Through my 10-plus years of coaching teams, executives, and business owners, I’ve had a few interesting conversations along the way. Some of them have been when I meet a leader or executive of an organization that tells me, “Listen, I’m good. You need to fix my team.”
I once had an experience with a gentleman I was speaking to off and on for about a year, we finally sat down and he proceeded to move forward. He mentioned that he had challenges with his team, challenges with communication, as well as getting the results he was looking for. I shared a lot of the concepts about understanding your assessment profile so you can make a shift to communicate with people and their language instead of yours, asking for permission if we can speak freely to take somebody else’s guard down to conduct an open and honest conversation. I gave him a couple of small books to read to get some really good distinctions on how you can have your team also read these books to step up. Once you read the books followed by your team, all you have to do is ask them questions to get them to move forward and better step up as individuals and leaders.
I gave them all these little tools, but unfortunately, he kept using the excuse, “Coach, I don’t have any time for this.” I respond, “Seriously, you can’t slow your butt down for one hour a week to get clearer on how to be a better communicator, a better leader to your team so your entire team and organization, including yourself, get better results, make more money, increase productivity and profitability?” “Can’t do it, coach.”
The reason I share this is your team is always waiting for you, the leader, to step up. When a leader signs on with me as a client, I’m excited. Why? Because there’s no better investment or way of showing your team that you’re willing to go outside your comfort zone, to address your blind spots, to get better as a communicator, a leader, to show them you’re going to do whatever it takes to be better for them and the organization. When they see you step up, they automatically follow your lead. And those who are not willing to follow your lead, well, they really haven’t earned the right to be part of your organization anyways because they are not willing to do the work.
If any of you out there are thinking, “Listen, I’m good. Coach, I just need you to fix my team.” Yes, I do work with teams, and I take a lot of pride in doing so. However, most importantly I work with the leaders so we can have them acquire the same understanding and distinctions of how they can get better so when the team is doing the same, it’s all congruent. We’re all speaking the same language and we all grow and move up accordingly.
The job of a leader is very simple. A leader’s job is to build other leaders. When we work on being the best leader we can possibly be, doing the little things to make the little distinctions to make the little shifts to get a little better each and every day, and then congruently we can coach our team up to do the same. I encourage you, or better yet, I challenge you to look in the mirror, and ask yourself how can I step up a little bit more each and every day? And then as you do so, you can ask your team to do the same.
COACH MICHAEL DILL is an Award-Winning Certified Business Coach, global speaker, and published author. He is a proud Action Coach Franchise partner as well as the President of Power & Ice Wealth Creation a strategic leadership company that works with business owners, leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs to both develop a systematized and structured organization while accelerating their mindset, efficiencies, and effectiveness to grow both personally and professionally to achieve extraordinary results. He brings more than 40 years of business and entrepreneurial experience in his leadership, team training, and mentoring practice. Businesscoachmichaeldill.com