22: Be a coach for your team - it makes life easier for you too

Sales leaders... know that you should be a better coach for your team, but not exactly sure why it helps you?... Michael Bungay Stanier reminds us in "The Coaching Habit".

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:06

So this one's for sales leaders out there are you getting bombarded with people telling you that you should be a better coach or a coach for your team? But when you really sit back, you're not exactly sure why and what difference is going to make. Michael Bungay Stanier reminds us in the coaching habit

Speaker 2: 1:31

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Speaker 3: 1:31

Welcome to the bite sized sales podcast where we believe that sales is the most important team and a B2B company, that the sales team deserves great sales skills training but usually doesn't get it and that taking bite-size steps each day to get better at your craft is the best way to improve results. I am your host, Andrew Monaghan, and I'm using my experiences and B2B sales to bring you simple actionable ideas every day to help you get better.

Speaker 2: 2:06

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Speaker 1: 2:07

Coaching has become such a buzzword these days that I wonder if sometimes we forget why it can be such a good thing. I think we just intuitively know it is good and we probably assume it's good for us, but the actual reasons why sometimes go by the wayside and anytime you're trying to do something that you're not fully bought into the real big outcome is going to do for you, the chances are is going to fall by the wayside. And that's what happens a lot with people when they try to become more coach like in their management style. They try it out and then they kind of realize it's not as easy as they thought it was going to be and maybe it falls by the wayside, but if they just remember what it's going to do for them in the medium and longterm, maybe it wouldn't fall by the wayside quite so much. Michael Bungay Stanier in his book, The Coaching Habit tackles this and he calls that the the three circles that create the reasons why having a coaching mindset and being more coach-like is so important. So to read from the book circle number one, creating overdependence. You may find that you become part of an overdependent team. There's a double whammy here. First, you've trained your people to become excessively reliant on you, a situation that turns out to be disempowering for them and frustrating for you and then as an unwelcomed bonus because you've been so successful in creating this dependency that you now have too much work to do, you may also become a bottleneck in the system. Everyone loses momentum and motivation. The more you help your people, the more they seem to need your help, the more they need your help, the more time you spend helping them. Building a coaching habit will help your team be more self sufficient by increasing their autonomy and sense of mastery and by reducing your need to jump in, take over and become the bottleneck and circle number two, getting overwhelmed. You may also be overwhelmed by the quantity of work you had. It doesn't matter if you've mastered all the productivity hacks in the world. The faster you dig, the faster the world becomes flooding in. As you've pulled in different directions, by proliferating priorities, distracted by the relentless ping of email and hustling from meeting to meeting, you lose focus. The more you lose focus, the more overwhelmed you feel, the more overwhelmed you feel, the more you lose focus. Building a coaching habit will help you regain focus so you and your team can do the work that has real impact and so you can direct your time, energy, and resources to solving the challenges that make a difference. Circle number three, becoming disconnected. Finally, you may be disconnected from the work that matters. My previous book do more great work had at its foundation. The principle that is not enough just to get things done. You have to help people do more of the work that has impact and meaning. The more we do work that has no real purpose, the less engaged and motivated we are, the less engaged we are, the less likely we are defined and create great work. Building a coaching habit will help you and your team reconnect to the work that not only has impact, but has meaning as well. Coaching can fuel the courage to step out beyond the comfortable and familiar can help people learn from their experiences and can literally and metaphorically increase in health, fulfill a person's potential. So you're up against the bind, the grind, and the resigned. And building a coaching habit is a way of breaking through to a better way of working. So that's a, that's red straight from the broken. I loved that last bit as a summary. The bind, the grind and the resigned is we're up against, if we fall into these traps, these circles that he talks about in this book, and I've seen it at least one of these in every single sales leader that I've coached, and sometimes more than one, it's unfortunately, it's easy to get sucked into this world. It's easy to try to take steps forward to help your team, but unwittingly put yourself in a situation where your chances of being successful and succeeding actually go down over time as opposed to go up. Uh, and these are common problems in sales teams all around the world. So if you want to break this cycle, you should take becoming coach. Like seriously. Don't give up on it. As you hit those roadblocks, as it becomes tough. You know, once you're getting into these coaching sessions and your team's not exactly working with you the way you want, and you feel like you want to step in with advice or step in with some direction of what to go do, you know, don't do that because you're gonna help fuel the fire that creates these circles. So double down on your efforts to be coached. Like change your style. Ask more questions. If you feel like you're ready to go advice, don't ask more questions. Uh, become more coach likes. Your team is not so dependent on you and you're not so disc disconnected from the real world and you're not overwhelmed by the demands of your job.

Speaker 2: 7:30

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Speaker 3: 7:31

if you liked this episode, please share it wide and far. Spread the word. I get energy from seeing people download and use this content. So please just take 20 seconds to share with anyone you think would like it to

Speaker 2: 7:51

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Speaker 3: 7:51

The episode is sponsored by unstoppable dot. Do most sales teams are not trained effectively in the skills and mindset they deserve. And these are the most important people in the company. It's no wonder that only about 50% of reps make quarter every year. Unstoppable is a service that helps sellers and leaders get great at the skills and mindset they need without taking time out of the field. It exists because if the sales team has the right skills and mindset, they thrive, they're confident

Speaker 1: 8:24

and they performed much better. Find out more and even get a free sales book@bitesizesales.com and now to wrap up as Mike Rogers,

Speaker 3: 8:40

VP of sales at in Corta may or may not have one sec. Training with our implementation is just entertainment and pre per entertainment when Monaghan does it. So make sure you take action on what you learned and keep getting better every day. This world does not need more sales BS, so don't create anymore. Be great at the fundamentals. Be honest, be real. Be yourself. Just do not be us. And finally I'm setting off as the great Joe Sexton would by saying, gone to sell

Speaker 2: 9:14

[inaudible].