Mitzi Perdue

What Coaching Can Do For You

Karen Snyder founded Concordia Consulting 27 years ago.  Through her work, she helps senior executives and their teams achieve extraordinary results by working collaboratively.

What has Karen learned in those 27 years that can help all of us?

“The leaders who are the most effective,” she answers, “do not wait until they have problems to receive coaching. They are like tennis pros, they’re always honing their skills.”

To see how this works out in practice, a high government official recently hired Karen for help with a serious morale problem in his department. His division was under scrutiny for having the lowest scores in the division on the yearly employee engagement survey. We’ll call him Andrew Beastaw.

Beastaw exclaimed to her, “My team members don’t support each other. They don’t communicate. They don’t hold themselves accountable. Morale is rock bottom! I was brought to this division to improve morale, and if they don’t improve, I will have failed.”

“I looked at him,” remembers Snyder and asked, “OK, and how do you contribute to the problem?”

Beastow did a double take and then stared at Snyder, aghast.  Nobody had ever asked him that.

However, Snyder knows that whenever there’s a problem with our team, we’re almost certainly either enabling the problem or ignoring the problem.  If it’s “our team”, it’s “our problem” She had hit a nerve with Beastow.

Beastow answered her, “Hmmm… I need to think about this.”

He did, and with the help of Snyder’s coaching, he came to realize that he had a significant pattern of being unusually kind and supportive until something went wrong. At that point, he would address the employees harshly for their mistakes while not owning his share of the problem. Additionally, he would hold on to the issue, like holding a grudge, and the mistake would follow the employee through his or her career.

This approach was demoralizing to the entire team.    With Snyder’s help, Beastow came to realize that there was a vastly better approach to handling things when something went wrong.

After all, his typical approach of, “Who’s to blame?” and some version of, “You’re an incompetent fool!” wasn’t working for the team or for him. It was not only disempowering and demoralizing, it was contagious.  Since Beastow passed the blame, so did the senior directors, and blame became pervasive in the organization.

A better approach, one that helped with morale and engagement was, “OK, we’ve got this problem, what can we do right now to correct it and then, what can we do to make sure it doesn’t happen again?”

When Beastow re-framed his approach, changing it from blame to looking together for solutions, he saw a rapid improvement in morale.  This approach felt better to him and to his employees.

It didn’t happen overnight. Snyder says that truly effective change takes time.  In the case of Beastow, “It was often eight steps forward and two back.” She spent a year and a half with the team, but he improved and so did his direct reports.  As the top leaders improved, it trickled down.  Employees still weren’t singing Kumbahya, but morale was improving.

What about you and your work? Does your leadership team manage synergistically?  Are there silos or is there collaboration?  Have you considered the possibility of upping your business game with the help of an exectuive coach?

After all, a professional tennis player or Olympic ice skater isn’t going to be at their best without a coach. Again, how about you? (And on a personal note, here’s the place for a hat-tip to my speaking coach, Sally Strackbein. A year of coaching with Sally is worth 10 years of trying to discover on my own what works best. )

You can reach Karen Snyder at: http://karensnyder.com or e-mail her at: karen@karensnyder.com. Her new book, Relationship Consulting, How to Grow Your Business Magically has just been released and she is also a sought-after business speaker.