Leverage Talent

We all know we need more leverage from our businesses, be it the use of available capital for investment, our infrastructure to provide greater efficiences etc. We also know that our staff, often referred to as "human capital", have a lot more potential than currently being employed. Surveys consistently show that white collar productivity and service sector productivity are areas with great potential. The key is unlocking the potential of the people working in those sectors.

That all sounds wonderful, like motherhood and apple pie and we all know it, but what are we doing about it? How can we get more leverage from the talent, experience and expertise of the people working in our organisations. A consistent issue our clients raise with us concerns effective coaching by the boss. Becoming a leader is usually the result of demonstrating your own ability to get results. We promote the performers in the hope some of the magic pixie dust will get sprinkled around. The outcomes are often seriously underwhelming.

For the organisation to grow, it needs talent to be fostered right throughout the whole organisation. We all need solid bench strength in case we lose key people. Invariably, we lose these key actors when it is the worst possible timing and we quickly see they are not going to be easy to replace. That means lost opportunity, time and business. The natural owners of that bench strength build are the current leaders. Managers manage processes and leaders manage processes and build people.

Coaching usually fails because of the poor quality of the process being applied. Think of it as a technology issue - your technology for building a coaching culture isn't very good at the moment. In many cases, it is even worse because there is no real process at all.

Here is a 7 step process which will vastly improve the coaching outcomes.

1. Identify Opportunities
The need may be obvious or circumstances may reveal a need. For busy leaders, selecting who to coach is a critical decision. The staff with the most untapped potential are probably the most attractive candidates. You can’t do everything at once, so start with the option that will create the most value. We will get to everyone over time but we need to prioritise our efforts.

2. Picture The Desired Outcome
Coaching without a clear strategy often results in sporadic efforts which ultimately lead nowhere. The Coach must work with the staff member to arrive at a clear vision of what the improved state will look like. It is hard to hit a target you haven’t nominated. Creating a word picture of the desired outcome helps to keep the efforts focused, especially when the chaos of everyday seems to conspire to ensure you get distracted.

3. Establish The Right Attitude
This sounds simple but it is not snapping your fingers and presto, brilliant attitude. Improved performance requires change and everyone agrees in principle that change is necessary but as long as it is not expected of them in practice. We need to know our people in order to understand how to communicate the change need in a way that resonates with them and they want to be part of it. Learning to talk in terms of the individuals’s personal motivations is powerful. Reality check for leaders – do you really know this level of detail about your team?

4. Provide The Resources
The most expensive and highest value resource is your time to devote to coaching. It also requires a sincere personal commitment to see the person being coached succeed. A lot of successful people climbed over the bodies to get to the top and expect that is how everyone else should do it. Their attitude to coaching is usually negative. People develop in different ways and at different times, so making ourselves the only metric of success is folly.

5. Practice And Skill Development
Make the time, identify the correct skill set needed, explain it, demonstrate it, then let them practice it. There is a balancing act going on here, where we need to let go, but keep monitoring without micromanaging them. We all learn by making mistakes and this is a fact we need to embrace. Encourage them to fail faster.

6. Reinforce Progress
Knowing and doing are sometimes related. Don’t expect because they have learnt it, they are automatically doing it. Check that there is no slipping back into the cuddly Comfort Zone, as people revert to their old, better established habits. Habit is stronger than knowledge. Keep them accountable to continue to progress.

7. Reward
What we reward gets repeated and what gets repeated becomes a new habit. Give praise which is specific, explaining exactly what they are doing that is good, rather than obtuse general statements of approbation.

None of this is complicated. Common sense though is not always common practice. Train the bosses in how to coach - that should be the first step. Expecting them to work it out by themselves is probably way too optimistic. In other words, you need to coach the coaches and use the best technology available to achieve that!

Executing these steps takes commitment but the rewards are enormous. We have layers of talent inside our people that are never developed, because we don't introduce the means to unlock the potential of our people. If your leadership team is coaching your key people using a solid process and your rival leaders are not, expect to win the war. It is your team against their team, so give your team the advantage by having better coaches.

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