Executive Podcast #292: Cultivating a Culture of Accountability

Chris Goede:
Hey, listeners, Chris Goede here with some bonus business insight before we jump into today’s episode. If you’re looking for the right place to host your next business gathering, conference or event, look no further than Orlando, Florida. It’s no coincidence that Maxwell leadership hosts our biannual international Maxwell Conference in Orlando. Between its many luxurious hotels, meeting spaces and venues, Orlando is the perfect place for you and your team to gather, collaborate and grow. Whether you’re traveling for business or bringing your company for a meeting, there’s a reason Orlando is as much a business capital as an entertainment one. And let’s not forget the delicious cuisine at one of the 46 Michelin rated restaurants where your team can kick off your evenings. So before you plan your next business eventually, check out Orlando, where the possibilities for business travel are unbelievably real.

Perry Holley:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership executive podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holly, a Maxwell leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:
And I’m Chris Goede, executive vice president with Maxwell leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. As we get started, we’re going to talk today about coaching. We’re going to talk about coaching for growth. Not just necessarily coaching, I think people probably coach. But today we’re going to specifically talk about coaching for growth. So as we go through this and you go, man, that is something that. That I’m attracted to.

Chris Goede:
That is something that I need. I want Perry Holly to coach me. That’s what I’m saying right here. What I want you to do is go to maxwellleadership.com/podcast. Click on this podcast. You can fill out the form there, let us know that. And we have an incredible bench of executive coaches that do coaching every single day for organizations and leaders around the world. Perry is one of those.

Chris Goede:
And so if this is something that is intriguing to you as we dive through this, I want to encourage you to use that resource. Well, as I just mentioned, we are big fans of growth. It’s one of our values around here. We’re big fans of. Of coaching. It’s probably been over the last three years. Even you would attest to this, is that our coaching side of things, the requests for it have grown tremendously, even more so than training at times. And so there are a lot of people out there that are looking for it.

Chris Goede:
What I love about it is that I think coaching is what makes training and ideas and reading and growth sustainable. Over time and you’re able to kind of go through and hold people accountable to that. So let’s combine these two and talk a little bit about it today.

Perry Holley:
I have noticed that the used to be several years ago people have a workshop one and done and hope it stuck. And it doesn’t.

Chris Goede:
It doesn’t.

Perry Holley:
Nice day. Fun. Perry’s very entertaining. However, the coaching makes it sticky. So we do the workshop, then we come in with some coaching follow up month after month after month. And it helps that. So a friend of mine, people know I like reading and stuff. So a friend of mine recommended a book to me called Cultures of growth by Mary C.

Perry Holley:
Murphy. And what, Miss Murphy? Her premise was that teams and companies can take on a mindset and, you know, about mindsets can either be kind of fixed or growth. And these shared beliefs about how intelligent we are, how much talent we have, how much ability we have that can be held by the team. Well, I never thought about, you know, I know individually, but it can kind of permeate the team. And so she, she presents, do you want to have this culture of growth? It can boost collaboration, innovation, risk taking, resilience, integrity and ethical behavior if you’re promoting this culture of growth. And I thought, well, that’s a pretty good argument for moving in that direction. I like that.

Chris Goede:
Love that. So let’s talk a little bit about being a coach. Coaching leader, right. So what is that about? So when you think about this, people look at coaching, they look at mentoring, they look at different things. We’re going to talk about coaching a coaching leader today and it’s about unlocking the potential of the talent in other individuals.

Perry Holley:
Right.

Chris Goede:
It’s like pulling out the talent in them and unlocking that. It’s also providing effective feedback and then development opportunities for those that you are coaching. So let’s discuss a few things that makes coaches effective and what that looks like to ensure growth. Okay. So first, and maybe even often overlooked, is assess the readiness of the team for coaching and growth. Right. It almost reminds me, right. Of as when you’re younger being force fed medicine or something, they’re shoving it down your throat.

Chris Goede:
You don’t want it, you’re not ready for it, you’re not going to receive it well. And so we’ve got to really think and step back and go, okay, where are they at? What are they motivated by? What’s the current potential that they have? What’s the current need for really them to grow in the organization and their readiness and have an open discussion about that. So that there is, there’s buy in, there’s connection between the two of you. And so we’ve got to make sure that we are going through a process of understanding, diagnosing where they’re at and where they desire to go before we prescribe what that growth plan looks like and what we’re going to coach them through.

Perry Holley:
I think about strengths and weaknesses too, that what are for every individual, when I think about what non culture of growth leaders may do, is that, and I’m just, I’m coaching a guy right now who finally confessed that he’s doing too much. He’s actually micromanage. He’s in everybody’s business. And I said, do you not trust them? He goes, well, I trust them. They’re very good. I just want to make sure it’s done.

Chris Goede:
I said that whole, well, that told you to answer before you even said anything. As soon as you’re saying, well, you knew right away, didn’t you? You were like, yeah.

Perry Holley:
So the idea of, I said, I want you to take on the idea of becoming a coaching leader. And I said, I want you to, before our next call, tell me the strength and weaknesses of every one of your senior leaders. What is it that they do great and where are their gaps? And this is where you can apply yourself to really help them by assessing their readiness, you can begin to identify the gap. And then we cut to the gap on that. A second thing that the author pointed out was about providing clear direction and support for the individuals that clearly communicating team objectives and the members role, the team members role in that objective. I thought, man, you can’t have a growth culture if roles are not clearly defined and identified and objectives are not known, expectations are not clearly established. This ongoing guidance that you provide in a supportive environment really helps to clarify. It helps to focus, it helps to set up an area where you can provide constructive feedback.

Perry Holley:
I just love this. If I, everybody on my team knows their role, our objective and their role in going meeting that objective. We’re doing pretty well. And then I can identify again, I’m looking for gaps and go back to what you said about assessing readiness. Are they ready in that role and where can I help? And start providing the tools, resources, coaching, whatever they need to close that gap.

Chris Goede:
A non coaching leader in that situation basically would make a statement. And by the way, I’ve experienced this in previous leaders that I’ve had, where they make a statement, they’re non coaching leader and they’re like, all right, that’s awesome. Let me know how that goes.

Perry Holley:
Right.

Chris Goede:
They didn’t even give you the clear direction of where we want that growth to be. More importantly, is the support behind it. And I think where that gets left out in non coaching leaders is they get to that point of, well, I don’t have time. I don’t have whatever, whatever. I just want to. Hey, Perry, I see this in you go do that.

Perry Holley:
Right.

Chris Goede:
Well, we gotta. We gotta support them with time, with resources, with thoughts, with ideas, and create that dialogue. If we do want to be a coaching leader around that. Well, third is man, challenge them to grow.

Chris Goede:
Right.

Perry Holley:
Sounds simple enough. Does it?

Chris Goede:
Does. Like, it does sound simple enough. Right. And for me, like, I love to be challenged, extremely competitive, and if I get challenged, like, I’m ready to go and be challenged to grow. So we need to do that. We need to do it in the right way to the people and how they’ll receive it well. Right. I have some people that need it, you know, communicated a different way than others.

Chris Goede:
But, man, assign them, you know, strategically different tasks and projects that they get exposure, they begin to get stretched, they’re working cross functionally and collaborative, collaboratively with different people, expose them to diverse situations so that when they come on the other side of it, they have a little bit more creativity, they have a little bit more confidence and being able to do this, going back to what you said just a minute ago on the first one with support, we often talk about some of the things we do in regards to how we develop people and how we coach them, is let them come along with you in certain situations to be exposed to these different things. And then after they see and feel it, then challenge them to grow in those situations.

Perry Holley:
I have the expressed pleasure of standing in front of many audiences, and I’ve stood in front of thousands and thousands of people, and I cannot tell you the percentage, but it is in the high nineties. When I say, what is your personal development plan? What is your growth plan? Maybe I make it sound too complex. I said, what are you doing to get better? The stairs and the quiet and the crickets that appear? And I thought, it’s like, I don’t have time for this. I’m trying to keep my head above water. I said, well, if you could develop a little bit of your skills and abilities, you might get your head more above water. But this idea that growth will just happen over time is false. Hear me? Growth doesn’t happen by accident. It requires intentional effort.

Perry Holley:
And so for me, as a leader, is. I love this idea. I think the non coaching culture leader disallows people to do their own thing. They are so busy themselves, they’re not developing themselves. So it’s hard to. That’s the key right there. It’s hard to get to encourage people to do growth when you’re not doing growth. And I understand the time issues, but I’m really gonna kick now.

Perry Holley:
Is that this idea of the unseen hours of your day, those early, late, whatever the unseen hours are for, you determine where you’re gonna go. What are you doing with those hours? Are you sleeping them away, listening to sports radio, watching the news? Could you dedicate a portion of that? I’m not saying give up the sports radio or the news, but I’m saying my unseen hours start with me, and then I’ll go to the sports and the news, and then I have something to show and it compounds over time. So we have some great lessons on doing small things daily that will compound over time to be remarkable or you do nothing and then the time’s going to pass and you’re going to have nothing to do that. So this is a big one for me, is that if you can get your people growing, it will take your team to the next level?

Chris Goede:
Yeah, let me jump in here real quick before you go to the next one. I think as you’re sitting there, I was going, yeah, no, that sounds great. Sometimes I have my flesh. Sometimes I have a hard time holding myself accountable to all that. And what I love about a coaching relationship is that, man, not only do we help you, you know, through asking the right questions, what are you doing? What is that happening in the hours where it’s just you? We’re going to help you develop an action plan, and then, more importantly, we’re going to ask you about it on the next call. We’re going to hold you accountable to it, and then that, then you’re going to begin to see growth. As long as we can just get some movement and some momentum, and you’re going to see some growth because you’ve invested in a coach to walk along that road with you. You’re going to see the benefits of it, and then it’s going to kind of come out of you as a coaching leader.

Perry Holley:
I just sent a guy this morning, and in my unseen hours, I discovered a video that is a 1 minute and 32nd video that spoke to exactly what he and I were talking about. So I sent it to him. I’m trying to encourage him to start a little morning routine, but I’ll know a lot if he thinks that the minute and a half is too much of an investment. Although I got a problem. Number four, this is about having a culture of growth would be exhibit your own vulnerability, transparency and trust. And I think we talk a lot about that here about being vulnerable builds trust and it says that are you open about sharing your own values, mistakes, decision making process? Do you build mutual trust by showing genuine care for the team members and their success? Are you putting yourself into the mix? Are you sharing about your own challenges? Are you making those challenges? Learning opportunities for the team? And I think that’s one thing I think we do pretty well here. I really like the fact that we say God really messed that up. I was in front of this audience or we had this coaching or I presented to that client and we, then we share ideas about it.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, a non coaching leader here would, what I made a comment here just said would never level the playing field for me. Like a non coaching leader would just be somebody that I look at and I go, man, I can never attain that.

Perry Holley:
Right.

Chris Goede:
They don’t ever open up and go.

Perry Holley:
They look like they’re too perfect.

Chris Goede:
That’s right. And so you just kind of, what do you do? You’re just like, I can’t attain that. So kind of I’m done and I can never reach their level. So you become discouraged versus like you just mentioned, right. A coaching leader in that situation is going to be like, dude, let me tell you, this is what’s going on. This is where I grew. This is what I’ve learned and just share it with them.

Perry Holley:
I heard John say, this really affected me. He said that if people look at you as the leader and they say, so what? You’ve kind of lost them. But if they look at you and say, me too, they’re with you. And I thought, yeah, that’s a little short, little quip I can think in my head, are these people looking at me and saying, so what? You seem so perfect. You got it all together. I’m not so perfect. I don’t have it all together. I hear my struggles, my mistakes, where I need help, then they go, oh, me too, me too.

Perry Holley:
Now I’m bought in.

Chris Goede:
And then when you do that as a coaching leader for growth, what they’re going to do is it’s going to, it’s going to create that organic conversation where they’re going to come back and be like, you remember when we talked about, tell me a little bit more about that. And now all of a sudden that coaching dynamic is happening there as a leader for growth well, finally, number five is celebrate progress and success. Regularly recognize both individual and team achievements to keep them motivated and to continue growing. Like, you have to have that incentive to keep going.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. And non coaching culture leaders would not even acknowledge that you’re doing, not give you credit, not ask you what your successes are. You probably wouldn’t even notice that.

Chris Goede:
No. Well, as we wrap up, the key is to move beyond simply just telling team members what to do, but really coaching them so that they discover their own potential, that they discover they can overcome challenges, that they can learn from their experiences and become more confident and leaders. You know, are you being coached and are you sharing what you’re learning? Back to what Perry said a little bit ago on one of the points where we talked about, well, maybe the leader is not even being coached. And if you’re not being coached, how are you going to be able to encourage your team to be open to being coached by you? Right. And you have to be able to share that. And so I’ll close with this, and this goes for all listeners, no matter what level you are. John, right now is on this, this kick of saying, if you ask me what’s the greatest attribute of an individual, he says it is teachability and coachability. If someone is coachable, if someone is teachable, then the sky’s the limit.

Chris Goede:
Like, that’s the number one attribute of a leader.

Perry Holley:
You can tell if someone’s teachable or not, and it says a lot to you when they are, especially if they’re senior to you and they’re still teachable. It’s great. It’s very attractive. Well, thanks, Chris. And just a reminder, if you want that learner guide, want to learn about our other family of podcast offerings? If you’d like to learn about our offerings, you can do all that at maxwellleadership.com/Podcast you can also leave us a question or a comment. We love hearing from you. Very grateful you’d spend this time with us this week.

Perry Holley:
That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership executive podcast.