The term “Coaching” refers to two opposing concepts. High-performance coaches work with athletes, singers, actors, and other elite performers. These coaches provide direction, guidance, and advice on how to improve already strong skills. In team sports, a coach is essential for both individual performance and coordination of complex team efforts.
In the world of life skills, coaches are trained not to provide direction or advice. Rather, they are taught techniques designed to elicit the client’s capabilities and strengths. Using a safe space and powerful questions, life coaches help the individual find their own path to success.
Our approach to Executive Coaching is a blend of those two approaches. Executives are high-performing individuals leading high-performing teams and have many capabilities that they bring to the table. At the same time, executives and their teams need guidance and advice to take advantage of the science of and deep experience with people, teams, and organizations.
Carol Kauffman PhD and I have written and spoken about “Infinity Loop Coaching.” This is our model for blending performance-based coaching with life coaching, designed specifically for executives and their teams. Our approach requires a coach who has knowledge and experience in business settings, as well as a deep understanding of people and systems. The coaches at Berman Leadership Development practice this style of coaching, balancing the innate capabilities of our clients with the knowledge of high performance based on both research and decades of experience.
That is why our coaches represent the pinnacle of our field – people with advanced degrees, from the best schools, with decades of experience in business and/or coaching. Our coaches have walked in executives’ shoes and understand all aspects of the business leader’s world.
We celebrate CEOs for encyclopedic mastery of every aspect of their business. We routinely ask government leaders if they knew the smallest details of an issue, and if not, why they didn’t. But are we setting leaders up for success? What if the cost of that knowledge is the loss of motivation and learning opportunities for everyone around them?
Let me tell you about a client of mine:
Hannah was responsible for one of the largest business units in a healthcare services organization. She had an organization of more than 3000 people, and $200M in annual revenues. As part of a coaching engagement, I conducted a 360 survey of her team members and colleagues. One message that came through from her direct reports was that she was too far in the weeds and did not leave her people to do their jobs. She was, in their words, “a micromanager.”
When Hannah and I sat down with her manager to review the results, he stopped me in mid-sentence. “Don’t you dare, Hannah,” he said with mock anger. “I need you in those details. You are the only one I trust to make sure your team stays on track.”
One of the most common complaints of team members regarding their manager is, “They are a micromanager – They are too deep in the weeds. They don’t trust me to do my job.” Those managers, they say, are over-focused on the details, and should spend more time on strategic issues.
For sure, some are micromanagers, dictating everything from where a comma belongs in a sentence to how often managers should hold 1:1s.
But in many cases, managers are showing micro-interest, not micromanagement. Micromanagement is a problem; micro-interest is an essential aspect of management.
Micro-interest means that the manager is asking questions, challenging assumptions, and considering options. These questions are not designed to criticize the presenter, but rather to make sure that the direction or decision is clear, well-thought through, and options and risks have been well-considered. The micro-interested executive may suggest that more work is needed. But they leave the person to do the work.
Stanley McChrystal put it best in his book, Team of Teams: “I referred time and again to the Visible Man during the Task Force video teleconferences. I told subordinates that if they provided me with sufficient, clear information about their operations, I would be content to watch from a distance. If they did not, I would describe in graphic terms the “exploratory surgery” necessary to gain the situational awareness I needed. They were free to make all the decisions they wanted—as long as they provided the visibility that, under shared consciousness, had become the standard.”
Micromanagement is different. Micromanagement means telling people what to do and/or how to do it. One executive I coached would routinely explain to his subordinates how to phrase an email response. Another vice president would routinely jump into negotiations with customers, taking over what was clearly the sales manager’s responsibility.
>>Micro-interest is all about challenging assumptions, evaluating risk, and considering options.
>>Micro-interest allows the manager to ensure the decision-making process was effective, and leaves space for the manager to hold their team member accountable for the results.
>>Micro-interest involves asking for the information you need to ensure a reasonable choice has been made.
>>Micro-interest is all about the work, not about the individual doing the work.
>>Micro-interest means people will either get it right or learn a lot in the process.
>>Micromanagement will ensure the decision-making outcome is one that they are comfortable with, but rarely checks to make sure the right data was used, and the options were thoughtfully weighed.
>>Micromanagement prevents the manager from holding their team member accountable – after all, the manager made the choice, so any failings are theirs, not their team members.
Of course, the boundary between micro-interest and micromanagement depends on time and experience as well. Micro-interest for a new employee may well be micromanagement for an employee with several years of experience. And micromanagement when the team member is learning a new skill may well be warranted.
Advice to Executives:
• Make sure people know what the problem is, and why it is important. Ensure they know the mission and strategy. And sometimes, tell them what to fix.
• Explain why you want to know the details.
• Whenever possible, give them the trust and confidence to come up with the solution. Be sure to give them the credit when they get it right and identify the learnings when it doesn’t work out.
Advice to Coaches:
• It is appropriate for managers to want to ask questions, challenge the work, and explore options.
• Your clients also need to make their teams better and better at doing what your client is already doing – analyzing, challenging, weighing risks, and considering options.
NYS Attorney General Letitia James gives press conference on Cuomo report.
The recent revelations from New York State Attorney General Letitia James’ report on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s pattern of sexual harassment have both saddened and angered many people, and for good reason. The report’s conclusions are troubling in and of themselves (and the issue of sexual harassment will be addressed in my next post). Mr. Cuomo’s continued denial, rationalization and externalization of responsibility makes his behaviors worse in many ways. Again and again, he has said various versions of “It was meant to convey warmth,” or “My intention was to help her.”
This is only one dramatic instance, however, of something I hear from leaders on a regular basis. As a coach to executives, some of whom have a history of problematic behavior (albeit less than Mr. Cuomo), I frequently hear similar versions of this:
“I’m not yelling. I’m passionate.”
“I was told to ‘shake things up.'”
“I was challenging them to do more than they thought they could.”
There is a fundamental lesson of leadership that Mr. Cuomo, and anyone who says a version of these statements, clearly has not learned. In the business world, and in all interpersonal interactions, when the impact of your behavior is harmful, what you say your intentions are really isn’t relevant. No one can see your intentions – those are private and known only to you. People will judge you based on what you do and how you make them feel, rather than what you say.
When confronted with the reality of their impact on others, some executives say, “Well, that’s their impression…” or “If that is their experience…”. The end of those sentences, often left unsaid, is “…they are wrong, but I’ll act like I am paying attention.” This type of rationalization and externalization minimizes the leader’s responsibility and denies people’s experience. In all likelihood, the leader will repeat the same behaviors in short order.
There are psychological processes that speak to some of this. There is a concept called “The Fundamental Attribution Error” in social psychology that says we use different criteria to evaluate our own behavior than we do when evaluating others’. In other words, if I do something wrong, it is explainable. If you do something, it is because you are not a good person. The unfortunate problem with this is that when we are not self-aware, our self-attributions will blind us to how we make others feel. And other people largely determine how successful you are as a business leader.
The reality of interpersonal communication is people rely on how someone’s behavior makes them feel and think to ascertain “truth.” People’s words contribute relatively little to our experience, compared to our own emotions and reactions. This is especially true when we encounter someone’s recurring pattern of behavior over time. When we have the same reaction in response to a leader’s behavior multiple times, we rely on those feelings to tell us who that person is.
At the end of the day, we do not know what a leader’s intentions are. Especially politicians. All we have to go by is their impact: How the person makes us feel and think when they interact with us. According to the report, Mr. Cuomo’s behavior harmed dozens of women, and created a hostile work environment. Whatever his intentions, he should have known better. His lack of self-awareness and denial of responsibility is a potentially fatal flaw. But he is not a one-off or a “bad apple” and this is not just about sexual harassment. This situation should be an object lesson to all leaders: Know what your impact is and understand how you make others feel. People will follow you, or throw you to the wolves, based on their reactions, not what you tell them.
One of the best times to build up your Influence and Impact is during times of crisis. Under difficult situations, leadership will shine. Those who can keep their heads and address the challenges confronting the organization will be listened to and valued. Erica Spencer, the VP of Global Learning and Development at Marriott International, wrote an extended version of the following contribution for our book to bring leading in a crisis to life:
Introduction
At the beginning of 2020, I set goals for the Learning and Development function. We emphasized the continued digitization of our fundamental training content, and the implementation of our learning technology roadmap. We cascaded these high-level goals to team members and defined specific initiatives and projects for each team. In March 2020, the coronavirus pandemic hit. This caused an unprecedented impact on the hospitality industry. We had to do more with less. We had to understand the constantly evolving recovery strategy and determine how learning and development could best support those efforts. At the same time, we needed to support the digitization and technology efforts that were critical moving forward. We quickly learned that COVID-19 had created a scenario in which we could accelerate and demonstrate the value of digital learning.
The Opportunity
We absolutely had to deliver training to associates on business-critical topics, such as the new cleanliness and safety protocols. We also needed to educate associates on how to work and manage teams in a virtual capacity. However, we no longer had the ability to deliver this training in-person. Through our focus on digitization, we created over 100 digital learning assets that supported our cleanliness efforts. Over 430,000 associates completed these trainings within two months of launch. We also curated over 150 resources to support associates during their furlough. More than 125,000 associates accessed these materials.
Solving Big Problems
Our support also went beyond the typical learning and development initiatives. We used our learning technology platform as the infrastructure to support work done by the broader HR organization. Our Work Opportunities Site, for example, showcased job opportunities for associates, as well as supported the data needed to support our re-organization efforts. Finally, we used this technology to create a health screening program for associates who needed to return to the office.
The Impact
As a result of the flexibility and commitment of our team, the learning and development organization delivered what the organization needed during an extremely challenging time. This work was completely different than what we had planned, but we were still able to advance our overarching goals of digitization and learning technology. These efforts also served to stimulate change in the organization, getting our leaders and associates comfortable with and accepting of learning in a virtual environment.
I have known Erica for many years, and wherever she goes, she builds up a level of respect and trust that gives her enormous influence across her organizations. Her impact has always been beyond her level, and leaders across the firms she has worked for pay attention to what she thinks.
