Overheard in the men’s locker room this morning: “He has no people skills. How did he ever get to be media director?”
“Well, he works hard.”
“Yes, he’s always served the CEO well, but no one else.”
Sound familiar? It’s a conversation I hear repeated everywhere I go in one form or another. Is this an HR strategy issue?
With a capable operator like Google (plus hundreds of others) proving leadership is by far the biggest key to productivity and both organization and team results, you bet. And if we take their “eight” keys to effective leadership, which they proved leaders could be coached to apply, the answer to whether anyone can become a leader is yes. So the question becomes how?
If you analyze Google’s list of eight skill sets, the one they define as most important really encompasses most of the others. To coach well absolutely requires that you empower those you coach, care about their health, well-being, careers and more — an all around, whole-human-being orientation. It requires you to be results-oriented, to push, but know when to step back and find a balance, to be a good communicator in both directions, but especially listening. And you need a clear vision of the desired result and technical skills that allow you to help, even though as a coach rather than teacher your skills don’t have to be better than your protégé.
A coach, by definition, cares about, pays attention to and works with the people in their care. No one would dream of saying “he served the CEO, but no one else” about an effective coach. A coach fundamentally understands the work their protégés do is more important in the long run than what they can accomplish alone in their limited time.
They put coaching either first or at least very high on their priority list. They don’t complain about the time it takes. The role of a coach is to extend the productivity of their team and each of its members so together they accomplish more than anyone, including the leader, could do alone, so the time is more than worth it in the end. Coaching is the primary work of an effective leader. That seems totally obvious from Google’s numbers-driven research.
So, as I write this, I think: “Perhaps one key strategic step we could take is to label every leader coach first.”
Executive coach, media team, for instance? Senior vice-president coach, HR. Perhaps that hard working individual who currently holds that position wouldn’t have wanted that role… at first.
Perhaps they’d say: “Not me, I’m not good with people, I don’t want to have to work with them like that.”
But chances are, to get promotions and more money, most budding executives would take a shot at improving their abilities, would be interested in taking training, would welcome being evaluated and coached themselves on these critical skills… if they wanted careers in leadership roles.
Some final observations: Since it’s a well-accepted fact leaders tend to hire and promote those they see as most like themselves — whether they set out to or not — if we can make coaching the primary factor in every leader’s profile all our leaders would strive to hire those who can coach best instead of the rather non-people-skill mix we see today.
We would never get to 100 per cent and might not want that anyway. Diversity is helpful, but we need to reverse the current preponderance of command-and-control leaders. If coaching eventually becomes the primary criterion instead of some of the other questionable grounds managers have for ruling people in or out of positions, that would be a benefit, too. This sounds like strategic talent management to me.
Dave Crisp is a Toronto-based consultant with a wealth of experience, including 14 years leading HR at Hudson Bay Co. where he took the 70,000-employee retailer to “best company to work for” status. For more information, visit www.crispstrategies.com.