where you(Where you(Where you(Where youwant to be)want to be)want to be)want to be)want to be)
. . . . . . . . . .25
No one is immune. Every single one of us faces
diversions, barriers, and distractions, which lure us
off that steadfast course from A to B. They’re physical,
metaphysical, mental. Some are mistaken. Lots are
valid, at least from the player’s viewpoint.
As far as barriers go, lack of time is a biggie. The
team environment gets even more polluted when
“lack of time” gangs up with all the other “lack ofs”
that derail business today; “lack ofs” like clarity,
communications, confidence, chemistry, skill,
training, resources and a thousand more, in greater
or lesser proportions. All those “lack ofs” are barriers,
heightened by personal problems of every sort (or
perceptions of those zigzags and barriers, whose
consequences may be just as negative and distracting
as if they were real)! When “lack ofs” fold in with the
“too-manys” (meetings, administrative tasks,
whatever), it’s amazing anything ever gets done at
all.
A lot is at stake. Every zigzag and barrier costs
us something—corporately and individually—in time,
money, productivity, attention to something/
someone else. Every barrier—no matter its nature or
legitimacy—drowns the roaring flame of momentum
and self-confidence players need to take intelligent
risks for improved performance.
It’s a coach’s job to repave the freeway and help
draw the map from Point A to Point B. Before a rookie
BYB coach can be truly effective in guiding players
past their personal proficiency barriers, there’s work
to be done on the coach’s own job description. After
all, the coach is the designated driver and all those
along for the ride are trusting that he/she will get
each one where they want to go. We begin by
examining what it really means to be a coach.
Recalculating Conventional Wisdom
BEAT YOUR BEST!™ A Manager’s Guide to Coaching Performance. . . . . . . . . .26
When I took my first shot at
dissecting the coaching arts and sciences,
I intuitively knew it warranted closing my
office door and taking time alone to really
sharpen up my analytical marksmanship.
I was right. I strongly recommend the
following exercise for every rookie BYB
coach: Sharpen up a fistful of pencils, get
lots of paper, and remove the stuff that
distracts you.
Remind yourself that this is the start
of something extraordinary: You’re
planning your team’s trip to dramatically
improved proficiency with an itemized
list of the Action Steps necessary to get
there, beginning with your own strengths
and shortcomings.
Until I began using the BYB process, I
evaluated coaching excellence by
checking out team results. In sports,
League pennant: good coach. Super Bowl
ring: very good coach. Six NBA
Championship trophies: great coach. In
business, made quota: good manager.
Exceeded quota by fifty percent: very
good manager. Broke company records:
great manager. This exercise goes a lot
deeper; it’s more pragmatic, and
discerning.
“The idea is toget the pencil
moving quickly… work up a
feeling, ride onit.”
—Bernard Malamud
“There’snothing lost by
discarding yourfaults.”
— Sophia Bedford-Pierce
. . . . . . . . . .27
CHARACTERISTICS OF TOP PERFORMING COACHES
How do the great ones earn the right to be called “Coach”
in that special tone of voice? It begins with a profoundly
personal question. Of all the coaches I know or know
about,whom do I really admire? Don Schula? Phil
Jackson? Bela Karolyi? Our Glee Club director? My Little
League coach? My current boss? My dad?
Take your paper and pencil and draw threeTake your paper and pencil and draw threeTake your paper and pencil and draw threeTake your paper and pencil and draw threeTake your paper and pencil and draw three
columns. Label the columns, A, B, and C.columns. Label the columns, A, B, and C.columns. Label the columns, A, B, and C.columns. Label the columns, A, B, and C.columns. Label the columns, A, B, and C.
Column A:Column A:Column A:Column A:Column A: List three to five coaches you admire as
“the best.”
Column B:Column B:Column B:Column B:Column B: List the characteristics that these terrific
coaches exhibit that make them “the best.”
Column C:Column C:Column C:Column C:Column C: Write down three specific things that these
coaches do to motivate their teams to perform at their
peaks, and to improve from there.
Jot ‘em all down.Jot ‘em all down.Jot ‘em all down.Jot ‘em all down.Jot ‘em all down. Three to five great coaches in
Column A. Four to five characteristics for each great
coach in Column B. How they motivate their winning
teams in Column C. Once you have a list of your own
opinions of coaching excellence, the really informative
ideas begin to pop.
No two lists come out the same; this is an examination
of personal opinions. This exercise is a lot more exciting
and enlightening—and takes a lot more thought—than
reciting the Boy Scout Law. Try it.
Recalculating Conventional Wisdom
See sample form on next page
BEAT YOUR BEST!™ A Manager’s Guide to Coaching Performance. . . . . . . . . .28
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. . . . . . . . . .29
“THE BEST REFORMERS
THE WORLD
HAS EVER SEEN
ARE THOSE WHO
COMMENCE ON
THEMSELVES.”
— George Bernard Shaw
Recalculating Conventional Wisdom
BEAT YOUR BEST!™ A Manager’s Guide to Coaching Performance. . . . . . . . . .30
Out of these three columns your
“personal coaching checklist” develops.
The characteristics of “The Greats” evolve
to become your backdrop to your coaching
profile. How you want to coach. To become
one of “The Greats” you have to evaluate
yourself and develop a list of action items
to get there.
When thoughts are focused, the mind
expands. Results are invigorating! Almost
all-new BYB coaches say their art-of-
coaching philosophies were much more
developed and detailed than they ever
realized.
“What isresearch but ablind date with
knowledge?”
— Will Henry
PERCEPTIONS
With the Coaches CharacteristicsCoaches CharacteristicsCoaches CharacteristicsCoaches CharacteristicsCoaches Characteristics beside you—take
another piece of paper and go down item by item in
your “characteristics checklist,” and ask yourself:
“Does my team perceive me to be _______ ?“Does my team perceive me to be _______ ?“Does my team perceive me to be _______ ?“Does my team perceive me to be _______ ?“Does my team perceive me to be _______ ?
“No” or “I don’t know” answers provide your first
food for thought for creating your personal BYB
coaching “Action Items.”
“Yes” answers give great information, too, when
they’re ranked, from one to ten. You can score yourself
a point or two or three for Lame-Yesses (“yeah, I guess,
but not that often”) … five or six points for Usually-
Yesses … and nine or ten points for Yesss!-Yesses, those
characteristics that you almost always deliver. More
real-world guidance emerges for your list of coaching
Action Items.
. . . . . . . . . .31
“Procrastinationis opportunity’s
naturalassassin.”
— Victor Kiam
One BYB coach said he put off this
exercise for days because he knew he’d hurt
his own feelings:
“I don’t know why I was worried
The outcome—my first tangible BYB
product—was a precise map for a
professional Action Plan, custom
designed for my own career. It was a
black and white assessment of my own
perception of myself right now, my
own Point A. It really focused me on
my own self-improvement. It was a lot
more powerful than if my boss handed
me the same data in a performance
review. It was truly a personal moment
of truth.”
In fact, every new BYB coach who’s
played back the experience to us—even
those with long lists of Action Items—
reports that with personal Point A in hand,
they felt newly capable, clear and focused.
There’s a real sense of progress when
you’ve done the work to figure out what to
work on first in your quest to become a
world class coach. (One boulder out of the
backpack.)
Then it’s easy to pick out two or three
major characteristics for a prioritized
“short list”—those that you want to change,
work on, or develop right now. Your effort
on this exercise work has given you
everything you need to create a list of
Action Items that respond to your short
list entries.
For example, if you scored yourself a
“Definitenessof purpose is
the startingpoint of all
greatachievement.”
— W. ClementStone
“Everythingmust be as
simple aspossible. But
not a bitsimpler.”
— Albert Einstein
Recalculating Conventional Wisdom
BEAT YOUR BEST!™ A Manager’s Guide to Coaching Performance. . . . . . . . . .32
Lame-Yes (three points or so) when you
asked yourself, “Does my team perceive me
to be enthusiastic,” your preliminary
Action Items might include simple steps
like these : “Every morning, greet all folks
with an authentic smile, an energetic
remark, and/or a genuine compliment.”
Neither subtle or esoteric, but precise,
detailed, and instantly recognizable signals
of change. In fact, the simpler and more
directly responsive the Action Item, the
better. The BYB mantra is important:
“Specific Actions Lead to Quantifiable
Results.”
There’s even a BYB validity checklist
to evaluate your Action Items in advance:
1) Is the Action specific enough to act
upon?
2) Does it state exactly what I will do?
3) When will I actually do it?
4) How will results be measured?
If you skip the process of thinking out
specific and pragmatic how-to-get-there
answers, this amazing BYB instrument
might just as well be a letter to Santa,
because it will have no more staying power
than a New Year’s resolution.
Now that you have a plan for where
you want to go, with specific Action Items
to get you there, it’s time to think about
your players.
“A bad habitnever
disappearsmiraculously:
It’s an undo-it-yourselfproject.”
— Abigail VanBuren
BYB ValidityChecklist
�Is the
action specific
enough to act upon?
�Does it
stateexactly
what I
will do?
�When willI actually
do it?
�How willresults be
measured?
. . . . . . . . . .33
The next stop on your BYB coaching
itinerary is to pinpoint where each player
is starting from, first, in terms of hard-
numbers, measurements and results, and
second, in terms of their proficiency at
executing specific activities that’ll make
those results come true.
Pinpointing a player’s demonstrated
maximum proficiency level is as easy as
checking out their history of results to learn
the “Best” that each player has ever done,
in any period, by any measure that matters
to player proficiency—units sold, sales
volume by category, cases closed, service
calls completed, deliveries made, accounts
collected, or any result that has measurable
revenue, profit and proficiency
implications.
Another BYB coaching goal is to handle,
understand, anticipate, minimize, or
eliminate performance barriers. The best
starting place is to analyze specific
workplace barriers that divert your whole
team from a steady trek to Point B. Relax.
Every team has them. Great teams assess
and address them. Mediocre teams neglect
them. Poor teams are practically killed by
them, but absolutely every team has them.
It’s human nature. Some team barriers
have been around so long that they don’t
even look absurd any more (except to new
players, still too polite to question them
out loud). Study your team’s clubhouse and
playing field as if you’ve never seen them
before.
“There isnothing so
strong or sagein an
emergency oflife as the
simple truth.”— Charles
Dickens
“If you wantto see, you
have to look.”— Bob Smith
“Opportunitiesare often the
things youdidn’t noticethe first time
around.” — Catherine
Deneuve
Recalculating Conventional Wisdom
BEAT YOUR BEST!™ A Manager’s Guide to Coaching Performance. . . . . . . . . .34
“““““PERFORMANCE
BARRIERS EXIST IN
EVERY ORGANIZATION
AND WITH EVERY
INDIVIDUAL.
WINNERS
FIND A WAY TO
SUCCEED ANYWAY.”””””
- Coach Mark
. . . . . . . . . .35
List the workplace barriers, stumbling
blocks and diversions. With your new BYB
vision and courage, you can assess them,
one by one, with productive questions like,
“Does my team have what it needs in
resources, equipment, training, support
staff?”
If the answer is “yes,” congratulations!
If it’s “no,” specific coaching Action Items
emerge. Once again, the simpler and more
straightforward, the better the Action Plan.
Your coaching list of workplace barriers is
a preliminary draft. A bit later on, when
your team works on it together, it’s likely
to grow, shrink, change priorities, and
become even more accurate and useful.
The next phase is to jot down barriers
that might divert a steady course from
Point A to Point B for some segments of
the team (say, sales folks), but not others
(say, service techs), or for certain players
but not everyone. With the Barriers
Checklist in black and white, you can
customize your coaching Action Plan for
minimizing or eliminating each barrier, one
by one.
Another step in your preliminary “solo
flight” is to develop a first draft look at
which barriers, one by one, seem to stand
in the way of each individual player’s
progress from Point A to Point B.
Managing the team as a whole is history
with BYB. Since “team performance” is an
aggregate of “individual proficiency,” great
“The art andscience of
askingquestions
is the sourceof all
knowledge.”
— Adolph Berle
Recalculating Conventional Wisdom
Ask yourteam: “What
could keep usfrom boosting
sales 30% thisyear?”
— Coach Mark
BEAT YOUR BEST!™ A Manager’s Guide to Coaching Performance. . . . . . . . . .36
“The socialistssay making
profits is a vice.I consider the
real vice ismaking losses.”
— Winston Churchill
coaches manage players as fascinating
individuals, with unique skills, talents,
and promise. The great news is that
coaching is much more interesting,
productive, and fun when it focuses on
one player at a time, one day at a time.
Cemented together into one wonderful
whole, players offer each other mile
markers for their marathon.
The barriers assessment exercise goes
a lot deeper. It calls on you to assess what
barriers stand in the way of a player’s
clambering up just one level. What
diverts this player from the most
profitable and productive course? What
can you do to chop down or chop up each
barrier? How can you minimize a player’s
risk? How can you help him/her to get
over his/her fear of change, to feel safe
and competent, to see the promise of
payoffs as worthwhile and close at hand?
“My interest isin the futurebecause I’m
going to spendthe rest of my
life there.”— Charles Franklin
Kettering
. . . . . . . . . .37
Recalculating Conventional Wisdom
“““““THE MAN
WHO MOVES
A MOUNTAIN
BEGINS BY
CARRYING AWAY
SMALL STONES.”””””
— Confucius
BEAT YOUR BEST!™ A Manager’s Guide to Coaching Performance. . . . . . . . . .38
Remember! Leverage strengths and build specific plans todevelop proficiency with each member of your team.
EMPLOYEE ASSESSMENT EXERCISE
For each employee in your organization that reports to
you, identify the barriers that affect them, and create
the strategies you feel are needed to help them overcome
these barriers and improve their proficiency.
B B B B BARR IERARR IERARR IERARR IERARR IER S S S S STRATEGYTRATEGYTRATEGYTRATEGYTRATEGYManager’s
Perception
Employee’s
Perception
Focus on your conversation
with each employee
Employee:Employee:Employee:Employee:Employee:
. . . . . . . . . .39
Recalculating Conventional Wisdom
Here’s that BYB mantra again: “Specific actions“Specific actions“Specific actions“Specific actions“Specific actions
lead to measurable results.” lead to measurable results.” lead to measurable results.” lead to measurable results.” lead to measurable results.” You assessed your
coaching, workplace, and players. In return, you now
have a detailed catalogue of:
1) Where you are today (your personal Point A);
2) How you are perceived as a coach (your Coaching
Checklist);
3) Specific diversions (barriers) that lure your team
off course (and preliminary Action Plans to minimize
their impact);
4) Preliminary player-by-player assessments (and
Action Plans for working with each individual), and;
5) Other Action Plans tied to each of these. You’ve done
incredibly valuable work! It’s right-headed and real.
You sense it right away.
If you’re like other new BYB coaches, you find these
exercises provide a huge infusion of “new” data to fuel
your development, a new view of details—as they are,
and as they are perceived. As a dividend—even at this
early stage—you sense new trust that since BYB has made
these important facts and attitudes ready and reachable,
it’ll work for your team in the trenches, too. (Another
boulder gone.)
With your Barriers Checklist form and preliminary
player-by-player assessments in hand, it’s finally time
to open your office door, take BYB to your team and
play with it.
BEAT YOUR BEST!™ A Manager’s Guide to Coaching Performance. . . . . . . . . .40
BYB PROCESS FUNDAMENTALS
1 .1 .1 .1 .1 . Positioning the BYB Process withPositioning the BYB Process withPositioning the BYB Process withPositioning the BYB Process withPositioning the BYB Process with
Team PlayersTeam PlayersTeam PlayersTeam PlayersTeam Players
2. Identifying Barriers
3. Determining Performance Categories
4. Pinpointing “Personal Bests”
5. Designing Templates
6. “Framing” Your Players
7. Creating Indiviual Forecasts
8. Assessing/Rejecting/Collaborating/Accepting
Forecasts
9. Developing Individual Mutual Action Plans (MAPs)
10. Logging Results
11. Forecasting with Your Team
12. Celebrating Beat Your Best!™ Successes
13. Setting New Records …