Why Your Team Needs a Coach – Not a Manager [VIDEO]

By: Joe Crisara

Coach Not Manager

If you’re someone who regularly follows ContractorSalesCoach.com, I can only assume that you’re dedicated to growing your business. And you can’t achieve that without creating a level of greatness in your team.

You know your product, you watch the numbers like a hawk, and you do your best to hire the right kind of people into your organization.  And yet there’s one mistake you might be making that holds your team back and keeps it from being as productive and effective as it can be.

One Thing Great Teams Need More Than a Manager

Most people in leadership positions manage first icloud link bilder herunterladen. And while managing is necessary, management alone won’t create a great team. In fact, management alone might actually hurt your team. 

Generating numbers, wondering why your people aren’t performing, having endless meetings with co-workers or complaining to your team about their performance are all activities that mediocre or losing managers do on a daily basis.  Enabling the routine and mediocre status quo without challenging your people by creating new possibilities is simply malpractice.

Your team needs a great coach first… and a manager second.

To understand why coaching should be your first priority, you need to have a firm grip on the difference between coaching and managing. One of the best explanations I’ve seen came from Brian Tracy. He said…

Management is transactional while Leadership is transformational 3d printer bestanden downloaden.

And that’s really what a great coach is – a transformational leader.  Someone who makes change happen to disrupt the failing or mediocre team.

Transactional management tasks include things like generating statistics, pondering the key indicators, creating more reports, holding staff meetings, talking about tasks that need to be done on a particular day, micromanaging, and holding performance reviews that are mostly about things that happened in the past. The day to day routine task-oriented stuff that doesn’t leverage improvement.

Coaching, on the other hand, is transformational in that it has to do with regular interaction with your team and the individual people on the team that need help.

Great coaches spend about 10% of their time thinking about the past and 90% of their time focusing and doing something NOW to influence the future.  They are creating team activities, training and the individual assignments that are needed for each member of the team to improve.  In essence, more time is spent DOING and a fraction of the time is spent THINKING www.lexware.de/08848 update herunterladen.

As a result, coaches frequently spend time with each team member and provide them with the new ideas, skills, tools and assignments they need to develop, move forward, and grow as a professional.

There’s no question that coaching requires more energy than the old task-based management approach, but the results produced by a committed, motivated team will make it all worthwhile in the end.

According to SalesForce.com, sales teams who use performance coaching have 161% more wins than teams who don’t.

Sounds like a pretty outstanding return, right?

So how do you start shifting your focus from being just a manager to being a performance coach so your team and your business can enjoy that kind of success?

Well, there are a lot of qualities that make up a great coach, and over my next several articles, I’ll share all of them.

But today, we’re going to talk about the one non-negotiable, fundamental characteristic all great coaches must have.

One Common Quality of All Great Coaches

A great coach has to be A BELIEVER.

All coaches MUST sincerely and deeply believe in 3 things…

Belief #1: A great coach must believe in their B.H.A.G
B.H.A.G. stands for Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal. All top-notch coaches believe they can achieve GREAT things. Not pretty good things… not above average things… GREAT things. They’re not afraid to set Big Hairy Audacious Goals. In fact, they live for the challenge.

And while anyone can set a big, significant goal, every cell in a great coaches body believes beyond the shadow of a doubt that their team can achieve them. They have total confidence, unwavering faith, and total commitment to reach their goals.

Belief #2: A great coach must believe in their people
What would it feel like if you had total faith in everyone on your team? What if you could be 100% certain that every single one of your team members had the skills, the attitude, and the motivation to achieve any goal you put in front of them?

Great coaches create that scenario. They put the right people in place and develop them as a team and as individuals by building them up – not tearing them down. A real coach knows that humiliation and embarrassment never work. Great coaches make an effort to catch people doing something right and build up their self-esteem.

Belief #3: A great coach must believe in himself
It’s hard to instill confidence in others if you don’t believe in your ability to lead them to victory. Great coaches continually work on improving themselves. They believe in continual learning, they ask for feedback, and they sharpen their skills every chance they get.

Great coaches seek their own coaches to help them become the very best they can be.  Henry Ford used to say, “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.”

Your Coaching Career Begins

An effective performance coach sets the example and the standard for the team. They display a positive, supportive can-do attitude.

Coaching is NOT…

  • Giving advice or being the expert
  • Telling people what to do
  • Showing them how to do it or doing it for them

Coaching IS…

  • Listening to the words, tone and to what’s not being said
  • Showing people the possibilities to make a change
  • Allowing them to choose and think about how they can improve

Your team will work for a manager. They’ll cross off the items on the to-do list, they’ll put in their time, and 1they’ll move things from one pile to the next.  Basically they’ll just do what they are told until the point that they see that either no one is watching or that the work doesn’t make a difference.  At that point they will quit and stay to collect a paycheck with poor results or quit and join another team that is succeeding.

On the other hand, a team will walk through fire for a coach who believes in them, their development, and the team’s vision.  They achieve more because you are teaching them how to solve their own problems rather than telling them what to do.  Giving your team assignments to work on, shows that you believe in them and they won’t want you to lose your faith in them.

The choice is yours.

Would you rather manage a bunch of worker bees and get the results you’re already getting? Or would you rather coach a highly motivated team who is ready, willing, and able to take on any challenge you put in front of them?

The answer is obvious. True championship caliber teams come from championship caliber coaches.

To help you on your journey to becoming a great coach, we have a special offer only for those who read and respond to this article.

21CoreValuesHeavyHitters_dateOn Thursday, June 23rd 5 pm pacific time we’re holding a special live Hour of Sales Power session called 21 Core Values of Heavy Hitters. These coaching calls normally cost $89, but if you join from this article, you’ll get in for FREE!

Click here to attend the Hour Of Sales Power before it fills up and take the first steps to becoming a top-notch performance coach.

What do you think? 

Have you worked for someone who was more of a transformational coach than a manager? What was that like? Let’s talk about it in the comments below.