“What am I even doing??” If you have uttered these words wondering what you are actually supposed to be doing in your role as a leader, you are not alone.
A few of my clients recently asked, “What is our role as a coach/mentor?” The waters can be tough to navigate so I am going to help provide some clarity around this. The truth is if we don’t have a clear definition for our role it is hard to feel successful, and who wants to feel confused all of the time!? So let’s dive in and chat through this a bit to define what success looks like.
Our role when coaching our team members is to encourage them, help them develop skill, practice with them, give feedback, and recognize them.
Think about this in terms of a basketball coach. My husband came home this weekend after a tough tournament he coached for our son’s basketball team. The team spent a ton of time over the last few weeks practicing, but when they got out on the court, they didn’t follow through with the things that they had learned. The players had specific things they were supposed to be working on in between practices. Now, what is my husband’s job? Can he make them do the stuff when they are on the court? Can he make them practice in between times? No- his job is to develop their skills, practice with them, etc. Their job is to take action and implement.
We can get super frustrated if we lose sight of this definition of success because the truth is there will be many times that our team members don’t take action.
Let’s walk through a few important steps you can take when someone isn’t following through on their commitments:
#1 Reflect
Is this something you suggested or told them to do vs something that they decided to do? If it is something they decided to do and just aren’t taking action, you can ask them- “is this still important to you?” If they say YES- they are recommitting to take action. If they say no- then you save yourself a lot of time and energy because you know where they stand. The goal is really to lead people to a “yes” or a “no”. It’s that place in between that makes us all crazy.
#2 Dig deeper
If they answered, “YES” to whether or not this is still important to them, the next question to ask is, “What got in the way of success last time?” “Tell me more about that”. This will help them think through the barriers that came up and prevented them from being successful. We often don’t pause long enough to think these things through. Simply giving your team member this space to process and reflect is valuable.
# 3 Reset
Give grace for failure and allow them to try again. Giving this safe place to fall and get back up will build trust and rapport. With your reset, set a specific timeline for when they want to take action (what day do you want to do this, how much time do you need). And ask them- what accountability do you need to complete this?
#4 Reconnect them to their motivation
Sometimes people have lost sight of why it is important to them to be successful. Helping our team member get back to that inspiration can be very powerful. some questions you can ask them are…“Why is this important to you?” “What does this mean to you if you don’t get this done?”
I hope that these tips have been valuable for you and helped provide you with some clarity on your role as a coach/mentor. 🙂
Thank you so much for ready today’s post. To sign up for one of our free trainings on closing, recruiting, or leadership go to emergesalestraining.com/freetraining.
Have a great day!
P.S. If you are ready to take the next step and learn how to create a duplicatable sales process you can Join our Direct Sales coaching program starting this Tuesday and sign up at emergesalestraining.com/ydsf or our Leadership coaching program starting November emergesalestraining.com/ylf.