Imagine this situation. Fred is in your sales team and at the end of every month Fred misses his sales target because his customers never pay their invoices on time. 

It’s the end of the month and once again Fred is in your office looking very sorry for himself. It’s absolutely not his fault (he says): he does the work, he sends the invoice in good time, the customer promises to pay at the end of the month and then it never happens and there’s absolutely nothing that Fred can do (says Fred).

How do you respond?

  • 1. As you know I was in sales for many years Fred, and this is what you should do.
    I always negotiated a contract well in advance, I always called their Accounts department halfway through the month to make sure the payment was on track and if all that failed, I would go and sit in their Reception with a face like thunder and refuse to leave…
  • 2. Don’t you worry Fred, I’ll do what I do every month and I’ll call the CEO (as you know we play golf together) and he’ll make sure that he talks to Accounts to get that invoice paid for you.
  • 3. Okay Fred so explain to me exactly what you think the problem is here and why you think it keeps happening?
    Given this situation what do you think your options are? What do you think you could do differently next time to solve this? Where do you think the bottleneck is? Who in their Accounts department could help you with this?

This extreme situation with the hapless Fred may be tongue in cheek, but it does make an important point.

Why rescuing doesn’t work

If you keep ‘rescuing’ someone (as in 2 above) either in your professional or personal life you keep them as a victim. This means they never step up and they never take accountability for themselves or their actions. Meanwhile you, as their rescuer, will probably become increasingly exasperated with them. What you need to understand is that you are a key part of this dysfunctional dynamic, and ‘rescuing’ is not a long-term solution to solving problems with members of your team.  

So what does work?

Coaching and mentoring, on the other hand, are powerful leadership skills. They are not the same thing, so it’s important to be able to distinguish between the two and to know which to consciously deploy in a specific relationship or situation.

Mentoring is when you use your own experiences and knowledge to advise and help someone who typically has less experience than you. The dynamic between Chairman and CEO for example is typically one of mentoring more than coaching. This is example 1 above.

Coaching (example 3) is based around the principle that your ‘coachee’ needs to find their own solution to their problem. If they do that, they are far more likely to ‘own’ both the problem and the solution. Coaching encourages people to be more creative, to be braver, and to take pride in what they do. When you coach someone you don’t impose your ‘mental map’ on them. You listen very carefully and you ask lots of open questions. You free up their thinking.

If you would like to find out more about how coaching can help you do get in touch. I’d be delighted to chat through the issues you’re dealing with. Contact me at 07770 221166 or ab@leaderslab.co.uk.

Tags: ,