The Hands-Off Manager (18 page)

As in math, when you introduce a negative to the workplace, it diminishes the total. Add a negative person to the team and the energy of the team is diminished.

When you are a positive leader with positive thoughts about the future and the people you lead, you add something to every person you talk to. You bring something of value to every communication. Every e-mail and voicemail that’s positive adds something to the life of the person who receives it. Because positive always adds to (increases, improves) something.

It’s a definite plus.

It runs even deeper than that. If you think positive thoughts throughout the day, you are adding to (plus sign) your own deep inner experience of living. You are bringing a plus to your own spirit and energy with each positive thought.

Your negative thoughts take away (minus sign) from the experience of being alive. They rob you of your energy.

And so the first thing a coaching conversation does is change the math. It alters the charge in the mind of the person being coached from negative to positive. That alone makes coaching immediately valuable.

Notice that most hands-on old-school micromanagers almost always bring a negative charge to their human interaction throughout the day. Every time they indulge in sarcasm about the organization, skepticism about the mission, or cynicism about the customer, the negativity builds. And they do this all day long.

One of the Internet’s most successful business gurus is Matt Furey (
www.mattfurey.com
), a former international champion martial artist who specializes in coaching his clients to stunning financial results. He is a friend of mine and shared with me his
own thoughts about negative people and the message he likes to send.

“If you’re interested in more success,” says Matt, “then you and I can spend time together. If you’re interested in blaming others, staying stuck, whining, complaining, and so on, then we will not hang out together. Simple as that. Now, why do you think I have this rule? I have it because I have witnessed what happens to me when I am around successful people. I get charged up. I get excited. And I succeed even more than before. But if I hang out with people who act and think like losers, then I start going downhill.”

A client of mine I’ll call Linda had a real problem. She was trying to run a sales and marketing team and failing at every turn. She was selling a service targeted to women, and her team was comprised of women who loved and admired Linda—almost to the point of worship.

Linda’s product was wonderful, but her team was losing money, and when she hired me to coach her, she thought she was a hands-off manager, but she wasn’t.

Linda had the same misconception about hands-off management that many people do—they think it means no accountability. They think it means to just fire people up, love them and then look the other way. If they don’t perform, express your hurt and disappointment.

Dangerous misconception.

Dangerous because you can lose your business or have your team fail miserably thinking this way.

Linda didn’t realize it, but she was trying to run her team on emotion alone. If her people had a bad month, she would get angry and subtly intimidate them. If they had a good month, she would become overjoyed and take them all out to a champagne dinner filled with promises and mindless joy.

When we sat down together for our first session, I wanted to have Linda see the importance of accountability.

“Business is a logical process run by emotional beings,” I told her, paraphrasing my favorite small-business millionaire Sam Beckford.

“How does that apply to our team?” she asked.

“Your team is on a roller coaster, up one day and down the other, based on your mood. You are teaching your people that their only real job is to win your approval.”

“Well, yes, that’s right. I want them to sell more and know that I’ll approve of them for that.”

“Not logical,” I said.

“How do you mean?”

“You’re basing the mission on emotion. They can’t perform well if they are constantly trying to anticipate your mood. That takes them back to dysfunction. Like little girls living in a household with an alcoholic mother. No one knows when it’s safe to talk to Mother.”

“What’s the alternative?” she said.

I told her that the alternative was to return her people to their work. To let them love their work, and make it better every day. To measure their progress. But not to strike fear into their hearts.

Linda was stunned by my assessment of her leadership style, but as I worked with her she began to see the value of holding her people accountable to themselves and their own best possible performance. She was opening up to a new way of seeing her business. She hadn’t always been this open!

“Why do I need coaching?” she once asked. “Why can’t I be fiercely self-reliant?”

This myth of isolation is just about the most painful thing any of us experiences—all day thinking,
I’m all alone—lost and afraid in a world I never made
.

Reaching out for help is not weakness, it is the ultimate in strength. It is a commitment to something other than looking strong. It is a commitment to something beautiful, a mission beyond the ego.

Doctors coach us on how to get well, teachers coach us on how to become knowledgeable, parents coach us on how to grow up, so why is this not just the most beautiful, natural way of it? Why is this not the most powerful way to grow?

It’s certainly the fastest.

Which is why the hands-off manager learns to become a masterful coach.

The great business management author and advisor Tom Peters says the manager in today’s workplace cannot be like yesterday’s boss. He tells managers, “Stop giving orders. Being the boss is no longer—if it ever was—about issuing mandates from on high. ‘Ordering’ change is a (stupid, stupid, stupid) waste of time.”

Your own humility will allow you to win the support of your people. Because you value them at the same level that you value yourself. Humility is not low self-esteem—quite the opposite: humility is exceptionally high self-esteem. It demonstrates a self-confidence that is so unshakable that you never have to put someone else down in order to make yourself feel better.

Coaching that helps bring a person “into alignment” with their true talent (passion) is not some goofy New Age narcissism. It increases productivity; hard numbers and profitability are affected. The growth curve and real dollar profit margins of the company Duane works for can only astonish competitors and onlookers who are reduced to guessing that they must have made some lucky land acquisitions in a prime market with good timing.

Well, yes, timing is everything. Especially when we notice that the time is always now.

What to do when coaching doesn’t work

If you have an unhappy employee who is under-producing, coaching is always your first option. Coaching can do so much!

Except when it can’t.

Yes, there are times when even the most masterful coaching will not change an employee’s poor attitude and inconsistent performance. Some people are just not open to it.

It is at this point that we like to remember the words of Harvey Mackay, chairman of the Mackay Envelope Company, who said, “It’s not the people you fire who give you problems; it’s the people you don’t fire.”

So why are we so reluctant to fire people? Aside from the paperwork annoyances involved, we are traumatized by the thought of firing someone for two very unnecessary reasons: (1) we think replacing them will be difficult, and (2) we think we will be doing them great harm.

Let’s look at the first mental obstacle—the difficulty in replacing a person. The truly masterful hands-off manager must be a (not good, but) great recruiter and attractor of talent. Talent is everything today. The company with the most talent wins. Hands-off management is wasted on mediocre people. You want dedicated people who love what they do, and you want to be great at bringing them on board. So releasing a person who is unhappy and underperforming and not a team fit is a pleasure—not a problem. It is a pleasure because of who you have waiting in the wings! You are always making your team better and better. You understand that talent rules. It is not that you are always looking to replace and upgrade people who work for you. The opposite is true—you are constantly looking for ways to help them succeed. And a big part of that commitment to their success is the willingness to remove obstacles in their path. Sometimes those obstacles are people on the team who are simply not a fit—people who are not aligned with what the team is committed to.

The second mental obstacle is that thought that you are harming someone by firing them. You are not. If that person is unhappy and unproductive, you are harming them by keeping them. Letting them go will set them free to find work they like to do. In the end, that’s the greatest gift you can give. Even current HR surveys show that people who are fired are more likely to improve their financial standing in life than people who quit. That’s the proven career value of a wake-up call!

Football coach Vince Lombardi was famous for saying, “If you are not fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.”

Duane lets people go who won’t contribute and are misaligned with the team. He lets them go! He says to them, “You’re my friend. I really care about you—and you’re in the wrong position. You will be much happier when you find a job that you love to do. Even if you feel disappointed right now that I’m letting you go, even if you’re angry, I still want you to have an opportunity to find alignment for yourself somewhere in a job that works for you. You’re the right person for that. This is the wrong job for you.”

Duane says that through the many years of working in his company he and his colleagues are unanimous on one point—“We’ve never let a person go too soon.”

It’s hard to keep creating a better team. We get distracted from the challenge by the daily problems of the workplace. Soon we think we’re too pressed and swamped to recruit and interview properly so we hire people quickly to “fill immediate needs,” and the quality of the team goes downhill. We have become distracted from our original vision. Therefore, vision-renewal is a daily activity of the hands-off manager. There can’t be exceptions to the vision of excellence.

“You have to release people who are not right for the team,” says Duane. “Because you care for them in a more elevated way than just trying to please them or be their buddy. You can’t let the rest of your team suffer because of that one person. You end up working through a fair amount of people before you get the team you want, but once you do, they’ll serve you for a long time. It’s not like a sports team where athletes have short careers. Bodies wear down. But the mind lasts for a very long time.”

Under the supervision of a hands-off manager, the mind grows stronger, more imaginative, and more excited about doing great work.

Mariano was a powerful CFO of a company with a good-sized accounting staff. He had been on my Website reading about the breakthroughs that hands-off management was achieving.

“I don’t agree with your theories at all,” he said, as we sat down to chat at an outdoor restaurant.

“Really?”

“Really,” he said. “In fact, I told my partner that I was angry with you after reading your theories about hands-off guidance or whatever it is.”

“That is okay with me,” I said, “but remember that they’re not theories. They are experience. You don’t need theories about success in the workplace; there’s enough actual experience to look at.”

“Well, whatever—I got angry because I know it wouldn’t work. I could never trust my people that much.”

Mariano had always had problems with his people. He hired people in a hurry to meet needs and then spent most of his time furious with the mediocre work coming from his people.

“I have mediocre people,” he said, “who need to be watched and monitored every minute.”

“They are not mediocre people,” I said. “In the right job, with a trusting mentor, they could be magnificent. Every last one of them.”

“So you say.”

Mariano was not a respecter of human talent although he himself had a great deal of it. To him, people basically weren’t trustworthy, so therefore his recruiting efforts were never very visionary or creative. He always hired to fill a need. Never to fill a desire or to fulfill a vision.

Mariano’s anger came from not knowing how to mentor people and allow them to be successful. He thought mentoring was weak. Especially compared to his own system of criticizing, correcting, humiliating, and embarrassing his people.

“Your system is too easy,” he said.

“You were a parent raising your son for many years, if I am correct,” I said.

Mariano nodded and said, “Oh, yes.”

“Was that easy?”

“Hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

“But you loved him.”

“More than anything.”

“And you guided him and mentored him.”

“Constantly, until I didn’t need to.”

“Rewarding?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And because of your love, was parenting a weak or soft activity?”

“I see where you’re going with this, but there’s no comparison.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t want me to all of a sudden love my employees like I love Derek?”

“Maybe not all of a sudden.”

“After when? I get a heart transplant? After I get new employees?”

“After you coach them. After you really, truly coach them, you won’t have to try to love them. It will just happen.”

“Why is that?”

“Because you’ll get closer with every session. You’ll be partnering for the higher good. You’ll be sharing life’s most difficult experiences. And you’ll be sharing life’s best moments—moments of growth.”

Mariano wasn’t convinced. But he was willing to listen. And, ironically, he’d always been an admirer of Duane’s team. (“How does he pull down those numbers year after year?” he would ask, shaking his head at this strange “magic.”)

I wanted Mariano to get something: When firing a non-producer is not your current choice, then coaching is what you must do.