Most of you reading this blog have an arsenal of tools you use to be effective with direct reports. The question becomes how are you using those tools to enhance performance, align behaviors with your organization’s strategy and closing knowing-doing gaps? Tools only take us so far. How we implement those tools in an environment that brings out the best in direct reports can lead to sustainable, effective sales leadership that cascades through the entire sales organization. Strong teams need sales leaders for inspiration, enthusiasm, focus, and to strategically guide their vision, mission and culture. A strong coach leader is often viewed as one of the most important factors in sales growth yet, many organizations struggle with the development and scaling of coaching and leadership behaviors.
Sales people change jobs for a number of reasons including issues with a boss, culture, money, and challenge. These reasons are consistent with what has been shared about the “great resignation”. Key talent turnover creates an incredible gap for sales teams. Using coaching skills to develop and better understand the needs, values and drivers of individual behavior of employees has been shown to influence the desire to remain with a sales team. Kelly in “The Dream Manager” shares that the destinies of the organization and individual potential are interwoven. He threads the concept of “best version of self” throughout his message which is inclusive of both the organization best version and individual best version. This requires that both the individual and organization deeply explore what is valued, the meaning made from those values and alignment of action with the values.
Boyatzis and McKee in “Resonant Leadership” add a resonant component to “Sales Leader as Coach; Sales Coach as Leader”. Focusing on the benefits of emotional connection, the authors position the relationship as key to successful coaching which has been proven time and time again in the research. The resonant coaching leader not only creates connection with followers but also creates resonance with self through the process of renewal. Leaders are so conditioned by “doing” that they often sacrifice “being” and reflection. Boyatzis and McKee share that developing a renewal process provides increased energy and engages the mind, body, and heart in shifting to positivity and healthier relationships. Kouzes and Posner while researching and writing about leadership in “Encouraging the Heart” share this thinking with Boyatzis and McKee. They contend that effective leader coaches are connected with followers as they demonstrate genuine caring for the follower. Without this caring, the follower may experience his or her leader as simply transactional rather than transformational.
Creating a thinking partnership helps a direct make effective choices and decisions when the coaching leader is not with him or her. Support is a component of the coaching thinking partnership which engages the leader and direct report in gaining clarity about goals, holding followers accountable for agreed upon actions and celebrating with followers when goals are met. These leaders provide opportunities for emergent and meaningful conversations. The leader coach sees himself or herself as a barometer of where the follower is with regards to their own thought processes. Questions are asked to draw out deeper, more thoughtful meaningful conversations and take the follower into thinking about future possibilities. Questions such as “go forward three-six months, you were amazingly successful with clients, what did you do differently that led to that success?” and “what might get in the way of your success?” cause a follower to think both in terms of best-case scenarios while also preparing to overcome challenges. Chip and Dan Heath in “Decisive” use an exercise called a “pre-parade and post-mortem” discussion in framing the issue in best possible outcome and worst case scenario. Interestingly, it is typically easier for followers to brainstorm the challenges than the successes which creates another opportunity for coaching.
The paradox of the sales leader as coach phenomenon exists in duality in that it is both about the development of self and the development of relationships with others. Leaders as coaches drive change yet stabilize the team. They also honor past successes while looking forward to the future. Finally, sales leaders as coaches integrate both science and art. Managing the paradox contributes to its complexity and to the complexity of designing effective leader as coach development programs.
If anything in this blog struck a chord for you, please join us on April 27th for our next webinar on “Sales Leader as Coach; Sales Coach as Leader” for a broader discussion on this topic.
Zoom link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83239074707