There are very successful CEOs of large organizations who use coaching for themselves and their leadership teams. The most progressive leaders among us do not have to be arrogant. They understand they can always learn and grow, and I can’t think of a better way for a leader to communicate a message than by modeling the behavior he espouses. I would have to agree with Marshall Goldsmith: The evaluation of the coach has little to do with the performance of the coach but rather the performance of the coachee.
Goldsmith and myself have had similar experiences that are quite interesting, and I’m going to share a few of them with you. I like reading Goldsmith’s stuff because he is one of the few coaches I know with a comparable range and scope of coaching experience. However, I wasn’t a college dean at the age of 28, haven’t worked with the largest corporations in the world and am not as prolific a writer as Marshall.
But herein lies one of the messages I have for you. Pick and choose your mentors and role models carefully. Learn from them, but know who you are, what you do best, how you are different and how you are special in what you offer your clients. As you go through your own journey of self-discovery, you must learn how to articulate who you are, how to position yourself and describe what you do, and how that benefits your client.
That is no easy task. I am continually refining the description of what I do and how that benefits my clients, hopefully because I am continuing to grow.
There is the case of Chris, a very bright, strong, confident and self-made CEO. He didn’t get a college degree, he never set out to own his own company, he just got fired, that’s all. Best thing that ever happened to him. There was a clash of values, he refused to fire someone he felt didn’t deserve it, so the company fired him. Fast-forward to the beginning of starting his company; Chris used his credit cards, his personality and his drive to succeed.
This guy went through setbacks including a devastating divorce, but he just didn’t quit. He married a beautiful younger woman and started a second family. The word “quit” was not in his vocabulary, as he often sweated having enough money to meet payroll.
When Chris first called me, he had a major long-term goal and an immediate short-term crisis.
His long-term goal was to grow his company from $10 million to $15 million within five years; his short-term crisis was that a loyal and previously productive key employee, his VP of marketing and sales, just wasn’t performing anymore.
Chris became angry trying to motivate his VP without results. The more the guy struggled, the more Chris pushed. He also didn’t want to fire his VP; Chris had a tremendous sense of loyalty and was aware of this guy’s major contributions in the company’s early stages of growth.
It only makes sense to address the immediate crisis before looking at long-term goals. When I first saw his VP in a one-on-one coaching session, I recognized the situation immediately. Sometimes it’s amazing what you can see that others don’t. The guy was seriously ill; he couldn’t perform. But here was the catch: How do I communicate the situation to the CEO in such a way that will make a difference? It didn’t matter what I knew; it mattered if Chris could hear me and take the appropriate action.
Chris invested quite a bit of time and money giving this guy a chance, so he didn’t feel guilty when he had to let him go. Sometimes you just have to let the situation play itself out; it doesn’t matter what you know or what you see coming. People have all kinds of motives, and it’s their life, their game.
I think Chris needed to know he gave it his best shot. The guy wasn’t receptive to coaching; he had given up.
Now an interesting thing happened when it came to Chris’ long-term growth goals. After reviewing the status of his company, I made some observations. I simply stated my opinion that his employee turnover was too high. His company did not have the staffing infrastructure, employee talent, recruiting and communication skills to reach his goals unless significant changes were made.
We discussed these items in detail, then he started to implement systems to correct the situation. After a year of his coaching program with me and his leadership team, he had reached his goal of increasing annual revenue from $10 million to $15 million — he had reached his five-year goal within a year.
CEOs are usually bright, capable people, and when you are their coach, you don’t have to show them how to do something. That’s not coaching anyway. If you make critical observations, often they take the ball and run with it. That’s how I saw Chris and his company. I could confront him with his shortcomings, and he would just correct what he could and charge forward. He didn’t succeed at everything, but he took risks and invested in himself, his company and his people.
A major key that was instrumental in the company’s growth was the intensive work I did with Chris’ No. 2 guy, his VP of operations. He would not have entered coaching without Chris’ support and modeling of the same behavior.
The only tough thing about working with Chris was that I was a pretty scared puppy when we flew around the country in his small plane, especially when coming out of the clouds to land. Chris is a great guy, and coaching him for a year was a wonderful experience. I think his return on investment was quite acceptable.
Jerry Stein, motivational speaker and executive coach, can be reached at
jerry@careercoach.com or (770)
988-0500. Go to careercoach.com for more
info and sign up for his free newsletter.
