I'm Muriel Wilkins, and this is Coaching Real Leaders, part of the HBR Podcast Network. I'm a longtime executive coach who works with highly successful leaders who've hit a bump in the road. My job is to help them get over that bump by clarifying their goals and figuring out a way to reach them so that hopefully they can lead with a little more ease.
I typically work with clients over the course of several months, but on this show, we have a one-time coaching meeting focusing on a specific leadership challenge they're facing. Today's guest is someone we'll call Mo to protect his confidentiality. He's based in the Middle East and manages a client-facing team dispersed across multiple locations.
His team has doubled in size in the last few years and it hasn't always been easy. Before being promoted to director, when I was a project manager, I wasn't really having direct reports.
Maybe this was the main challenge when it came being a director and something related to the challenge is maybe that when I got promoted, it was during the COVID, the turnover was... absolutely high you know so while I was just getting promoted and I'm starting to work how I'm going to manage the team I was just getting a lot of people are resigning and I need to to maintain them so actually I lost
half of my team in actually a couple of months. And it was a big struggle for me at that time. Moe advanced steadily at his company and has performed well. He made the shift to his current director-level role during a tumultuous time. But he's also running into other challenges that he didn't expect. a diversified team from junior to senior employees. Your expectation is always that you need to give a hand for the junior team and you trust the senior.
ones that they know the job, they know how to do it. You trust their decisions. But when it came to reality, it's totally the opposite. I've seen a lot of incidents happened and... Unfortunately, I'm struggling with managing the senior employees in my team. We started the conversation there by looking deeper at how exactly he was struggling with more senior members of his team.
versus the more junior members, and how the impact of this dynamic was playing out. Let's dive in. It's a struggle because I feel it's unfair. for my team because they know each other and they know how each project within the company
Within our region, it's moving and is it healthy or not? So when they hear about escalations that are happening with senior employees versus what they are doing in their projects and they are achieving their milestones, you are getting the questions from the... juniors why you are not promoting me or giving me i'm doing better people they start to compare and it's affecting i would say the team split that's one of the things
The other thing, I don't have a successor. And for me, I feel this is a thing because if I'm not having a successor, I don't feel that I did my job or I didn't deliver the message as expected. I'm trying not to be... blaming myself but i'm keeping myself accountable at the end that at certain point I need to make sure that there is someone to manage the team for certain time or even to release one or two of the junior project managers to be direct reports to one of these seniors.
Which is, until now, I'm not able to give this green light. Okay. What would make you feel like you can give this green light? If I got the trust from them, if I felt that they are accountable, if I felt that they are able to manage. their projects as expected without I wouldn't say advice it's not the normal advice Mariel you know it's we're talking here sometimes about basics that it shouldn't be going this way
It's mainly about trusts. All right. And it sounds like the trust for you would come if you could see that they are performing, delivering their projects as expected. Yes. Okay. So I heard you say that your hope would be that the senior level folks on your team, that they could be accountable to what they need to be doing.
So my question for you is, what role have you been playing in holding them accountable? I'm having my one-to-one meeting with all the team. I'm trying to be updated with their project progress. I'm asking them about any challenges.
not to get dragged with the day-to-day interaction but just as an oversight on the whole project how is it moving and any challenges especially if i know that for example they are managing a new country that they are not familiar with the regulations and they might be looking for some guidance i can give such thing but again if they are coming up with a lot of issues without coming with a solution
That's one of the flags. I would say that they are not being accounted. If they are having issues that wasn't pre-identified and it was just flagged when it came with an official escalation. That's a flag for me that they are not getting accountable. If the rest of the team working with them, they are struggling and I'm getting some concerns from cross-functional departments about...
either responsiveness or in the way of communication or the support that they are expecting from a project manager. It's a flag of accountability. Okay, so... When these things happen, let's just take, you know, they come up with issues, but no solution, or you're hearing complaints from cross-functional groups about lack of responsiveness. And I hear you when you say it's a lack of accountability. What I'm curious about is what is it that you are doing as their manager when these things happen?
if i'm going to take an example here for such a situation so one of them was just coming with big experience he was a director actually but He was looking for a job and he applied for a project manager. I knew that when I was interviewing him, even I had this discussion that. Wouldn't you see that it's going to be a challenge that you are downgrading to level from what you had previously? You had a lot of direct reports and he told me at the end, I'm looking for the new challenges and I'm open.
to take the ladder. But what happened when he joined and we started working together, he had a lot of concerns. Maybe it's the company culture, maybe how we are running the business.
it looks different from what he has experienced on different companies his expectation that we should be challenging each other that this is something healthy for the work but we don't have this kind of interactions and so he was always he's coming with some guidance or recommendations but at certain point it became that they are not accepting this kind of
recommendations. And at the beginning, I just thought it's benign and you will just try to move on because you need to build relations and rapport with the team that you are working with. But unfortunately, these kinds of concerns started to raise from different people and I had to have this discussion at certain point trying to calm him down and to focus on the work itself rather than
focusing on the people and what they are doing so let's just make the job done and everyone will be happy but it came with a very defensive discussion i would say so it was a struggle for some time Even if I've seen some improvement in this communication internally, still I'm finding struggles with the communication with the external stakeholders. So, Mo...
What do you think you need to do? I would go for my way of discussion when it comes to negative feedback. So frankly speaking, I'm not that confrontational person. but i tried to deliver the message and i did it in a way or another not sure if i need to try different strategy to get different outcome
which I think it's a must because I cannot do the same and expect different outcome. But with his level of seniority, you will feel that he might be bored a little bit or his feeling he lost the... the passion and he's looking for the next step yeah but again this is putting me in a challenging part because i cannot give someone who's not delivering and he's not getting what is expected from a project
And I'm just rewarding him to give him direct reports because that's what he's looking for. It cannot be this way. I feel that I need to put him this year underneath development grades. But I feel it's going to be a very tough discussion to go through with. Yeah. My big challenge with him when we're having discussion about performance or about issues is the defensive.
way he's talking about the accountability that always when we're talking about an issue happened or a gap that this issue or gap will be just thrown on someone it's this one he didn't review it correctly or this one didn't give me the right information or so at the end he's not going to say okay i'm accountable for that maybe i'm i didn't have this experience
having direct reports it's not that much long time to have a lot of tough discussions so let's take a step back because i want to kind of make sure that i am reflecting back what i'm hearing i think on the one hand you have this you know how do i drive accountability with these senior level folks right and so what it seems like you've tried to do
is when you see something that's not going right you provide them with some feedback albeit it might feel a little difficult to do so and in one of the examples that you shared it sounds like at least with the internal team, there was some difference. There was some change in behavior, but now you're seeing the behavior pop up again, but somewhere else. Yes.
And in those situations, what it means is, I mean, I don't know, was your expectation that when you gave him that feedback, that would be it? He would be done. He would, you know, make the change and then it would never happen again. It didn't happen from the first time. It took me like one year having these discussions with the different concerns that came from cross-functional department. Maybe it was like three, four months ago when we had this discussion.
I started our meeting saying that I can see improvements in the way of your communication with the colleagues internally. What do you think about that? And he told me at that time, yeah. I tried to follow the other ways in order to get things easier for us. I told them at the end, let's take it positively. You try to find other pathways that works at the end, which...
It seems right. And he told me I agree on that. So I tried to deliver, just encourage him that you are doing good. And I felt that it was a good message that he was able to digest it and things were.
moving in a better way but again when it came was the the other way around from the clients and now they are asking to remove him so we are talking here about unpleasant track record let's say Mo is experiencing what a lot of managers at any level experience, the need to have some difficult conversations with those he's managing and to try to shape behavior towards a path that's better for the organization overall.
The specifics here of why Mo's employee may or may not be performing is not what's important, because those specifics, they'll always change depending on who he's dealing with. But what we can focus on is whether Mo can use new ways of handling these situations when they arise. It's clear that he wants to do a good job here, and is self-reflective in realizing that even at his senior level,
He hasn't had to have many of these difficult feedback conversations in the past. I think it's important to note that as much as we might want to, it's not always a given that leaders and managers can help improve someone's behavior or performance. especially if they're not coachable. But what we do have control over is our own behavior and how we approach a situation, both mentally and tactically.
Now that we have context on Mo and what he's specifically struggling with, we can dig into coaching him through this particular staff situation he's dealing with and then end up with some higher level takeaways that he can apply elsewhere. So now you have a decision to make, right? The first is your expectation. You came in saying, you know, maybe I'm not having the conversation right with him.
It sounds like you're having the conversation. The behavior did change, right? There was some improvement, but... Now the behaviors, negative behavior is happening in other areas and you're getting some negative feedback on your direct report. So what that means is, you know, it's not completely solved. And if it's not completely solved, what it's going to require from you is having more feedback conversations. So I think that there's an expectation in your mind that because they are senior.
They only need to hear it once or twice, or this shouldn't even be happening. And when it is happening, you're giving them the feedback once or twice, and then it should just resolve itself. But that's not what's happening in reality. They still have issues. So then the question becomes, how many issues does there need to be for you to make a decision on whether this is a performance management problem or is it?
a skill that this person needs to learn that you're going to coach them through? From what I see, they have the capabilities, but they don't have the passion. That's my perception.
I trust my feelings at the end because I'm dealing with them on a daily basis. I know that if he's just focusing, giving more time, focusing on the projects, he will be able to deliver. But it's a matter of being... I should be in a better place or something like that, you know, which is I cannot just give you what you are looking for.
without getting what I'm looking for. Right. So it's the motivation on their end, the commitment on their end. Yeah. I'm trying to motivate from my side. I'm trying to keep people motivated. I'm trying not to get them bored because... Any job at certain time, it's becoming boring. You're doing the same. So you need to find something new. And that's what I'm trying to do. But I have a limit. And the other person, they need to do some effort as well. That's right. It's a two-way street.
Exactly. You can't motivate someone who is not open to be motivated. Exactly. Now, I don't know these folks that you're talking to, so I can't assess whether they are open to be motivated or not. But I am curious whether that is a conversation that you've had with them around their level of motivation and commitment. And as you put it, passion for being able to deliver.
on the competencies that they do have. I tried to have this discussion when we were talking mainly about the conflicts that were coming with the internal team. That was my main focus at that time. But I wasn't talking about motivation because... I wasn't expecting, frankly speaking, at certain point that I'm going to get back to the same point where I'm getting a client asking to remove him from the project. I was trying to get him busy.
You know, people, when they are not busy, they lose motivation and they spread negative vibes as well, which is something I don't want it to be contagious to the other motivated people within the team. here's the thing right there's a saying around when you have a team you have to make sure that imagine that your team is on a bus and the bus is going to a certain destination which is the goals that you're trying to achieve
You've got to make sure that you have the right people on the bus and then you have to make sure that they're sitting in the right seats. Yes. And so when you look at your team members. To what extent do you feel like you have the right people on the bus when it comes to these senior level team members? And if you have the right people on the bus.
To what extent do you feel like they're sitting in the right seats, meaning they should be in the senior seats? I agree with you. Maybe again, if we're talking about the senior seat here, so it means that I need to give. more responsibilities and delegate other authorities that I need to give. But how can I do with the current situation that I'm having now? I cannot.
move with such a decision i'm not sure if this is maybe it's a wrong perception that like for example if i didn't test him for being a line manager in reality he has this experience he's saying that he has it but i didn't see it so shall i say okay maybe he's not doing the right thing on project management but if i give him direct reports he will be doing great job
Well, I think it's interesting because you said, I agree with you, Muriel. I didn't make the assessment. Yeah, I know. I agree about the bus itself. The bus itself. But you automatically jump to. Your answer, which was your response, which was, yes, I should be able to then delegate more to them and to give them more responsibility, assumes that they are the right people on the bus. Okay.
And I don't know one way or the other. You know, when it becomes a performance issue, that's when you start saying, hmm, like in order for you to be on this bus, you have to be able to perform at a certain level. And if you're not performing at a certain level. you might not belong on this bus. And so I think you can't automatically jump there, right?
The first part is to lay out the expectations. And it sounds like what you're saying is you've laid out the expectations in terms of skill and competency, and they have that. but they're missing on the commitment and the motivation and the passion and what it is that they're bringing. So at what point...
And again, I don't have any skin in the game. These are just questions to help you think through it. At what point are you making decisions around whether you have the right senior team or not? Do you feel like you have the right senior team? No. Okay. So if you don't feel like you have the right senior team, what options do you have in front of you? They need to shape up. They need to show that they are seniors. I'm trying to work with them on that. But again, maybe...
The other point here, as we have been talking previously, you said that my expectation that if I'm saying or giving an advice for one or two times, that they should be changing. So maybe the question here, if they didn't change, do I need to be just more aggressive in my feedback? Is this the solution or getting to another way of giving a feedback?
Maybe I feel at a certain point, I feel maybe I'm not delivering the message in the right way because that's why still they didn't change this attitude. For example, let's say, is this because I need to be more aggressive? So that's...
the only way that they will be listening and considering to change. And what would that mean to be more aggressive? What would that look like? Like putting someone on an action plan that I'm not going to be... easy anymore let's say either i'm getting the results i'm looking for or that's it the end of story i'm not that person frankly speaking and i don't feel that this is
the easiest way it's not sweet but it's the easiest way to just okay i'm i'm having the upper hand here i will just put on action plan and that's it so Maybe I didn't have this kind of experience before and that's why I don't want to step within this. black hole that i don't know how it will be what is the consequence for such a decision to be taken so i'm trying to be patient i'm trying to to keep the open discussion but at certain point maybe i'm
I'm not being fair with the team and dealing with them equally. Yeah, so I understand. I understand. And there's a couple of things here. Number one is you said... You know, should I take a more aggressive approach, which is putting them on an action plan with, you know, very clear consequences, etc. I can't tell you one way or the other, but that is an option, right? That is an option for any manager.
as is there's an option of coaching them through it, which is what it seems like you have been doing. So I think your question is, is it maybe because I'm not effective in the way that I'm coaching them? Therefore, that's why they're not changing. And then your other option is to just do nothing and keep things as is, which I know that's not what you want to do. No, exactly. None of these options are easy. Yes. This is the challenge of being a manager.
This is the part that's not necessarily fun, okay? Because they all can be what can feel like difficult conversations. So one is understanding what your options are. And then the other is how do you know when you move from one option to another? And I think there's a couple of things that you have to take into consideration. One is.
Well, if I keep things going at the way that they're going, at what cost? And am I okay with that? There's a trade-off. So if what you're saying is, look, I want to continue coaching them. I don't want to take... the more, quote unquote, aggressive approach of putting them on an action plan. I'm going to continue to work. I'm going to be patient with them. But in the meantime, I know the rest of the team is starting to feel very frustrated by this.
What you're saying is it's OK for the rest of the team to get frustrated because it's worth it for me to work with this person. And that's fine as long as that's the choice you're making. But if you're saying, hey, I can't afford the rest of my team. to lose motivation or to get frustrated or to get, you know, all these things because they're seeing somebody who's not performing well continue to get rewarded. So I'm going to now move to...
the next action with that individual, right? For the sake of my team or for the sake of the results or for the sake that I need a successor. So Muriel can't tell you what those different litmus. tests are, but you have to sort of figure out, you know, at what point do I move to one of the other options? Okay. That's more something as a manager you need to come up with.
And then you also have to look at your company, like what's the process? You know, what's the policy at your company? I'm sure there's probably some type of HR policy of what warrants moving somebody to. a performance improvement plan or an action plan. Okay. And every company is a little bit different in that.
So this is definitely one area that I would say consult with whoever your HR person is to understand, like, does this even warrant moving to that? But what I do think is important is for you to... recognize because I feel like what you're looking for is how do I make it a little less uncomfortable right that's true and that maybe the discomfort is that you haven't had this experience before yep
It could be that you've never had this experience before and that's what makes it uncomfortable. It could be that because you're faced with people who are getting defensive, that's what makes it uncomfortable. It could be that, you know, you. prefer to coach people along and believe that people can actually.
change and improve and you would rather do that and put them into an action plan so it goes against your beliefs and that's what makes it uncomfortable there could be a number of reasons for what makes it uncomfortable But the fact is, for you, the way you're experiencing it is uncomfortable. And that's okay. Yeah, it means I'm comfortable that maybe this will push me to take an action if I'm taking it from a positive way that I need to find a solution.
to get comfortable but i'm not happy being uncomfortable with the situation right i don't know if you'll ever be fully comfortable with it what you are doing and you said earlier you said look i trust my feelings around this You have to look at the facts, which it seems like you have evidence around where the performance is and what's happening. And then there's a certain aspect of, OK, like, what do I believe I need to do to move this forward?
And it can't just be because, you know, you're frustrated. That's why I'm saying having some metrics. What does the person need to be able to do? What are the expectations regardless of who's in that seat? What do they need to be able to do and how do they need to lead as a senior person to be in that seat? And then you assess. Okay. What I'm saying, Mo, is.
I think you have, but I'm going to ask again. Have you laid out what it means to be successful in these senior positions? Yes, it's about the our achieving the goals and we do have clear. achievements and KPIs that we need to achieve with certain kind of quality that we need to be working a specific process so it's clear how to understand
that you are achieving and you are doing a great job. And do they understand what the expectations are in terms of how they achieve those KPIs, meaning the behavioral expectations? I'm assuming it's yes. I know it shouldn't be an assumption.
But again, with the kind of discussion that we had, like the concerns that came related to communication with a situation happened with a client that is coming and saying, I need to remove this person from the project. They understand that they are not doing well. OK. And so, again, going back to your choices, one choice is to continue to kind of try to coach him through it. Right. The other choice is to kind of lay out an action plan with very clear.
goals or changes or progress that he has to demonstrate by a particular time, what would make you feel like you need to move from the coaching option to the action plan option? What would be the difference for you? The difference will be the responsiveness to what we are discussing during the coaching. If I'm not getting the results from the coaching, so this means that I need to put an action plan. I'm escalating, I'm moving to the next step. That's my understanding of moving to an action plan.
So far in the conversation, Mo has taken responsibility and really questioned whether he could be doing a better job as a manager in motivating his team, especially with members that seem to be missing the mark, which is a great instinct to have. to ask, what can I do better when it comes to team members that are not performing up to par and when it comes to having tough conversations? But we reached a moment in this part of the conversation that I thought it was important to highlight.
that at a certain point, you also have to look at the trade-offs. Because difficult feedback conversations are uncomfortable. Suggesting someone might not be in the right role or that they lack passion for that role is uncomfortable. The hard part for any leader is to make a decision that is best for the team and the company. Otherwise, you're essentially saying it's more important to stay comfortable than it is to upset the balance in your organization.
So while it's always important to think first about what you can do better to improve a situation, it's also good to remember the overall purpose you serve in your role. and whether the current team dynamics are letting you and your team fulfill that purpose. Let's keep that in mind as I circle back with Mo now to talk about his definition of accountability. And so all these things are under the umbrella of driving accountability. As a manager of others, holding the team accountable is a...
big part of your responsibility. And so what does that mean to you, even the term of holding others accountable? How do you define that for yourself? Whatever is happening within my team, I'm responsible. And I want to make sure that we are having this mutual agreement about accountability and the level of understanding of responsibilities toward the project.
that's why when i was saying i'm assuming yes because when we're talking about with the team and how they are doing the work there are some baselines that We all understand from responsibility, from accountability toward the projects that it is not negotiable. It doesn't need to be discussed. So when sometimes you're discussing with a senior person.
It's a question mark. Why we are discussing this point, you should know it. We shouldn't come up to this discussion. I should be discussing something totally different. I should give you another responsibility. That's the kind of discussion, but not going back four or five steps, then we are starting to talk about basics.
why you are not responding on time, why you are not checking the document before you are sending this. And we find that it has a lot of mistakes, for example, or something like that. Okay. And so if the mistakes keep happening or if it sounds like you keep having the, you know, lower level conversations or the conversations that you don't expect of somebody more senior and you've given them the feedback.
that the conversation should be happening at a higher level with them. But we keep going back to these very baseline things. If that keeps happening over and over and over again, and...
You've given them the feedback in your coaching. So these are two big. You're telling me you have. Right. So I'm going to assume you have. And it sounds like you have from what you've shared. But again, I'm not in the room. But let's assume if you've done the feedback and you've done the coaching, you've communicated to them.
where you expect them to perform, and yet they still keep performing at a different level that's not aligned with the seat that they have on the bus, what are your choices at that point? You have three choices, right? The choice is to keep them in the seat on the bus and continue to coach them. The second choice is to move their seat on the bus, put them in a different seat that's more aligned.
with how they're performing and the third choice is they're not on the bus yeah If you allow me, Manuel, just I want to go back one step when we were talking about the feedback and when I was giving the example about the basics. Just to clarify that this discussion still didn't happen. Okay. The main focus, as I mentioned previously, maybe it was mainly about the communication and the conflict.
with the cross-functional department and we were working on that we saw some improvement now with the new situation with the new incident happened with this project and A lot of investigation were going around and then I figured out a lot of gaps, which as I was just sharing here, that they are basics that I wasn't expecting to find such findings in this situation.
That's my point actually. And what I was planning that in this touch base that I'm going to be discussing these new gaps that I found, I feel that he needs to understand that. You need to change the way of managing the projects and dealing with people. So I need to take a decision. That's what I'm feeling that it might be even.
the good step for me if i'm talking here before going to an action plan but i'm not sure if i should be discussing this during the touch base or shall i keep it for the end of the year discussion
Okay. You're not going to like my answer because I can't tell you whether to communicate needs improvement now or at the end of the year because that does become much more of a... performance review question, it would be irresponsible of me to give you that type of guidance in our coaching, irrespective of what the overall
HR performance review process is for your particular company. Right. So that is something that I definitely think you should discuss internally with whoever your HR people are. OK. That said. I think your responsibility as a manager is to be clear about what the behavior is that you're seeing. So what the feedback is as concretely and specifically as possible. That's number one. And number two, be very clear about what your expectations are. And so even if it's not, you know.
saying oh you're going to get a needs improvement or it's in the performance review language to be able to say Part of what I'm seeing in terms of your work with XYZ is there's a lack of responsiveness. You're taking a week, two weeks, you know. falling behind and responding, my expectation is over the next couple of months that you improve your responsiveness and that you're responding within X period of time.
That is about clearly stating expectations, which is your responsibility. And then the third piece is, how are you going to support him? in being able to meet those expectations. And that's where we get into, okay, I'm going to meet with him weekly. We're going to go over what we discussed at this meeting and I'm going to continue to give him feedback. I'm going to track the progress.
to see how things are going. Okay. So how does that land with you in terms of the question that you had and then what my response is? How is it resonating with you? Well, it's giving me actually confidence more about the discussion because I like the part that you mentioned talking about the actions and what are my expectations and that I'm here to support you.
to meet these expectations. Because as I was talking again, with the personality of being a little bit defensive, I need to make sure that he understands that I'm not just pointing finger on him.
without supporting i need to ensure that whatever the message i'm i'm delivering to him that i'm able to evaluate it and that we are having this agreement mutual agreement that we will be working on that together it's not that i'm just going to be the boss who's you just do it and i will assess it we will work on that together and let's make the improvement As I mentioned, maybe this is just giving me the confidence to go with this scenario. And I hope to get what I'm looking for.
And, Mo, you've mentioned a couple of times that what you want is for your direct report to understand what the expectations are, to understand what it is that you're... saying to him in terms of the feedback. What would you need to ensure for you that he does understand? How could you ensure that there is understanding? At the end, he's a smart guy. So if I'm giving clear message because here what I'm talking about is facts.
and coming with these facts and putting them on the table saying so here this what happened with this situation how it should be done to overcome such a situation so if we open all these incidents and we had this kind of discussion that should be setting the expectations for what should be going on for any other tasks it's similarly the same way that he needs to if we are coming to this discussion and agreeing on the preventative or the mitigation plan not to get
such incidents happening again so we are putting some expectations toward the attitude but in general it means that more oversight will be needed and to have more effective time spent on the projects to cover these gaps that are coming. Yeah. And so what I would suggest is in presenting the facts. There's different levels of how another person can respond, right? They can hear you, but because they hear you and they hear the facts and they see the facts doesn't necessarily mean...
that they are understanding the facts in the way that you would like them to understand it, right? When we talk about understanding something, it is the interpretation of what you're presenting. Yes. What you want to ensure, what I hear you saying you want to ensure is that he understands the situation in the way that you understand the situation so that... then there is a mutual agreement or alignment that happens afterwards around how to move forward. So...
Yes, you can lay out the facts, but there are things that you can do to also ensure that he is understanding them in the way that you need him to understand it. He's interpreting it. in the way that you need. And the reason why I'm bringing this up is because you said, you know, the person tends to get defensive, right? So defensiveness often gets in the way of understanding. It doesn't necessarily get in the way of hearing. It gets in the way of understanding.
And so one of the ways is you can check for understanding, you know, after you've laid everything out and they've responded, say, OK, so. You know, what are you taking away from this? How are you interpreting this? What do you think the next steps should be? What are you hearing in terms of what you need to do differently moving forward? Check for understanding. Okay.
what you're getting back is different than how you think it needs to be interpreted, then you can say, oh, I actually think we're on different pages now. Yeah. Okay. So you want to check for understanding before you can then get to. alignment and mutual alignment is in how do you move forward and that's the how am i going to hold you accountable what do we agree to or align on to move forward for the goal even though he may not agree right
What you really want is for him to understand and also be aligned. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, I agree. I'm trying to do my part and I'm trying to do my part. It's not just that I'm throwing issues on the table and saying, see what you did. That's not my intention here. I'm really trying to help because again, I need my success story.
And if I came up with this discussion with a positive output, it's success for him that he's going to be doing great. And it's success for me because I was able to help him. That's my scope as well. That's what I'm looking for. What you're doing is you're planting all the seeds to increase the probability of that happening, of it being a success story.
But obviously, there's no guarantee that it will be a success story. I will do my best. And that's all you can do. That's all you can do. OK, so when you think about the questions that you had when you first came into the conversation. And where you are now, what questions have been answered for you? And what do you think you're going to do differently moving forward in dealing with these situations?
From the time that I got promoted to director, I was really trying to prove myself that I can take this. As I mentioned, it was challenging time. So I read a lot of articles and I attended many podcasts. I felt that I was inhaling. a lot of information but i'm not able to exhale i just need to I need to meditate and to just regulate my breathing. So it's not just I'm going to read, I need to take some out, but I want to make sure that I'm exhaling in the right way.
So when I was coming here, I had a lot of thoughts about this situation. I was really frustrated. I'm not saying now that I'm relieved. Still, I'm feeling uncomfortable. I still am having my duties and this kind of discussion that we are agreeing. It's not going to be easy as we are having now. But at least I'm able to see a map and a plan that I can put the piece that I'm understanding the frustration that might come.
from the other side and how I need to digest it and ensure that I'm giving the support. It's not that I'm attacking or I'm just... finger pointing as i mentioned this is a plan that we are mutually will be working on it that's what i need from you and let me know what you need from my side to be able to get for what we are looking for so at the end I'm giving the good intention it's his decision at this stage either to collaborate or
I wouldn't say get out of the bus, but let's say, yeah, to sit in the inside, in the right place within the bus at this stage, yeah. Okay, terrific. And yes, you can exhale now. Thank you, Mo. Thank you. At this stage in his career, Mo has realized one of the hardest parts about managing.
driving accountability on your team and making sure everyone on the team is performing at the level expected, motivating employees to stay engaged, having the tough conversations, and making the difficult decisions when needed. Moe's instinct. To think about what he could do differently to manage the staff issues he's facing is a good one. And a key takeaway here that every leader needs to pick up is knowing the difference between when an issue on your team calls for coaching
versus when it calls for a performance management approach. Unless you know that you have different options at your disposal to manage how your team delivers, you'll continue to feel stuck. rather than move forward with a plan as Mo is now able to do. That's it for this episode of Coaching Real Leaders. Next time. I guess I feel quite certain in my mind that it's time to make a change. And I think where I stall out a bit is...
You know, for so long, I've kind of gone to the right school and done the right prep and then taken their next role and the next role and the next role. And most of my career has just positioned me for what I guess is objectively speaking, kind of a traditionally. big job like a c-level executive at a public company type role and now that i find myself kind of at the precipice of that next logical step i feel pretty uncertain
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