Insight on Coaching
Coaching New Managers for Success Transcript
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Time Speaker Transcript
0:14 Tom Floyd Welcome to Insight on Coaching. Insight on Coaching explores the many facets,
flavors and sides of the emerging Professional Coaching field.
I’m Tom Floyd, the CEO of Insight Educational Consulting and host of the Insight on
Coaching radio show.
Today’s show is dedicated to new managers, focusing on how coaching can help
new managers make the transformation from individual contributor to management.
Well to prepare for this show, we did some research to help set the stage, looking
specifically for some of the challenges that new managers seem to be facing in their
role.
One article our team stumbled across was a gem from the Harvard Business Review
titled “Becoming the Boss”, by Linda Hill.
Some interesting points the article raised were:
The skills required for success as a manager are totally different than the skills
that were required for success as an individual contributor. As an individual
contributor, success was measured on personal expertise and actions. As
managers, it shifts to establishing and setting agenda for an entire group, which
isn’t something most individual contributors have to do.
New managers often have to unlearn mindsets and habits that served them
successfully as individual contributors, and begin to define new ways of
measuring success and finding satisfaction in work.
The article also mentioned that new managers typically have two questions: “Will
I like management?” and “Will I be good at management?” These questions tend
to be followed by another question “Who I am becoming?”
The article also had a great table that I liked titled “Why New Managers Don’t Get It”
The table consisted of two columns – one was titled Myths, and the other was titled
Reality
Let me share each of the five myths, along with what the corresponding reality was:
Myth: Authority: “Now I will have the freedom to implement by ideas”
Reality: Interdependency: “It’s humbling that someone who works for me
could get me fired.”
Myth: Formal authority: “I will finally be on top of the ladder”
Reality: “Everything but: “Folks were wary, and you really had to earn it.”
Myth: Control: “I must get compliance from my subordinates.”
Reality: Commitment: “Compliances does not equal commitment.”
Myth: Managing one-on-one “My role is to build relationships with individual
subordinates.”
Reality: Leading the team “I nee to create a culture that will allow the group
to fulfill its potential.”
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1:20 Tom Floyd Myth: Keeping the operation in working order: “My job is to make sure the
operation runs smoothly.”
Reality: Making changes that will make the team perform better. “I am
responsible for initiating changes to enhance the group’s performance
The points above seemed to correlate well with a few challenges that another
Harvard article listed in Harvard’s Working Knowledge for Business Leaders section,
which listed two challenges are:
The first big challenge for general managers with newly acquired or significantly
expanded responsibilities is learning to see linkages and interconnections across
the organization.
The second is transitioning from the role of \"doer\" to the role of managing
through other people—and that's a big change.
Last not but not least, an online article by Carter McNamara titled “The Typical
Experience of a First Time Supervisor” cited a few additional challenges as well:
New managers rarely having adequate training
New managers feeling intimidated with having to enforce a wide range of policies
and processes
New managers rarely having enough time to get everything done
New managers often feeling very alone
New managers feeling overwhelmed and stressed out
Support and development is critical for new managers – that last fact of course,
sounding like one of many things a coach may be able to help with.
As with all of our shows this season, it’s going to be a panel discussion.
’m thrilled to welcome four guests to today’s show. Let me give you a quick overview
of each of them.
I’m going to start with Michele Volpe.
Michele Wolpe is a certified coach, having completed the Hudson Institute of Santa
Barbara’s professional coaching program in November, 2004.
Combined with her 18 years of corporate executive experience leading
communications functions at firms including The Walt Disney Company, Barclays
Global Investors, Charles Schwab and Silicon Graphics, Michele brings a strong and
experienced business orientation to her coaching work with business leaders.
As a coach, Michele has worked successfully with business leaders and executives
to enhance their skills and capabilities in the areas of professional and personal
growth and development, including leadership, communication, influencing and
conflict management.
Michele has a master’s degree in international management from the American
Graduate School of International Management and a BA in French from the
University of California, Davis.
Welcome to the show Michele.
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6:45 Michele Volpe Thank you so much.
Great to be here.
6:47 Tom Floyd Great to have you.
Our next guest is Patrick Reilly.
Patrick Reilly is an Executive Coach and Consultant with more than twenty years
experience helping people solves difficult business problems.
He is a principal with Resources In Action, Inc. a firm that specializes in talent
management, change management and executive coaching.
He typically supports three types of executives: those who are new to organizations
or onboarding and needing to get up to speed quickly, high potentials the
organization is trying to develop in an accelerated fashion and those who are
talented yet distinctive.
He has worked extensively with leaders in the technology, health care, IT and energy
sectors. In the recent past, he has developed a talent management methodology
based on key customer failures in hiring, developing and retaining top talent. The
approach effectively integrates best practices in recruiting, selecting and onboarding
“A” performers in ways that increase organizational productivity and mitigate risk..
Welcome to the show Patrick.
7:44 Patrick Reilly Thank you very much.
7:45 Tom Floyd Our next guest is Celia Young.
Celia Young, president of CELIA YOUNG & ASSOCIATES, INC. has provided
coaching and consulting services to FORTUNE 500 companies for over 20 years.
She helps her clients develop vision and strategies to manage “change” in their
businesses worldwide. Celia coaches and develops globally competent and
multicultural versatile leaders individually and in teams, so that they can mold a new
organization that is open to and capable of fully utilizing the “diversity” of its people.
Celia is a faculty member of the Gestalt Institute of the Cleveland, Organization
System Development Center where she teaches the theory, concept and application
of Gestalt in the development of individual, groups and organization.
She is also uniquely qualified in the coaching and development of “Whole Person”
leadership. Additionally, she is a professional speaker on Pacific Rim cultures, cross-
cultural communication, organizational behavior, organizational change, multicultural
leadership, diversity and creativity, and multicultural marketing strategies.
Welcome to the show Celia.
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8:48 Celia Young Thank you.
8:49 Tom Floyd And our last guest is Dr. Michael O’Connor.
We’re thrilled to have Michael back.
As many of you recall Dr. Michael J. O’Connor is an internationally recognized
thought leader who has contributed several different types of breakthroughs for
producing higher personal, group/team, and organizational performance as well as
purposeful fulfillment.
He is often referred to as a practical, problem-solving visionary.
He is called upon daily to provide his expertise in the areas of personal, group, and
organizational behavior.
He has dedicated his life to helping others, of all walks of life, positions, and types as
well as levels of organizations, through his speaking, coaching, consulting, training,
writing, and published resources. Michael has authored several books, including
Managing By Values and The Platinum Rule.
In 2005, Michael introduced The Hiring & Developing Winners Process; The Online
Total Personal Global Profiles System (GPS); and co-authored The Leader Within.
Welcome to the show Michael.
9:48 Dr. Michael Thanks Tom.
O’Connor
9:49 Tom Floyd As today’s show, as with our other shows, it’s going to be a group discussion.
We’ve got about three minutes to our first break, and to kind of set the stage, and
we’re going to come back to this when we get back from break as well, but to set the
stage, the first question I have for all of you are, from your perspectives, when the
typical person makes a move from individual contributor to a manager for the first
time what does that typical experience look like?
So, what I’m asking for is to really paint a picture here for us.
What their first week and month look like.
What activities do they typically start performing as they ease into the role?
How are they typically asked to go about performing their jobs?
Things like that.
Michele, let’s start with you.
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10:33 Michele Volpe I think one of the common practices I see a new manager getting involved with right
away is figuring out how do I be successful and focusing right away on the immediate
goals in front of them and how they can achieve those goals.
So there’s a myopic kind of tendency sometimes to jump in really fast and try to roll
up the shirtsleeves and get going on a goal in order to prove themself.
And so from a coaching perspective, one of the opportunities there is to help the new
manager maybe slow down a little bit before jumping into action and get a better
sense of the overall picture.
Who do I need to get to know?
What is the culture I’m part of now?
Who is my team, and how do I engage them in this process?
What do I need to learn from them before I move forward so that we’re working
together as a team?
And that kind of goes back to that first overview you gave about managers, and one
of the key facets of leading is moving the team forward rather than relying solely on
your individual skills and talents.
11:36 Tom Floyd Some visuals that were coming to my brain as I was listening to you, I almost saw
dust, like a dust cloud going everywhere out of the office, or also the analogy of kind
of bull, bull in a china shop.
11:48 Michele Volpe Exactly.
11:49 Tom Floyd Can it be like that?
11:50 Michele Volpe Or the roadrunner zipping as fast as possible down the road and not necessarily
seeing what’s on each side of the road that they need to pay attention to.
11:59 Tom Floyd Got it.
I’m hearing the music for our first break.
Let’s go ahead and go on pause.
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14:54 Tom Floyd And we were just starting to paint the picture when we started off in terms of what it
looks like.
What does the typical experience look like as a new manager starts to ease into their
role?
We talked about it being a little bit like the roadrunner or almost like a bull in a china
shop in some cases, as a new manager is really trying quickly to show some wins
and successes and accelerate things.
I want to turn to some of our other guests and get some of their thoughts on that as
well.
Celia, what’s been some of your experiences around that?
15:40 Celia Young I’ve been thinking about this question every since you asked it. I think it really
depends on if this new manager just got hired into this organization or had been
growing up in this organization.
Because there are two different things that he or she will have to worry about. If
you’re brand new, you just go hired into an organization; obviously, the first thing on
the job is you really have to get to know your people.
And inside the article you talk about it.
Can I even be having any relationship with the people who have been here because
they’re the ones who carry the existing culture?
And so, as a new manager I’m having to really work hard to obtain my entry into this
system so to speak. And if a manager has been growing up in the system and sort of
just got promoted, he or she will have to worry about yesterday, these were my
coworkers, today all of a sudden, and I’m somehow having more positional power
over these people.
So what should I worry about then? And so my coaching has often focused on
relationship building and sometimes that’s a subject that doesn’t get looked at very
often and falls down quite a bit just like the Business Review talked about.
At some point in time people that’s just way too soft and didn’t have to worry about it
so they worry about tasks earlier instead of worrying about relationships.
17:15 Tom Floyd It’s interesting that you bring that up too because when we talked about the
on-boarding process last week in terms of giving new hires on-boarded as well, that
same feedback or piece came up.
It was really important for folks to focus on building relationships at all levels within
the organization when they’re in that new position.
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17:35 Celia Young Absolutely.
And often when we do leadership development work we always ask them to take a
look at the percentage of time they spend doing their work versus managing their
career.
Often because the emphasis that I have is around diversity, I find that, especially
managers who are not white or not men, tend to spend more time in doing their work
instead of managing their career.
So when they finally got promoted they continued to think that the best thing they can
do is work harder.
And they forget to know that there are so many other people around them.
18:16 Tom Floyd So it’s almost like they’re going heads down, so to speak, not realizing that in the
process of managing their career they need to be managing and cultivating some of
the relationships—
18:24 Celia Young Yes.
Absolutely.
18:26 Tom Floyd Interesting.
Patrick, what are some of your thoughts?
18:29 Patrick Reilly I’m just going to link right into this relationship conversation because I just find that it
just happens again and again and it really is most often an oversight for people, and
it just seems to be critical for success.
In fact, the term that I’ve come to use in this area is actually the building of a
covenant.
I’ve tried to elevate the conversation that for new managers a critical success factor
is really facilitating meeting the right people and developing relationships with people
on their team, their boss and their peers and creating agreements around
expectations, how decisions are made, how you socialize ideas, that sort of stuff, so
that you get to the place early on where people are more comfortable with you and
more respectful of you.
Because it’s only at that point that you can begin to be effective and to get results.
So I find that that’s really important.
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19:39 Tom Floyd It’s almost like it takes down walls and barriers that people might have if a new
manager didn’t go through that process.
19:46 Patrick Reilly Well, let me use myself as an example here.
I remember a time I was hired for a job. I walked into the first team meeting with the
staff and I was just being myself.
And I was being very excited and sharing ideas and saying what I was going to do
and I walked out the door and my new boss pulled me aside and he said, that’s it.
Don’t say anything, don’t be so helpful, and don’t try to show what you know.
He said, just be quiet for the first three months and listen to what it is that people
want and need and have them become comfortable with you and then you can go out
and be effective.
But until they’re comfortable with you and see that you’re capable, they are not going
to let you run and the walls will not be down.
And it really got my attention and was very, very helpful in getting me personally off
to a quick start in that position.
20:49 Tom Floyd And that actually kind of builds upon a theme that has come up with new hires last
week too is that Joanne, one of our guests on that show had said that a lot of times
for new hires they’re in observation mode and so they’re really kind of observing and
taking things in and learning.
And it sounds like for many new managers, it’s a good idea, I should say, to be in
that role as well.
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21:10 Patrick Reilly It is.
It’s a very good idea and most of the literature that I see these days makes that
suggestion.
Though it’s very hard for people who are paid and have a history of being paid to
perform and to get tasks done, to put the brakes on themselves and to not do what it
is that their instincts suggest to them are the right things to do.
It’s very hard for me to personally; when I begin to do something in a certain way, to
say, huh, now I need to change direction and to do things very differently than I’ve
done before.
Just one more quick comment since we’re quoting references, there’s a book that I
find very, very helpful, The Leadership Pipeline by Rom Churan and others and why I
find it useful is that in that book they layout the six fundamental tasks for managers,
activities, sort of key areas of focus for coaching for managers at different levels.
And the thing that fits right in with this is that almost each time a manager as she or
he moves to the next level has to stop what they were doing and to a great extent,
reinvent themselves. And the only way that I’ve found you can do that well, at first, is
by sitting, observing, and listening at the beginning.
22:44 Tom Floyd Got it.
I just wrote down the name of that book too.
Well, Michael, let’s go ahead and move on to you and I want to change the question.
From your perspective, what are some of the typical complaints, on average, that you
hear average new managers complain about or bring up during their first 90 days?
23:07 Dr. Michael Typically it’s a function of the manager themselves. It goes back really largely to that
O’Connor article you talked about.
What we find are individuals who have moved into this position because of their
expertise and also the desire they have to have authority or control of situations.
And then you have others that have sought this out or have been recruited because
of their ability to get along with other people.
So essentially what we find is individuals who have a high authority interest and low
relationship interest and the reverse of that.
And after working with thousands of managers and doing assessments of them, what
we’ve found, U.S. and internationally, is that individuals who have high authority and
low relationship interest tend to over-supervise, and what happens there is that they
find is less involvement by the team members and, of course, that people are likely to
pull back at that point in time not knowing what to expect in the self-protective mode,
and that affects productivity as well as morale.
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24:19 Tom Floyd So is that some of the folks who might not be as relationship focused, just want to get
stuff done, are they saying things like all of these meetings, for example, these
meetings are driving me crazy I can’t get anything done or so and so needs so much
hand-holding I don’t have time for this, I need to get things done.
Are those some of the complaints that would come from a manager who is more from
that context?
24:42 Dr. Michael Yes.
O’Connor
I think largely what happens, the biggest complaint really you find in terms of high
authority, low relationship is trust issues, and they’re not sure whether this person is
a manager who wants to help me or hurt me, whether they’re dealing with their
agenda or concerned with helping us achieve ours.
And when you flip it around, the person who’s high relationship and must be
everybody’s friend, is somebody that, again, people are not sure whether that person
has the capability to lead them because they’re not looking for friends, they’re looking
for somebody they can respect that they think deserves the job.
25:18 Tom Floyd Let’s turn that question and take another light on it as well. I want to turn to the entire
group for this question.
What are some of the typical things that employees complain about when it comes to
their new boss in the first 90 days?
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25:33 Patrick Reilly This is Patrick.
If I could start off with that because I’ve thought a bunch about this and I have found
again and again a consistent pattern of four things over time that I’ve heard.
One is that I want my manager to help me and support me in my career and that’s an
active piece, is that’s part of what they can do for me or what I expect. They’ve been
around longer, they’ve been in the company longer and I really need them to help me
figure out how I can develop myself and move ahead.
The second thing is just that I really need them to protect me to be able to my job and
to not let unwanted intruders get involved in corporate politics, pulling resources
away, meddling or intervening in the work that we’re doing before it’s completed. So
I need them to create a protective cocoon around me once we’ve agreed that the
work that I’m doing is important, let me do it.
The other two are fairly simple and business-like in my experience, which is we need
you to help us go to budget meetings and make sure that we have enough dollars to
do our work and that’s something that we really value.
And then we also need you to go out and get Rexfield or find us the right resources if
we needed an additional engineer for a particular thing.
Help us find those people.
27:13 Tom Floyd So it’s almost like their kind of falling into two categories.
One is what they need to kind of grow in their career and the others are this is what I
need to get my job done, kind of the logistical side of things.
27:22 Patrick Reilly That would be about it, yes.
27:24 Tom Floyd I’m hearing the music for our next break, so we’ll go ahead and go on pause.
30:40 Tom Floyd Where we left off right before our last break, we were talking a little bit about some of
the complaints that new managers have their first 90 days and on the side of that
what employees tend to complain about the first 90 days about their new boss.
Michele and Celia, I wanted to turn to both of you.
Patrick shared some great examples of some specific things in terms of employee
needs that they tend to express.
Do you have any stories or examples or anything that you can share when you think
of, one time there was a situation where this is what the employees were upset with,
this is what the manager was upset with, and what that was like?
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31:25 Michele Volpe Yes, one of the complaints that I’ve heard a lot about from employees about new
managers is, again, that the new manager comes in and in the effort of trying to
prove him or herself and get some wins under the belt, they try to make decisions
really quickly without necessarily involving their team.
So the employees themselves can feel left out and often have a lot of good ideas and
answers and experiences to lend to the manager’s efforts, but can feel left out if the
manager doesn’t include them and engage them in the problem-solving process.
I have an example of that where a new manager came in from outside the
organization and had a lot of experience but didn’t really know the new company’s
culture or what that particular team had been going through.
She knew how to get the job done in the other environment where she had come
from but assumed that it would work in this new culture, when in fact there were a lot
of factors that would probably make that approach not workable.
She started off assuming a lot of things and putting together a vision and then she
presented it to her staff, and lo and behold, found out there was a lot there that
wasn’t going to work.
They were resisting her work. They were not particularly engaged and had to kind of
backtrack and start over again and sit down with the team and simply do more of
what we talked about earlier in the show, listen, ask questions, and rely on the
expertise in the room.
And that in turn created a lot more trust from her team members and buy into her
leadership. It kind of comes back to what we talked about, listening to your team and
being a learner and having beginner’s mind when you start out as a manager.
33:14 Tom Floyd And going back to the observation mode, so to speak.
33:16 Michele Volpe Exactly.
33:16 Tom Floyd Got it.
Celia, anything that you would add?
33:19 Celia Young I have found very specific things that worked within the last 20 years because most of
my clients’ employees are moving around the globe. What happens is, the area of
help they really need is cross-culture.
Crossing over cultural boundaries.
How to manage a team that’s actually not all Americans, and so their framework is
coming from American centric framework.
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36:57 Tom Floyd Thanks for hanging in there.
We had a bit of a technical glitch there.
Where we left off we had had a conversation about some of the complaints that new
managers and new employees typically express in their role.
And we were starting to get into a discussion about how a coach can help with some
of the myths that have come up around that. Michael, I started with you and I think
we got cut off because we had a little glitch there.
I’m going to ask you to step back. The first myth really was around now I’ll have the
freedom to implement my ideas, was the first myth that the article had highlighted.
Can you talk a little bit more about that in terms of why new managers tend to have
that myth?
Where it comes from and how they go about kind of acting on that?
37:47 Dr. Michael I have two individuals we’ve been working with coaching recently. Both of whom are
O’Connor newer to this organization, but one is a brand new manager, who was a high
individual contributor.
The other is a seasoned manager, but again new to this organization. Both of those
individuals are really experiencing a lot of trouble because of this myth that they tend
to have the belief in their own head that they have to be in charge or in control.
And they were given assessment feedback at the start in telling that their success
would be a function of whether or not they could collaborate and build the other team
members into a more productive, high-morale group by effective listening and
encouraging people, getting input, and things we’ve been talking about, and working
together with them to foster team building.
At this point in time school is out because the two of them have gone back to their old
habits, which tends to be over-supervision and they can’t wait 90 more days. That’s
something they knew going in but as a habit they chose not to change and now
they’re at risk.
39:03 Tom Floyd Let me go ahead and turn to the rest of the group.
Anything come to mind there?
Anything that you would add?
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39:09 Michele Volpe I think it’s a great opportunity, that example that Michael just shared, for a coach to
help a manager see the big picture.
Most of us tend to go into our comfort zones when we’re under stress. When you’re
a new manager and those behaviors aren’t serving you, as it sounds like in the case
of his clients, a coach can help the client see the cost of relying too heavily on those
old behaviors that are not suitable for the new environment.
You’re a manager now, you’re expected to perform in a different way, and here’s the
cost if you can’t make the adaptation. The coach can also help that new manager
practice those new skills, role-play them, so that they can get more and more
comfortable over time in implementing them.
39:55 Tom Floyd So the coach is almost like a sounding board I that case?
39:57 Michele Volpe Yes.
40:00 Tom Floyd Got it.
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40:01 Celia Young This is Celia and as a coach we often help our client to discover their own resistance.
Resistance actually is framed in a very actually positive way from the way I’ve been
working on.
Resistance means that there is something that they’d rather spend energy on, so
those are their habitual patterns, like Michele was talking about. The habitual pattern
only got them so far and they hang onto that particular success formula and now
they’re in a different environment.
What do they need to do to expand themselves?
Earlier in the show somebody mentioned about you go from being an individual
contributor and now you’re a manager, what are some of the different things you had
to rely on, maybe that had nothing to do with the past.
It means all the success you got up to this point may not help you any further than
this.
Especially in the area of technology, and I’ve worked with so many scientists, and
they have the worst problems of becoming managers because they really don’t want
to. And so now they’re there because the system said to them, one, and a success
indicator is for you to take the promotion, and what they really want to do is really
discover the next best formula.
So how can they enlarge their repertoire a little bit to say that now they really have to
rely on other people in the team to really make the success happen, not just
themselves?
41:41 Tom Floyd So they’re just starting to realize that they’re not in it alone, specifically.
41:44 Celia Young No, they’re not.
41:45 Tom Floyd That they can actually use the members of their team and other folks they have there
to help them.
41:48 Celia Young Yes, and this is internal work.
This has nothing to do external.
This is internal.
Someone has to really have time for reflection about connecting who they are to the
kind of work they want to contribute.
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42:05 Tom Floyd Okay.
In terms of that same myth, the article had also mentioned the reality, which is
exactly what you just got at.
The interdependency.
Curiosity question there is, do new managers ever express fear when they kind of
feel that humbling feeling that the article gets at in terms of those people who work
for me could get me fired.
Does that manifest at all in the coaching relationship and do you find yourself kind of
talking to the new manager about that and helping them deal with that fear?
Patrick, anything come to mind there?
42:40 Patrick Reilly You asked us to talk about this specifically offline a couple of minutes ago, and I
have a pretty clear example that occurred just last week.
I have a coaching client with whom I’ve been working for a while who just a week and
a half ago reassumed her old position for the entire organization. She had been
managing a smaller piece of it.
And I had a meeting scheduled with her sometime one day last week, and a few
hours before that I got a call from one of the people with whom she works as a peer,
who said, she’s back to her old habits.
I then had 45 minutes just listening to him and trying to calm him down, and he said,
you know, as soon as she got control of a larger organization responsibility for the
whole thing she went back to where she was six months ago.
At the end of the day what was interesting is that some of it was true, some of it
came from the prior perceptions that she had created around herself, particularly
negative ones, which people had held onto.
And the third piece was quite situational which was that because she, in the first few
weeks in this new expanded assignment, was working remotely with doing a lot of
management from a different location, and therefore, was sending a lot of emails to
people, which she didn’t do when she was actually in the office.
And that immediately pushed people’s buttons and they got alarmed that she was
sending out a whole lot of emails again, which people took as she’s trying to control
things again.
44:37 Tom Floyd It was almost like they were viewing her as maybe micromanaging some, being very
controlling—
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44:41 Patrick Reilly Oh, yes, yes.
Since that was the habit set that we’ve worked on mostly to try to get her to be seen
as a more effective and powerful leader, and that’s what happened.
And interestingly enough, my coaching conversation with her lasted about five
minutes because she said, what you’re telling me on a scale of 1 to 10 is about a 12.
And with permission which I had secured previously, she actually talked to the
person who had called me and they talked things through and that seemed to solve
at least 50% of the problem.
And, in fact, as we speak she is meeting with this gentleman and his entire team this
morning to iron this all out.
45:28 Tom Floyd It sounds like she, did she take the feedback well once it came out?
It sounds like she definitely wanted to rectify it.
45:36 Patrick Reilly What I’d say is that one of the issues with this particular client is that she always
takes feedback well.
What we’re trying to do together, or what I’m trying to help her do, is to be more
proactive and to recognize before she does or not does what it is that shouldn’t be
done or should be done as opposed to focusing so much in a world of apology.
There’s always receptive feedback but really with this particular client having her take
more informed action the first time is really one of the goals in this case.
46:16 Tom Floyd Got it.
I wanted to move on to on of the other myths.
In some of your story there it hinted at that a little bit and it had to do with control and
that was another one in the Harvard Business Review article I pointed out.
And it was the one that sounded so robotic to me, almost like, for Star Trek fans-the
Borg almost, you will become a part of the Borg, and what that myth was is I must get
compliance from my subordinates.
I want to throw that out there to the entire group. Is that something that you’ve seen
new managers try to really enforce that and what challenges or hurdles tend to come
up for them when they start to do that?
And I’ll open up that question to anyone.
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47:03 Celia Young This is Celia.
Let me jump in on that one. I’m not so sure I must have compliance is even the first
thing that the managers have as a consciousness. I think more like they are so
eager to have the team go in the direction that they felt like they’re being held
accountable for, so what they ended up doing is over-teaching, over-prescribing, as if
that’s the way to get their employees to follow them.
What happens when they do that is it sometimes has absolutely the opposite effect,
and we talk about being a coach to these managers. I would think that we would try
to make them coaches themselves.
Make them become developers and coaches so they can get folks to be willing to
participate and bring the best idea instead of bringing nothing but teaching and
prescribing.
48:02 Tom Floyd It’s almost like as a coach, where you’re helping the manager learn the art of getting
people to self-realize.
48:11 Celia Young Exactly.
Otherwise, yes, this whole mode of compliance, I haven’t heard that term outwardly,
in other words managers don’t use that term but they wanted is for people to all sign
onto the same thing, go the same way, follow the path so they could be successful.
But the way they do it is having the opposite effect.
48:37 Tom Floyd Got it.
Michael, anything that you would add?
48:41 Dr. Michael What I see is that really, most of the new managers, they are anxious.
O’Connor
That would be the common characteristic, and based upon how they’re wired, they
have different sources of anxiety, and it’s real because the vast majority of people
who are either new managers or existing managers don’t have a sound model for
managing and they don’t have a proven process for effectively coaching performers
to higher performance.
49:14 Tom Floyd Okay.
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49:15 Michele Volpe Yes.
I would piggyback on that too, Tom, because what I see with new managers is the
fear of failure driving them sometimes to exercise that control factor, and it really
works against them.
There’s an assumption there that I have to have all the answers rather than an
assumption of the team may have much of the wisdom and the answers that I need
and the more I can engage my team, trust my team, and align my team, the better
chance we will all have of being successful.
So part of the coaching opportunity is to help the new manager realize you don’t
have to assume you have all the answers, and try not to let fear drive your actions so
much, as empowering your team, engaging your team, and using the whole team’s
wisdom to move forward.
It creates more of a trust issue there.
Building trust with the team and the leader and that ultimately paves the way for more
success.
50:17 Tom Floyd I kind of feel like I’m on The Apprentice asking this next question, but it was kind of
popping in my head as you were talking.
Do you see situations where sometimes you’ve got a new manager who is actually
successful if you look at the facts in terms of what he or she got done, they get a lot
of things done, were successful there, but what actually ended up being their
downfall, the reason that they left the organization or were asked to leave, is because
everybody hated their guts?
50:46 Patrick Reilly This is Patrick. Absolutely.
Tom, I would just say, Donald Trump has done fine being on The Apprentice, so I
wouldn’t be concerned about that.
You make me think of a particular client who was brought in because he was a
closer.
He knew the business, he could generate clients and customers, he brought lots and
lots of money in the door, and he just did not know how to manage himself around
other people.
He was not a quick learner in the new culture. He didn’t pick up very quickly or
readily on the signs and signals, and his final coup was he irritated with his style a
very important customer as well as a senior member of his own organization who
pretty much they said; I’ve had enough of him.
And it was all about his inability to manage his relationships successfully, not at all
about his task accomplishments or the amount of cash that he brought to the
organization. People just didn’t want to work with him.
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52:07 Tom Floyd Interesting.
I had a feeling I was going to hear some examples of that coming up.
Any other stories or anything that anyone would add along that note?
52:16 Dr. Michael What I would say Patrick’s comment and your question, Tom, are really talking about
O’Connor managers who are task leaders but they are not morale leaders.
In this day and age to succeed you’ve got to be good at both high productivity and
high morale and those individuals typically don’t leave the organization, they get
promoted up, the ones that people really respond to because those are the key
resources.
52:44 Tom Floyd Okay.
52:44 Celia Young And I could add to that. I would say that some of these managers get promoted all
the way to the top and then at that moment it’s really a reflection of the entire
organization culture.
They basically reward and promote folks who are task-oriented, I call the giant
machine.
You just had to follow the machine and everything works perfectly if you work the
machine, and people sacrifice their relationship and their own well-being because
they know this is the trade-off, if I am an employee I want to work in a particular
organization for all the goodies and benefits I could get. I’d be willing to sacrifice my
soul almost to do it.
And I’ve went into so many of these kinds of organizations in the last 20 years.
They’re extremely successful, so if you ask any particular manager, they would say it
ain’t broke why fix it?
Actually it’s not true because underneath of it people are bleeding.
So if you are a new manager, you walk right into something like this and you want to
be successful you’re going to have to follow the same rule and be the machine.
53:57 Tom Floyd And so, if you have a machine though, it’s got blood and bones all over it, that
doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good machine.
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54:03 Celia Young It’s not.
Eventually it’s going to catch up.
The way that it catches up is when the organization realizes the business climate is
changing and all of a sudden they had to go look for a different kind of customers and
that all shows up.
All these people who are making machine work realized that they can’t help
anymore.
They lost all the creativity with this kind of machine.
54:26 Tom Floyd Got it.
54:26 Michele Volpe If I could add one more thing because there was an earlier—
54:29 Tom Floyd I hate to cut you off here.
We are right at the end of our show unfortunately, and gosh, I feel like this show
alone could become three in and of itself, but huge thank you to all four of you.
And as always, a big thank you for our listeners as well.
For more information about our show, you can of course, look us up on the Voice
America Business channel, you can visit our website at www.ieconsulting.biz, you
can also look us up in Apple iTunes, just go to Music Store, click Podcast, and enter
Insight on Coaching.
Thanks everyone.
We’ll see you next week.
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