Leadership Expert Nathan Jamail on Coaching Vs. Managing - Learn How You Should Lead Your Team!

I think it's a mindset of loving who you are loving what you do , being able to do it and doing it with the people you love I do . I think it's that simplistic in concept .

Uh , I , I think success starts with loving who you are and loving yourself fantastic .

You know from Family Ties .

I've always had a drive . I , you know , I've been working full time since I was 15 years old . When I was in middle school I'd sell snow cones in the parks . I mean , I've always had this drive that I don't think I created it , I don't think I , I don't think I built it , I just think it was inherently given to me as a gift .

And man , I just chased it . And I think I'm too . I don't think I'm smart enough to realize that I'm supposed to fail . I think my ignorance you know they say ignorance is bliss I think , like I really believe I can achieve anything , like I see you do something , like I can do that and everybody's like you can't . I said no , I really can .

So I think I chose success a long time ago and in the sense of what I'm willing to do . As a young leader , I used to tell people all the time there are significantly more people smarter than me , but I'm going to do my best to make sure no one's going to outwork me . So what is ?

The guy says hello , Mr Jamel , Welcome in , we're waiting for you , here's your stuff . And we start to chat and he says you know , I would love to do something different , like you do , but I have kids and a wife and I said don't use them as an excuse . Like your kids don't care how big your house is , they care that you're around .

Don't , don't use that . And I think people are afraid to to take a chance . You know , I have on my wall here and I tell myself every day you know , be bold . I think success is being willing to take a chance and and suck , I mean and fail .

And if you and I tell this to a quote I use with my clients is the difference between an idiot and a genius is success . You know , when Bezo was going to invent Amazon , they say hey , I'm going to do a bookstore on the internet . All his friends are probably like I don't know this from personal experience or anything , but you're an idiot .

Well , now he's a genius , and so my goal is to be an idiot long enough to be a genius , I can .

I don't think anything gets in the way of effort . I talk about this . I was doing a keynote yesterday . Effort and skill development is , in my opinion , is the key to any success . And knowing that you're going to fail and it's OK .

But I think that effort , that resilience you know everybody says the overnight success , for 10 years maybe , but I think that's what it has to be . And you know , at the same time and you said I love the word love I think you have to be like I'm grateful for where I am in my life . But let's be clear , I'm not near done , like I'm not content .

Uh , I want more and I think you have to have that . I think you have to have the my , the correct amount of achievement that matches your hunger for it , right amount of achievement that matches your hunger for it , and so my hunger for success and your hunger for success can't be the same .

But we've got to make sure that we feed that , and so I do , I think , your mindset , effort , fearless , being bold , and just do it .

How many things were invented because they found out what they were trying to do with the item didn't work and now we're using it for something else ? I think you've just got to try it

. When I went out on my own , my accountant told me I'm an idiot . I left corporate America and he said let me get this straight .

I think they both require obstacles , they both require effort and the only difference is at the end result . What's the outcome ? But here's what's funny whether you have success or failure , if you want to continue success , you don't get to stop . I mean , the worst thing you can do is succeed and stop . That means you're going to be good .

You're never going to be great , or at least never be better .

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See , I love that word better and I think that philosophically , the word better needs to be spoken about and used a lot more often . The job is not to fail or succeed .

Tell me more about that philosophy , because I think that's something real interesting we need to dive into .

It's not the person who knows the most about the sport , it's the person who achieves the most . It's the effort , it's the practice , it's the success . And in business , I believe it's the exact same . The greatest leader doesn't know the most about leadership . They read books .

The person who is the best leader or the best coach has the biggest impact on their people , and I believe that we need to learn . When I do a speech , I start off with think of this , with a growth mindset . Don't say do I do it or not . Ask yourself , how do I do it better ? And that's that constant growth . Listen , we all do things . We as leaders .

We have difficult conversations with our people . How do we do better ? How do we make sure our intent matches our words ? I think the only way to get better at it is not to do it in real life , but to practice it , and I have a saying that says training is learning something new . Ok , so if I do a workshop , it's a training .

Practicing is getting better , something we already know . And if you , if you want to simplify that , go into sports . Baseball players right now are practicing catching grounders , hitting balls , building pop , flies , right . They're all the same things they've been doing for 15 plus years . And the reason why they're practicing it ? Because seconds matter .

Little improvements make big differences , and that's the same thing in life , isn't it ? And , quite candidly , I deal a lot in business . It's the same thing in business . So I believe that practicing is not doing .

Practicing is preparing to do , because a lot of people say I do it every day , that that's not practicing , because in real life , when you're doing it , there's a consequence . Practicing there's a consequence . So I think we train decent , I think we practice in business today and as humans , very poorly .

If we have conviction for it , we'll do the effort . If we do the effort , we'll have the results . It's funny I use a bit about kids do chores very poorly . The reason why kids do chores very poorly . If I tell my kid to load the dishwasher , their goal is to get the dishes out of the sink and throw them in the box , upside down , right side up .

It doesn't matter when we load a dishwasher as an adult . We load it because we want the dishes to get clean . And my point being is kids check the box as adults . If we don't believe in something , I just do the activity , I just check the box . I believe , as leaders , belief not only determines what we're willing to do .

Belief determines what excuses we're willing to accept , and so our belief will determine exactly where we're going to be in life and what we're going to achieve . I don't believe it's some kumbaya moment . I think it's the core of what we become and who we are it some kumbaya moment .

So when you look at the servant approach and you started on the servant approach back in some of your other books on the sales stuff , but you've really hit it on this one and I think one of the things that you look at in there is serving multiple audiences Tell me more about that philosophy and how that plays out on a day-to-day .

I think I think we need to coach them in . The way we serve an employee is by coaching them . I think where we serve up an organization is in belief . Believe in our people that we follow , believe in our leaders , believe in the organization , believe in our services . I don't think you can successfully work for someone you don't believe in .

And here's what's funny If you look at the greatest competitive advantages of business today , there are two organizational alignment and the speed of change . And serving up allows you to eliminate that . And here's why I challenge my leaders to be . We're all leaders in the middle . If you're a CEO , you report to a board .

If you're a president , you report to a CEO .

And they all say yes . All I'm asking in Serve Up is to give your boss the same respect you want your people to give you . Treat them the way you want to be treated , and when you do that , your people will learn that behavior .

We learn how to parent from our parents , whether we agree with it or not , and so , as leaders , we learn from our leaders , from our parents , whether we agree with it or not , and so , as leaders , we learn from our leaders , and it's and here's the thing in a book called uh how to win friends , influence people by dell carnegie .

He says in that book we are and this is written in the 40s , by the way that uh , we are wrong 80 percent of the time , yet we'll argue we are right 100 of the time . And the reason why is because we argue perspectives . And in the book I write listen , if we're wrong eight out of 10 times , give grace , because you're going to want grace .

And what we end up doing as leaders is we argue our perspectives from someone else's vision . If I believe in you , brad , if you're my boss and I believe in you and you're wrong , who cares ? We do a U-turn , we go a different direction , but as long as we're all running the same direction , we'll win because we're running together .

And that's what the book's about . It's about getting you know . I talk about removing the silos . Everyone wants to blame another team why their team's not successful .

The first one is in management , we focus on the employee , and in coaching , we focus on the environment , the culture , and I'll give you an example . If there is a player in sports , special sports who , no matter how talented they are , if they're bad for the locker room or the team , they get traded .

And those athletes all that , we all can reference some athlete that's been traded from team to team , even though they're the most talented athlete out there in business .

If we have someone who's got a bad attitude but been there a long time , does less work but has a lot of knowledge , we will keep , though , and sacrifice everything else about our culture , because we don't want to remove that resource , and so coaching is about making good , logical decisions that make sense , and so we , in coaching , we focus on the culture , and

management , we sacrifice the culture for the person . There's a couple of other ones I'll give you that are kind of big . In management , we focus on those who need the attention .

We focus on the struggling employees and therefore our involvement is considered a negative , which is why every employee in the world says I want to be so good , my boss leaves me alone .

And so you know everybody wants to talk about so again , and the idea was the management and coaching and management . We focus on those who need the attention , and people won't take this to the other side and say , well , you ignore them . You don't ignore them , but you focus on those who deserve the attention .

Um , the other biggest piece I'll tell you in the difference between coaching and managing is in management we get involved at the end . We get involved in this correction . Coaches get involved in preparation . You know a coach set expectations from day one .

They are prescriptive on what they expect you to do , and they're not because they want to micromanage you , but because they know what success looks like you to do . And they're not because they want to micromanage you , but because they know what success looks like .

So I challenge coaches to teach your people so they can be successful , instead of letting them figure it out on their own and then correcting them at the end . Coaching is about making people better , not the people we have becoming more experienced or letting them figure it out on their own . There's a reason .

And and so we , we either . We don't say the truth , we say what we think you want to hear , which is why people think they're all fake . And so I challenge people to say turn it to scrimmaging . No , no professional sports team in any sports , and it would . And I don't just mean to use sports , you can use acting , you can use broadway .

They don't just go up on stage and do a show , they practice every day , all week long for that one show , because timing matters . No one in in a skilled profession does not not scrimmage . They all scrimmage before a game .

And so my challenge to leaders is if you and I were to scrimmage and scrimmage means getting into character like a role play but to do it to prepare for an opportunity instead of to test a skill how often do we do a better job if we scrimmage first and every person will tell you 100% . Here's the scary part , brad we still don't do it .

Yeah , you know why . And do you know why we , as leaders , don't do it ? Because we're afraid to death that our employees are going to find out . We're not near as good as we think we are .

You could do this in operations or anything else . Let's just use sales .

For example , if you spent three months getting the opportunity to speak to a customer , a prospect , and then you travel three hours to get to their location , you spend an hour in their office and then three hours get back , how do you not have 45 minutes to an hour to get into character and scrimmage the conversation ?

But do you know what I do ? Before every keynote , I go into my room and I scrimmage .

all across . Right , what's the difference between someone who does good and someone who does great in your mind ?

Here's what I'll tell you the really superstar players , they want to be superstars and they and they never see themselves as being done . Learning it , I can tell you it's . I see successful people in my workshop and I see them all taking notes and they know 10 times what I know .

And I see the average people sitting back with their arms crossed because they have to listen . Man , the greatest people , earners , are learners , and so I think the first thing they do is they have the mindset that they need to get better and , more importantly , they can get better , and then they're willing to do the work .

They're willing to go through the boredom of practice . You know there's a lot of great athletes .

The key to being a great athlete is withstanding the boredom of practice and training , and so I think they have the willingness to learn , they have the discipline to go in there and do that preparation and that practice , they have the humility to see themselves as coachable . And then , most importantly , they're bold enough .

They're brave enough to put themselves in that situation , to make the call , to have the conversation , to seek growth , and so I think that's what makes them different . They just do the work . They do the prep , they do the work and they're bold about it and , quite candidly , they're typically the most humble people you've ever met .

Yet , you know , I always believe they're the most humble and the most confident . That's where I see the greatness . I think they never stop growing . I mean , it's the same in sports . Look at the greatest athletes .

You know and Brady is a perfect example of that . Let me ask you then you mentioned that , like the superstars , they believe they're going to be superstars .

If someone's on our podcast today and they don't yet believe that they can achieve superstar status , how do you coach people to actually believe that there is a possibility of superstar , amazing status in their world , in their life at some point ?

Because you have to think , you have to get out of your own way . But it's like anything else , brad , you can't coach someone who doesn't want to be coached .

I can share the inside of the power of belief , but if you don't want to , if you're not willing to change your belief somewhere along the way , you made an agreement with yourself that you're not good enough . Until you change that on your own , I can't make you change it .

Yeah , and so I think you've got to talk through that , yeah , and so I think you've got to talk through that . But if someone thinks , if someone doesn't think , they can be a superstar , until they change that belief they won't be a superstar .

I think you have to start with that . Call it a mind game , even if you have to fake it , I don't know . But I think you've got to kind of get your mind right .

And everyone wants to raise their hand . The question again , right , how many ? How many of you wish your employees were more were committed as you to the team and the goals and organization ? And and everyone wants to raise their hand .

Most people raise their hand and um , and and I say at the beginning of the speech , I think you're going to find out when we get done today that we're not as committed to them as we might think we are . And here's what I mean by that .

If you allow someone to be on the team , that is not creating a thriving culture , someone who is sucking the life out of the team , being negative , yet you accept them and allow them to be on the team . Right , that's not a committed leader .

Your job as a leader's job is to create a thriving environment , and all of us have worked for that boss where our peer didn't do as much work as we did or had a bad attitude and we thought our boss either didn't care , didn't notice , didn't engage or just didn't take action .

And so the question to us as leaders is how many of us are that leader on accident ? It's never malicious , it's just our actions don't always mirror our words . So when you look at that , we have to be committed to making sure we have the right people on the team . And I'm not being mean , I on the team , I'm not being mean .

I don't think there's bad people . I think there's bad fits . You might not fit on my team . That doesn't mean you're a bad person . It just means you don't fit with my team culture and I probably wouldn't fit with other people's team culture , I think .

On the second piece of it , I think people love to tell people you got to do this job , but we don't teach them how to do the job . And when we give high expectations and hold people accountable yet don't teach them , we create high tension . High tension is bad . We're just waiting for the other foot to drop Right .

But if we give expectations and we hold people accountable , yet we teach them , we create high intensity , and intensity is good . It's known as the buzz around the office .

So , again , we have to be committed to the team , we have to be committed to teaching them , we have to be committed to holding them accountable , regardless of how difficult it is and how painful it is .

We have to be committed to creating that environment and , more importantly , we have to be committed to bringing new talent if people want to make the team stronger , and so when we're committed to that act , they'll commit to us , nathan .

You know , if you want to be , if you want to be better than everyone else , you got to work harder , I believe , than everyone

else . I don't think there's a get rich quick scheme . I don't think it's . You know , lose , lose a thousand pounds because of a pill . I think you gotta put have a lot of desire and a lot of effort behind it .