By Dana Phillips.
When working with your future leaders, are you committed to the outcome or committed to the activities that produce the outcome? Early in my career, I was committed to the outcome. When working with my future leaders, I would talk about what results were needed to get promoted. I sounded like this, “Susie, I’m so excited! You only need 2 more recruits and $500 in sales to make your target date. I know you’ll have the sales, now go find your recruits this week. I know you can do it!”.
I was focused on the outcome, and there wasn’t very much coaching being done. It’s easy to be a cheerleader when you get to celebrate results. When it didn’t happen, my future leader often missed their target date or gave up on becoming a leader altogether.
As I grew in my leadership, I learned to learn to release the outcome. When I did, I began focusing on the activities that produced the outcome. I coached on the activities that made recruiting happen. Instead of telling my future leaders to “just go do it,” I asked questions about the activities needed for the outcome. “Who are your recruit leads? How many do you need to talk to to get a recruit? When will you call them? How many recruiting conversations will you do this week? By asking the questions, I held my future leaders accountable for what they were going to do. We formed the partnership needed to get the outcome we wanted.
Releasing the outcome doesn’t mean there won’t be any results; the activities to create the results will be done. Coaching on the activities teaches them to trust the process, knowing that they will get what they want when they do the activities consistently. When you release the outcome, you show your future leader how to trust the process.
By focusing and coaching on the activities, your future leaders will be doing the most important things to support them in making the goal. Not having to control the outcome is freeing and less stressful and makes promoting leaders fun!
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