Three Ways Leaders can Supercharge their Organizations

“Leadership is lifting a person's vision to high sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.”

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?Navy SEAL Teams assign trainers, coaches, and mentors, to provide the members of that military unit with knowledge-based learning, critical skills development, and when ready, enlightened empowerment to apply judgement. Many corporations also do this to beneficial effect. My take on training, coaching, and mentoring to drive performance is straight forward. When building or rebuilding a business, holistically or in part, you need to be ready to invest time and energy into improving the performance of every single person and then be willing to drive collective team efforts to a higher level of play. That’s everyone, leave no employee behind.

My experience has been that leaders understand the value of training, coaching, and mentoring but fall short of implementing one, two, or all three of these methods. The common rationalizations I hear are lack of money, too little time, or too few qualified people to manage and deliver and maintain each of these methods while simultaneously running day to day operations. I must admit, scarcity of quality resources is a real dilemma for most businesses, large or small. However, to grow the power and technical capabilities of a workforce you must become comfortable investing scarce resources today to ensure improvements in creative and productive human behavior occurs in the future.

This level of forward thinking is rare in smaller companies. New employees or members are expected to show up ready and stay that way. This hope-based approach feels rugged and tough minded but it’s shortsighted as well as dead wrong. Unless your business is static, or worse, declining, your employees need to keep pace with increased volume, increased complexity, increased velocity, or a combination of these three task factors, all normally associated with rising and rapidly scaling companies. Your team needs your focus and commitment to their professional development. Here are three ways leaders can supercharge their organizations:

1.????Training to a Technical Standard: My definition of training helps me to separate it from the concepts, focus and expected outcomes of coaching and mentoring. Training is often used as a catch-all term encompassing any effort to deliver new information or skills, at any level, and for any length of time, to employees and members of companies. Training, in my opinion, has specifically defined elements delivered to a tightly defined standard, in a specific period. Technical training is used for all types of specialties, physicians, carpenters, truck drivers, military personnel, all benefit from initial credentialling training and follow on learning. The term technical in this case means itemized, specific, and directive. You must turn the valve to the right, throttle the airspeed back, you must perform the function in this order. You get the picture. Training is the bedrock of an organization. It begins with a great onboarding program and is sustained year after year. Skip this step at your peril. Adopt it as a tenet of your culture and reap the rewards for years to come.

2.????Coaching to an Operational Standard: When does training end and coaching begin? I think coaching is a long-term effort to improve the performance of someone who is already trained to do what they are supposed to do. Coaching is an intimate, one on one engagement. Training can be conducted this way but is more often executed in large groups for efficiency’s sake. Coaching is all about influencing individual behaviors at the operational level. You can teach culture, but it takes coaching to ingrain a culture in every individual. You can train a group as a team, but it takes coaching to move the team from aspirational goals to execution and excellence. Coaching is leading and guiding employee behavior through a diligent program of surveillance and adjustment. Coaching also takes wisdom, sound judgment, and an understanding of human nature. Of course, you need a certain level of technical knowledge, but good coaches are not always technical experts. Add a coaching program to get the very best out of your leaders and technical talent.

3.????Mentoring to Achieve Peak Excellence: The terms coaching and mentoring have blurred in recent years, creating confusion. My take on the subject is they are clearly not the same thing. An internal or external mentor can be assigned to you by your boss, a board of directors, or you can seek out and retain a mentor on your own. Mentors come in all sizes and shapes and every industry, profit or non-profit, benefits from the use of mentoring programs. Mentors are highly focused on one individual’s success. They may be paid to do so, or if you’re lucky, they agree to do so as a favor. In either case, having a mentor can help you through unique professional challenges. I have been privileged to have several mentors in my professional progression from enlisted SEAL to officer, while a portfolio manager, and in my current role as CEO and Chief Strategy Officer. My mentors seem to have appeared at just the right time for me to bridge my abilities from a place where training and coaching had reached the limits of their helpfulness. If you are a professional looking for an edge, seek out a mentor. If you are leading an organization, start a corporate mentoring program. You’ll be glad you did!

While you are training, coaching, and mentoring don’t be afraid to show a little emotion, Passion is the currency of motivation and where words and plans fail, intensity of leadership commitment sells. Be aspirational but add details, define goals as concepts, set target dates for expected growth, and then tie all that to the promise of rewards for all who help you reach those targets. Lay out a case showing your employees, your team, your leaders can make a bigger difference too. In your industry, your community, and in the lives of your customers or external stakeholders. Train, coach, and mentor your way to greater heights!

Marty Strong is a retired Navy SEAL, CEO, speaker, and the author of two business books, Be Nimble: How the Creative Navy SEAL Mindset Wins on the Battlefield and in Business and Be Visionary: Strategic Leadership in the Age of Optimization

martystrongbenimble.com?