The Workplace Coach

Whatever your genre of movies there is one consistent theme that runs through most of them. Transformation is often an uncomfortable, sometimes painful process. The teen heartthrob transforming into a giant werewolf once a month, a caterpillar into a butterfly, Bruce Banner into the Hulk or the ugly duckling into a beautiful swan. Change and growth will be accompanied by discomfort.

I often observe this process with my clients as they start to discover a different way to ‘manage’ their people. I ask managers to flip the script, to start thinking about how different their workplace might be if they started working for their team rather than maintain the illusion that the team work for them. This can be a tough lesson, a difficult concept to grasp and even more challenging to embody on a daily basis.

I was working with a client the other day and she told me about some of the frustrations that she was experiencing with one of her direct reports, lets call him Liam. Liam loves being in the spotlight, will put his hand up to lead projects, talks the most in meetings, and has stated a number of times that he needs to ‘build his resume’. He is young, ambitious and looking to climb the ladder. The problem is that Liam is, as my client described him, all flash and no dash. He talks the talk but can’t or won’t walk the walk.

Now Liam is no dummy, he’s just inexperienced. He considers himself a subject matter expert but doesn’t have the depth of experience that he needs, and he knows it. This is exactly why he tries to put himself in a ‘project lead’ role where he can delegate to others in the team who do have the expertise. You could argue that as long as he is good at delegating and managing people that this is okay, and you might be right. The trouble is he’s not particularly good at those things either, for the same reasons.

Liam is a classic case of ambition exceeding ability.

So what should my client, Liam’s manager, do about this? How should she handle it?

Some managers might surreptitiously look to put Liam back in his box, ensure that other people in the project team get the lead roles, start pushing some of the grunt work to Liam and holding him directly accountable. They might even start a performance management process.

A leader on the other hand might take a very different approach. A leader might adopt more of a mentoring, coaching approach with Liam. They might look to build the relationship with Liam, establish trust, let him know that they can see huge potential in him and assure him that they want to help him succeed. They might suggest to Liam that if he’s open to it, they could help him build a really strong foundation to set him up for success, noting that there is going to be some work involved. Friedrich Nietzsche said “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

It is quite likely that nobody has ever taken this approach with Liam. He has probably fumbled and stumbled his way to his current position without anyone ever offering to guide him, to help him grow. So if he is still open to doing some hard yards, with an understanding that you are prepared to invest time and effort in helping him, then it’s time to get started. The best thing is that Liam is not the only one to benefit here, the manager and the team will also win.

If you have a Liam in your team and aren’t sure which way to go with him, we would love to help. Find out more about what we do at The Workplace Coach.