Getting Better Results

Getting Better Results

If you are like most leaders, you want your team to get better results. And if your team members are like most, they know you want better results from them. Yet when you look at the sales numbers or the team’s productivity, the mutual focus of getting better results doesn’t seem to be evident.

You’re not alone. This is a common issue for most leaders.

Here’s the secret most leaders don’t know … don’t focus on getting better results. Seems counter intuitive, doesn’t it? Yet experience has taught us that a results-focused coaching strategy does not produce results. It’s not about coaching performance.

Instead, a coaching strategy that focuses on helping the team think better creates the by-product of better results. This kind of shift would be equivalent to a car mechanic opening the hood to find out why the car is not performing as well as it could (and, of course, fixing the problem). You are like the mechanic. A slight shift in your coaching focus to the thinking behind your team’s results will create better results.

So in your next coaching session, focus on how you can help your team member reflect better on what they have done, think about the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches and then select the option they think is best for next time they are in a similar situation.

This kind of thinking-focused coaching helps your team engage in behaviors that will produce better results.

This leads to the question … What do you do with the results your team gets?

Monitor them. See their results as the outcome of your coaching not the focus of your coaching. By engaging in thinking-focused coaching, you’ll help your team get better results more often and sooner.