© Rob hyrons | stock.adobe.com

As leaders we have a responsibility to make our employees better, not just more knowledgeable or experienced (by the way this is imperative for leaders of leaders as well).

One of the most common mistakes made by leaders is the focus on “correction” instead of “preparation.” To give direction is to share clear expectations on what we the leaders expect from our people, not just job descriptions and sales goals or results. Preparation is about helping our employees understand how we expect them to think, prepare and execute. This mistake looks like this: leaders spend more time correcting their employees after the fact, instead of spending time in the beginning to help them prepare.

A challenge for you as you read this article: Don’t ask yourself “Do I do this already or not,” ask yourself, “How can I do this better?” The goal is for you to take one or two of these lessons and use it to help you become a better coach tomorrow than you are today. Our goal as leaders should be to get better every week not by just learning more, but by changing and increasing our efforts because that is what we expect from those we lead.

We will focus on two key areas to help leaders focus on preparation over correction.

1. Giving clear expectations; this is basic in concept but rarely done consistently or effectively.
2. Purposeful preparation and activity management.

Each of these topics can stand on their own, but in this article we will touch on the key points of each one.

Giving Clear Expectations

Expectations are like accountability — most leaders feel they do this already, but in reality they fall short. First, expectations are not about the employee, they are about the leader. Every person who wants to be successful should want to know what their boss expects, how their boss thinks and what they like and don’t like. So as leaders we should share those with our people.

The first step is to understand that expectations must be in a written format and then reviewed verbally. If they are only in words or shared verbally alone, then they are not expectations, they are mere thoughts and opinions. Take the time to write down what the best performers do that others don’t and make them the expectations for all your employees. As leaders we should not accept anything less than a person’s best.

Two specific thoughts apply here:

• First, we would only expect the best effort from our kids, so why not our employees?
• Second, most leaders find the difference between their best employee and the worst performing employee is activity and choices.

With that being said, most of your employees are capable of achieving the expectations given.

Last, a leader must be willing to hold their people accountable to their expectations, otherwise they are again, mere suggestions. If done correctly, your top performer will see your expectations as basic and will use your expectation as the minimum standard of their performance (to be exceeded) and the bottom performers will use them as their max effort.

Creating and giving expectations are not easy tasks. They take time, thought and discipline, but the benefit will pay dividends for years.

Purposeful Preparation and Activity Management

Preparation with a purpose is about focusing on the journey, not the result. If a leader does not give their people a detailed plan of expected activities and only manages the results, then they can only manage by correction and not preparation.

As a sales leader for more than two decades I was very strict on activity management; not because I did not trust my people, but because I knew the activity would determine the productivity and the productivity would determine the results. I expected my sales managers to not only give the salespeople a high level of activity expectations, like number of calls per day, number of new contacts and referrals per week, and number of new appointments set for the following week before end of current week, but I also expected them to go over their upcoming days’ calls and meetings to help them prepare so they were able to be their best.

So often leaders make the mistake of thinking that focusing on a person’s activity and being involved in their employee’s day-to-day is micromanaging, but it’s not. Coaching is about preparing our employees to win and most important helping them by making them do the hard stuff that they probably wouldn’t do if their boss did not make them do it. I know as a salesperson, a sales leader and in my own personal life — if left to my own accord, I would not do what I know I should do because it is too hard to do or, more important, too easy not to do. Good news for me is I have a wife/boss that holds me accountable.

Final Thought

Why is it that every athlete, young and old, amateur and professional, strives for their coach’s attention and yet employees strive to have their bosses leave them alone? Simple — coaches spend 80 percent of their time preparing the player for success and managers spend 80 percent of their time correcting their employees for minimum performance. To be a coach, our people must see our involvement as necessary to making them better. As leaders, when we coach our employees and spend time with those that deserve the attention — instead of with those that need our attention — not only do our employees see us as a benefit, they see our attention as a reward.

MANA welcomes your comments on this article. Write to us at [email protected].