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Frontline Leadership Coaching
20 Plays1 year ago
We dive into the crucial role of leadership at the front lines and how effective coaching can elevate performance and impact. Front-line leaders often serve as the bridge between senior leadership and individually contributing employees, making their development essential for organizational success.
Too often, coaching is limited to senior leadership, and front-line leaders don't receive the same level of leadership development support. This episode explores the importance of providing targeted coaching to front-line leaders, addressing common challenges they face, and offering practical strategies to enhance their leadership skills. We’ll answer the question, How can we affordably, consistently, and effectively provide sustained coaching to front-line leaders?
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Transcript
Introduction to Leadership Dissected
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Welcome to Leadership Dissected, where we examine the details of leadership, strategy, workplace culture, and decision making through the lens of behavioral science.
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I'm Dr. C. And I'm Dr. D. With our decades of leadership experience and PhDs in business psychology, we dig into the latest research trends and practical strategies to help you survive at work without losing your
The Role and Development of Frontline Leaders
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mind.
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In this episode of Leadership Dissected, we dive into the crucial role of leadership at the frontline and how effective coaching can elevate performance and impact.
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Frontline leaders often serve as the bridge between senior leadership and individually contributing employees, making their development essential for organizational success.
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Now, too often, coaching is limited to senior leadership and frontline leaders don't receive the same level of leadership development support.
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This episode explores the importance of providing targeted coaching to frontline leaders, addressing common challenges they face, and offering practical strategies to enhance their leadership skills.
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We'll answer the question, how can we provide sustained coaching to frontline leaders affordably, consistently, and effectively?
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Let's cut into the topic.
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Dr. D, why is it important to coach and support frontline leaders?
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Frontline leaders are the bridge between senior leadership and the frontline employees.
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They are the link between strategy and execution.
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If your frontline leaders aren't leading effectively, your strategy isn't going to translate to the front.
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The things that are heard and seen and felt by your customers and by your frontline employees are not going to make its way back into other parts of the organization.
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to drive improvement.
Challenges in Leadership Development
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It is important that your frontline management are impactful and effective so that you have organizational success.
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I also think a lot of leadership at the higher levels of the organization don't realize how many frontline leaders there are.
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More often than not, there could be potentially 10 times more frontline leaders than there are executives.
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Yet they have such a profound impact on keeping employees working, keeping people accountable.
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Often things roll downhill and they're kind of stuck in the middle of what decisions are versus what potential strategies, executive leadership decisions are.
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And that creates
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a lot of swirls, a lot of challenges to ensure that you have productive and effective frontline leaders.
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There are some challenges overall with frontline leadership.
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People are promoted to these frontline leadership roles and they may not have the right training, the right support, the right temperament to be effective.
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Dr. D, in your experience, have you seen people just promote it based on their experience, let alone being able to lead people?
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Yes.
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A desire of most organizations is to promote from within, to develop
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people within their own ranks.
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Who knows your organization, your processes, your systems, your customers better than the folks on the front line that are doing individual contributor roles.
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They understand your organization best and they are the most likely place that you're going to find a manager of a team, a supervisor of a team, a lead of a team.
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But these frontline leaders have less experience.
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They have less exposure to senior leadership.
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They may have some very limited experience.
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A great technician is often promoted to the role of leadership because of their technical skills.
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And I'm using the technician term very broadly.
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A great customer service person with a lot of charisma and understanding customer service and how to get the best results for your customers, they're a technician in getting results within their domain.
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But they might not have the best leadership skills.
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They might have the drive, the aspiration, the potential, but they don't have the experience.
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Yet oftentimes they're promoted into supervisory roles, into leadership roles, because they understand the job, the role, the function, and the organization doesn't want to lose that person.
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So they promote from within.
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I think that's something that organization should do.
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But what they don't do is surround that person with so much leadership support to help them find their path, their leadership voice, bridge that transition from being a frontline tactician into being someone who motivates and inspires and develops others so that they can find their next replacement when they move up further in the organization.
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That's where good coaching comes.
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good leadership development programs are necessary and they're kind of absent.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And I think for the employee side of things, it's very much the conditioned natural progression of a person's career is you start off at a certain role and you want to move up in an organization because that's what we're conditioned to think about that.
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I'm going to move from being
Inadequacies in Current Leadership Training
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a individual contributor to now I'm going to lead a team.
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Now I'm going to manage a process in a team.
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The challenge is people don't truly understand what it means to be a manager, what it means to be a leader.
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We also have, I like to say, functioning or working leaders, which are not only trying to lead a team, which can easily take up about 70% of your time or more, but also trying to be a contributor at the same time.
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So there's a very, very challenging balance for most leaders.
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One of the areas where when they're early on in their frontline leadership role, they may not get the right training.
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When it comes to training, there's a lot of different types of training, but often it's a very process focused training that a lot of frontline leaders get.
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And that's just to hold their teams accountable, which is one component that any leader needs to be able to have.
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They need to be able to hold their teams accountable, but they also need that ability to communicate.
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They also need that ability to not only give effective feedback, but to receive feedback from their own teams.
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Another area is helping people understand relationships change.
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The interactions that they may have had with their colleagues change once they move into this
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frontline leadership role, manager role, supervisory role.
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And a lot of leaders don't know how to handle that.
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So they go to implore strategies of taking full control of trying to just force people to comply.
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And that creates a lot more chaos, a lot more disengagement and challenges for those leaders.
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Oftentimes those leaders are transitioning from being a peer in a team to being a manager of the team or a supervisor of the team.
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And the team is usually pretty supportive.
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The person who is promoted has earned respect within the team.
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Otherwise, they probably wouldn't have been chosen for the next leadership role.
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Institutional memory is very short.
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A person will move into a leadership role.
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Everybody knows this person's new and they're trying to find their way.
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But a few months go by, the business is moving on and that person is expected to be a fully functioning,
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fully adept, well-rounded leader of a team with almost no experience in leading a team.
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Even managers at another company and then come into an organization are given usually a honeymoon period of about three or four months.
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They're expected that they're coming in with this great sense of managerial style, but they don't.
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probably are trying to figure out the organization and are learning within their role.
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And without the right leadership support, they might not have had great leadership development in their previous role.
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This might foster a sense of imposter syndrome.
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It might foster a sense of uncertainty.
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It might foster a sense of, as you said, Dr. C, a need to exert some excessive control, micromanagement.
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I think organizations do recognize leadership development, coaching, ongoing training,
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is necessary at every level of an organization.
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McKinsey & Company published a study back in 2021 that 83% of companies believe leadership development is crucial at all levels, but only 5% have implemented development programs for frontline leaders and middle managers.
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There's a reason for that.
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It's expensive.
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Most senior leaders...
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Think about the executive coaching that they receive.
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Executive coaching is common at the senior levels, at the mid-senior levels, less so, but at the senior levels, it's very common.
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Now, these are experienced, well-seasoned, well-honed leaders.
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that rely on executive coaching because it adds a tremendous amount of value to their professional career and to the organization.
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That's why most organizations have really good executive coaching programs at the senior leadership level.
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But the folks that are in most need of professional development
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might get an occasional training class maybe once or twice a year.
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They certainly aren't offered an opportunity to do one-on-one executive coaching.
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If it is, it's unfortunately often only offered to folks that are struggling in leadership.
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It's not really provided to highly effective frontline leaders because
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They're seen as being highly effective.
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Why would they need a coach?
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If we apply that logic at the senior leadership level to the frontline leaders, frontline leaders need it more.
Barriers to Effective Leadership Coaching
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They need it more consistently.
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They would rely on it and benefit from that investment far more significantly
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than the same dollar provided to a senior leader.
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Now, senior leadership development is still necessary, but when you think about how are we going to pay for executive coaching, leadership development on a consistent basis for all of those frontline compared to executive coaching, how can we possibly afford it?
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That's the big question.
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I think for a lot of organizations, they are hoping and banking on that trickle down effect.
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If we coach our leaders at the very top, we should be able to coach our frontline leaders.
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But the reality is not everyone is prepared or skilled to be an effective coach.
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I know for myself, I sometimes question my ability to coach people.
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And I've been coaching people for over a decade now.
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But it's really important to understand that.
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It does require appropriate structure, appropriate personality, because sometimes people fail to understand what coaching is.
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And to your point, Dr. D, sometimes we coach when there's a problem.
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And that may not be the right opportunity to actually prevent any problems or further problems.
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When we frame coaching as a reactionary measure to something going wrong, you run into a lot of different challenges.
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You're going to get resistance.
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You're going to get the resistance from the person who's being coached because they know why they're getting coached.
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It's not so much that we're trying to develop you.
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Well, we're trying to correct the behavior that we do not agree with.
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And that already sets up a coach, whether it's a external coach, whether it's a manager, supervisor, someone on the human resources team, whatever it may be.
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It already sets up barriers, barriers for this person to actually be authentic and to be willing to invest their time in their own development.
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Organizations.
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bank on we're going to do reactive coaching or we're going to have our leaders who are right above that frontline leadership role coach team members in the hopes that the coaching at the top has trickled down.
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Reality is those people may not know how to coach.
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They may have an impression what coaching is versus what it's not.
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And I think a lot of people think, well, coaching is providing your opinion, your perspective, providing feedback.
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But the reality is coaching is more about being a guide for the person to understand their own behaviors, their own thinking, their own decision making and to take action themselves instead of being told to take action.
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I think that's where a lot of challenge comes in.
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when we have frontline leaders being coached by their, the next level up leadership to them.
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I agree a hundred percent.
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So let me just put a couple of clarifying points around definitions.
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A manager above another manager or supervisor, they're inherently biased.
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They have the closest relationship with the person that they're providing feedback to, that they're encouraging, that they're motivating.
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But that's all around a very specific point of view.
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The team that they're on, the team that they're working with, the processes they're interacting with, there's an inherent bias.
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Now, if you can remove a person and provide them someone within their organization to provide some guidance, that's mentorship.
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That is something different.
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So feedback is provided by the supervisors.
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of that person mentorship is somebody who is disconnected far enough that they can provide them guidance and objective insight into their performance or open up avenues of networking a coach is somebody who provides completely objective feedback and insight as you said dr c encourages the person to think through their own motivations without regard to the environment that they're in but just making them a better leader overall organizations should have very effective
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feedback mechanisms.
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Organizations should have ventureship programs.
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Those are all very important, but they're different than coaching.
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They are different than leadership development.
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They are inherently brought by experts who are experts at providing self-discovery and guiding insights into decision-making.
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Unless your leaders who are coaching their teams have been
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trained and educated in how to coach and how to make the best out of the people that work for them, then the organization hasn't done them a service.
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If there is a gap in leadership development support, relying on other leaders who have had a gap in leadership development support are not going to fill the gap.
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You bring up a great point.
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In reference to training, I think there's an expectation once you're promoted to that leadership level, regardless of where you are in that leadership level, that you should be able to lead, that you should be able to manage people.
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Reality is most people are promoted because of their skills, their talents, their ability to do their role.
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Not so much for their ability to actually influence other people and train other people and coach other people.
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other people that they're working with.
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A 2022 study by Gallup interviewed managers and supervisors, and 60% reported that they didn't feel they had the adequate training to tackle their responsibilities as a leader, as a manager.
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I think this is kind of across the board for a lot of organizations.
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The investment at the frontline leadership level doesn't always match the investment higher up in the organization.
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Now, I understand the higher up in the organization
Investment in Frontline Leadership
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you go, the more decision making power you have.
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So we need to make sure that we have good decision makers.
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But that leaves a gap in the organization because we don't have adequate supervisors, managers, leaders at the front line to actually execute on those decisions.
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The other component of it is people may not want to invest in those frontline leaders because they're more likely to leave an organization than a higher level leader.
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So it's a little bit of that risk avoidance of investing in something that may not ultimately be a long term investment.
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As we know, for a lot of organizations, the frontline fails, the organization fails.
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So there's often a lack of investment.
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There's often a lack of understanding.
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the importance of preparing those leaders because it truly does have a ripple effect throughout the whole organization.
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For me, this is why it's so important to invest in frontline leaders, probably disproportionately to the rest of the organization in terms of leadership development.
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They have the least experience relative to
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to the depth and breadth of experience that you might find at the executive leadership.
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The executive leadership team has already gone through this learning journey and has found their voice, found their confidence, found their path.
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But frontline leaders might be fearful of speaking up, might lack the confidence
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to say, hey, senior leaders, I'm noticing this problem over here.
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And for fear of not being able to articulate it correctly or being able to make a strong enough business case for their idea, leaders may choose to not speak up for fear of embarrassing themselves or
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not having the confidence to be able to communicate what it is that they are trying to communicate, therefore missing out on opportunities for improvement or innovation within an organization or heading off other issues like or employee engagement or turnover.
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If a frontline leader thinks that there is discontent within their team or that employees might be considering leaving, they might be fearful of reaching out.
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So I'm not going to say anything and I'm just going to let
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What happens happens and let employee X leave like I don't know about it rather than raising my hand and asking for help.
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I think another aspect of this is so we have these leaders who were promoted from being high performers in their role.
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They're now put in this leadership role.
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And if they don't have the skills, the abilities are not going to be a high performer.
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It can shatter the confidence of this high performing team member now in this leadership role in struggling.
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And the self-perception of this leader starts to erode.
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And that can lead to a lot of different challenges that this person may encounter.
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The first one that comes to mind is burnout.
Transition Challenges for New Leaders
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Harvard review study showed frontline leaders experience higher levels of stress and burnout compared to other levels of management within an organization.
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Because again, they're getting it from their frontline team members.
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They're getting it from their leadership.
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If they don't have the adequate skills, the adequate training information to be effective, it can lead to that burnout.
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It can lead to getting overly stressed.
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Not only that, often when a person enters a leadership role, there's a transition period where they are leaving their role to move into this next role.
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They're called on to continue doing their original role in some capacity.
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So it changes their workload.
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And now you have a working manager, working supervisor who is trying to balance being able to care for their team while still performing.
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Another aspect is often when leaders are put into a leadership role, their compensation structure may change.
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They may go from an hourly team member to now an exempt employee where they're getting salary.
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You're going to work longer hours.
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When I think about the
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executives that I coach compared to the frontline leaders that I coach.
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There's a confidence difference between the two that comes with experience.
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You think about what experienced leader brings to a team.
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They can navigate the politics.
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They understand who to talk to about what, what relationships and alliances are necessary.
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for a decision to be made.
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They understand and have an intuition around the financial impact and can make educated, well-informed decision around where to put resources and how to get financial resources.
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They can build their team, bring people together around common goal, a really effective lead
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is a fine-tuned decision-making machine.
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They make decisions about where to allocate resources, where to invest relationship energy, where to build alliances, and where they can spend their time.
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A frontline manager who does not have that same depth of experience
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or that same longevity in leadership roles has a hard time navigating those things and that's where they need extra help if you're a senior leader think about the level of confidence that you had in your very first leadership role what level of support that you had in that leadership role think about what mistakes and what missteps and what missed opportunities you may have had by not having someone to guide you and help you
00:19:01
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overcome all of those challenges.
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You may have had mentors, you may have had a coach.
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Think about how rewarding those experiences were in helping you overcome those early challenges of leadership.
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I think there's this perspective where if you're promoted, it's trial by fire.
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You have to just get thrown to the wolves, figure it out.
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You're able to figure out your role before, you can do it again.
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I think people fail to realize that your role impacts so many more people.
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That level of stress frontline leaders experience is different.
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I like to say executives stress about the what ifs frontline leaders stress about the what now.
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We sometimes fail to look back.
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And to your point, Dr. D, look back at our own experiences.
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of what it took for us to become a leader.
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And actually there are symptoms that we can identify when we have these underdeveloped, under supported frontline leaders.
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Confidence, confidence in leadership and their leadership role is one of those big symptoms.
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No one likes to have these tough conversations.
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It's even tougher when you don't have the confidence in your own leadership skill, your own ability.
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Frontline leaders who don't receive adequate support, adequate coaching are more than likely going to be less
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confident to speak up, especially when it comes to that conversations with your leadership or recognizing emerging issues that create risk for organizations.
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So this lack of confidence, this lack of feeling that I am in this role and I can make an impact and grow the person's ability to be an effective
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of frontline leader, which in turn impacts team member engagement.
Impact of Poor Leadership on Team Dynamics
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You know, we all want to work for a leader who is confident, who we can trust, that we feel if we can go to for this support.
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So without proper support or coaching, frontline leaders may not be able to connect, have adequate engagement with team members.
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This can lead to lower morale, lower productivity, and ultimately can create disengagement.
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In my career, if I had a leader that was
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Inexperienced, it was harder for me to actually be productive because I felt like I had to support them the whole way or I didn't get the support that I needed.
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And often what ends up happening, we end up having increased turnover, not just from employees who feel they have a quote unquote bad leader.
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The frontline leaders will also leave because they're going to get burned out.
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They're not getting the support that they need.
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They don't have the confidence in the role and it's why am I going to fake it until I make it?
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If I can go somewhere else, I'm not going to have the same amount of stress.
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And we know that turnover when it's a negative turnover, meaning we're losing team members that we've invested in, team members that we want to see grow in the organization or have shown that they have the capacity to grow.
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Not getting the support can be costly to organizations.
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In addition to that, lack of confidence, lack of ability or support for frontline leaders can also lead to poor decision-making.
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They don't have that sounding board.
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They don't have that confidence to make a decision and follow through with it and be effective with it.
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Dr. C, I agree 100%.
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A lack of confidence in a leader will make a leader be perceived as not being able to represent or advocate for their team.
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That disengages the team, which causes people to leave.
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All of this for me comes down to
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a leader's decision-making
Cultivating Decision-Making Skills
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skill.
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Early in my career, I thought I was making good decisions.
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I sometimes didn't.
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I sometimes didn't know who to ask or what criteria to use.
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But people have to develop that intuition over time.
00:22:19
Speaker
They have to develop that skill for decision-making.
00:22:22
Speaker
Frontline leaders just don't have that at their fingertips like a more experienced leader does.
00:22:27
Speaker
My first executive coach focused in, most importantly, on what were the things that were important to me in my decision-making process.
00:22:36
Speaker
Where was I investing my time?
00:22:38
Speaker
Where was I choosing to spend my relationship capital?
00:22:42
Speaker
Where was I building relationships with my team?
00:22:45
Speaker
Who was I investing in?
00:22:47
Speaker
What issues was I advocating for?
00:22:49
Speaker
Was I able to recognize conflict and miscommunication more readily within a team?
00:22:55
Speaker
I was prepared to be a manager, so I thought, but I'm sure now if I'd look back on that leader that I was then and could coach that person now, I would have thoughts and
00:23:06
Speaker
perspectives that would keep young me from making some of the mistakes that I had through sheer power of experience, being able to think about what the outcome was, what those decision-making processes look like, who and how to advocate for and when to ignore a problem or save it for later, or this is something that I need to intervene early rather than just letting it play out.
00:23:28
Speaker
The things that you talked about, Dr. C, confidence in leadership, employee engagement,
00:23:33
Speaker
turnover, conflict and miscommunication, decision-making, all of these lead to organizational performance.
00:23:39
Speaker
That's what the leader is there to do is to improve organizational performance.
00:23:43
Speaker
And if you don't have these in place with solid, effective leaders, you are essentially missing the opportunity on efficiency, reducing turnover, other opportunities in the organization to have a profound impact on
00:23:58
Speaker
your bottom line i'll be honest first time i was a supervisor manager i knew nothing i was very confident and knowing nothing and it really showed it really showed with and i feel bad for for some other people who first reported to me when i first became a manager or a supervisor because again didn't have the adequate training at the time they didn't have the advocate support which really made it difficult for me in my first supervisory role to be able to connect the dots or be able to
00:24:27
Speaker
to understand that, hey, these two people probably don't get along.
00:24:30
Speaker
Let's not schedule them together all the time.
00:24:32
Speaker
It's very important to have that introspection of how effective am I?
The Importance of Training and Support
00:24:38
Speaker
And now as I've gone up in different roles, different leadership capacities, I see the value and also the importance of ultimately setting up frontline leaders for success.
00:24:48
Speaker
And to your point, Dr. D, coaching can be one of those amazing experiences for people.
00:24:54
Speaker
early in their leadership careers is impactful for decades, impactful for the remainder of that person's life and does ripple out to the people that they're leading themselves.
00:25:05
Speaker
We often talk about what is a good leader and we can throw out a couple of ideas, but what we remember, we can remember like,
00:25:12
Speaker
it was yesterday.
00:25:13
Speaker
But those bad leaders behave like not because they're being malicious, not because their job is to make your life miserable.
00:25:19
Speaker
It's very much either they're encountering a lot of pressure, a lot of expectations that they weren't ready for and have the adequate support.
00:25:26
Speaker
Maybe they didn't have the adequate training on how to have a non combative conversation.
00:25:31
Speaker
We're also a reflection of our leaders, leaders we've experienced.
00:25:34
Speaker
And often when you're early on in your leadership career, you're going to mimic
00:25:38
Speaker
Some of those behaviors that you saw other leaders do, whether they're good behaviors or bad, it's just they're able to do it.
00:25:45
Speaker
They were able to keep their job.
00:25:46
Speaker
I guess that's what I got to do to be able to be a leader.
00:25:48
Speaker
I think there's an importance.
00:25:50
Speaker
I think there's a growing need for frontline leaders to get that adequate support, coaching and development.
00:25:57
Speaker
glad you brought up bad leaders because we've all had at least one, probably several.
00:26:03
Speaker
I've probably, in some people's eyes, been a bad leader.
00:26:07
Speaker
There is no doubt in my mind.
00:26:08
Speaker
Even the best leaders are perceived as bad leaders to some.
00:26:12
Speaker
And a good leader or a bad leader, it doesn't matter.
00:26:15
Speaker
They're probably trying to do the best that they can with the resources and tools that they have.
00:26:20
Speaker
A bad leader in the eyes of some is not the failing necessarily of
00:26:25
Speaker
of that leader.
00:26:26
Speaker
Unless that leader is doing something unethical, that's a different story.
00:26:30
Speaker
But a well-intentioned leader who is just not a good leader, that's not a failing of that leader.
00:26:35
Speaker
It's a failing of that leader's leadership team, that they haven't provided them with the right support, or they put them in a leadership role with a team that is not the right fit for them.
00:26:45
Speaker
A leader that is struggling and having a hard time finding their way
00:26:49
Speaker
or doesn't have the confidence is under stress.
00:26:52
Speaker
And think about yourself.
00:26:53
Speaker
When you have your stuff together, you're feeling confident, you're feeling good.
00:26:58
Speaker
Think about how you approach a situation.
00:27:00
Speaker
Now think about how you might approach that same situation when you're under stress.
00:27:06
Speaker
Your responses aren't going to be the same.
00:27:08
Speaker
Your decision-making processes aren't necessarily going to be the same.
00:27:11
Speaker
That's what a lot of frontline leaders feel like.
00:27:13
Speaker
They're under stress.
00:27:14
Speaker
They're still doing maybe part of their own job.
00:27:16
Speaker
They're lacking the confidence.
00:27:17
Speaker
But imagine where these leaders are given the right level of support.
00:27:22
Speaker
What would happen?
00:27:23
Speaker
Think about all those things that we talked about that were negatives before.
00:27:27
Speaker
And what could flip the script for these leaders?
00:27:31
Speaker
Imagine a confident leader.
00:27:32
Speaker
that has the understanding and the confidence to raise their hand and say, I see a problem over here.
00:27:38
Speaker
I might not be able to articulate why I think it's important or be able to make a really strong business case on why we need to look at that.
00:27:45
Speaker
But I think we should look at this or even more so, given the right training to be able to articulate a business case and
00:27:52
Speaker
Break down a problem with clarity and accuracy and assessment to be able to say, I think that we have a problem.
00:27:59
Speaker
It looks like this.
00:28:00
Speaker
It's caused by this.
00:28:02
Speaker
I think we should invest in this to solve this problem and it will help make the organization better.
00:28:07
Speaker
That leads into being able to build confidence in decision-making skills and shape the way that people
00:28:13
Speaker
prioritize decision criteria.
00:28:16
Speaker
Think about risk.
00:28:17
Speaker
Think about cost.
00:28:18
Speaker
All of these will help a leader feel like they're more of an advocate for their team.
00:28:23
Speaker
Being more of an advocate and more effective for their team is only going to improve employee engagement
00:28:29
Speaker
Improved employee engagement has demonstrated reducing turnover and they can become a model for other people to follow.
00:28:35
Speaker
Your frontline leadership team can be a source of inspiration for others to follow and to model.
00:28:43
Speaker
As you said, Dr. C, we all model leaders that we've seen.
00:28:46
Speaker
Imagine what self-perpetuating leadership looks like if you're investing in leaders who bring the right qualities
00:28:53
Speaker
who bring the right decision making, who advocate for the right things within their team, who improve conflict resolution and create harmony within their team.
00:29:01
Speaker
Absolutely.
Creating Future Leadership Pipelines
00:29:02
Speaker
And frontline leaders are also a reflection of culture.
00:29:05
Speaker
Frontline leaders are often, for frontline team members, the face of leadership.
00:29:09
Speaker
So they're picking up on those cues.
00:29:11
Speaker
And people notice when their leaders are getting support or not getting support because we start seeing the same emerging problems repeat themselves over and over.
00:29:19
Speaker
It's
00:29:20
Speaker
often comes up when it comes when we have discussions around conflict, conflict resolution, those tough conversations.
00:29:27
Speaker
And for a lot of those leaders, by having the investment, the development opportunity, it actually reduces the need for additional interventions and resolving conflicts among team members, which in turn reduces risk to an organization, reduces risk to a team, reduces risk to just a culture and environment of an organization.
00:29:47
Speaker
But it also does when we do investment
00:29:49
Speaker
frontline leaders is you're creating a pipeline, potential leaders within the organization that you can tap into.
00:29:56
Speaker
Also, for those leaders themselves, this is career development for them.
00:30:00
Speaker
By providing coaching, by providing support to frontline leaders, it not only helps them become better leaders, they gain a better understanding of their own strengths.
00:30:09
Speaker
own areas of improvement and they start to build the skill of being able to set clear professional goals for their own growth and in turn they can take those behaviors and share it with their teams so now it has that multiplier effect where we invest in these leaders we invest in this front line that truly does have an immense impact because they're the closest to our front line they are also the closest to our external stakeholders have a profound effect i know when a challenge is
00:30:37
Speaker
for enhancing, developing leadership skills for the frontline is we have a lot of leaders.
Strategies for Effective Leadership Development
00:30:43
Speaker
We have a lot of frontline supervisors, managers.
00:30:45
Speaker
We either don't have the time, we don't have budget, the resources to be able to train and develop these people.
00:30:50
Speaker
We're hoping that there's that trickle-down effect for coaching, but I think there's some practical strategies that can really support organizations, teams, and for those who are leaders at the frontline, helps you articulate the ask of what support you need.
00:31:04
Speaker
So there are some practical strategies to be a starting point for coaching and developing leaders.
00:31:09
Speaker
First is setting good, clear goals, understanding the difference between feedback, mentoring, and skill development and what frontline team members truly need.
00:31:18
Speaker
It's very important that any approach you take, you look at your current environment and you tailor it to it.
00:31:23
Speaker
Understanding that there is no one size fits all when it comes to developing your frontline leaders.
00:31:27
Speaker
People are going to be at different places.
00:31:30
Speaker
going to have different experience levels.
00:31:31
Speaker
If you're going to implement any type of development program, coaching program for frontline leaders, that it's initially grounded in the reality that they're working in, the environment that they're working in.
00:31:41
Speaker
This is an opportunity for you as a frontline leader to develop your skills, to strengthen that leadership skill and capacity.
00:31:48
Speaker
I couldn't agree more.
00:31:49
Speaker
One mistake that leaders make when they're thinking about development and coaching for frontline folks is they try to apply that executive coaching model
00:31:58
Speaker
to frontline staff.
00:32:00
Speaker
It doesn't work.
00:32:00
Speaker
It's too expensive.
00:32:02
Speaker
It's too intrusive.
00:32:03
Speaker
It's just not affordable for the effectiveness.
00:32:06
Speaker
Now I coach and I know it's effective, but I also know it's not cost effective for every frontline leader that you have within your organization.
00:32:14
Speaker
So you have to think about alternate models.
00:32:17
Speaker
We also know people get a lot of value out of
00:32:20
Speaker
leadership development training.
00:32:21
Speaker
The challenge is that leadership development training usually only happens a couple times a year for a given manager.
00:32:28
Speaker
They have a great time in that training.
00:32:30
Speaker
When they step away, people often forget those things that they learned in that training.
00:32:34
Speaker
There's some indelible thing that's left behind, but some or most of the training gets lost.
00:32:40
Speaker
One thing that I have noticed and observed in different types of trainings for leaders is
00:32:46
Speaker
is that it is a lecture with very little opportunity for it to be experiential.
00:32:50
Speaker
It's an opportunity for people to actually connect to real-life activities that they're doing and understanding the impact of their leadership to their stakeholders.
00:33:00
Speaker
And connect with each other through those experiences.
00:33:03
Speaker
I think that's an important thing.
00:33:04
Speaker
aspect.
00:33:05
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:33:05
Speaker
And I think for a lot of leaders, building these connections with their peers, frontline leaders, leaders in general, gets lonely.
00:33:12
Speaker
You don't have a lot of people that you can confide with them and talk through the challenges.
00:33:17
Speaker
And I think that's where coaching or having an avenue to receive some coaching actually supports a lot of leaders because it gives them an opportunity to talk through these challenges that they may not normally be able to talk through.
00:33:28
Speaker
With leadership development opportunities,
00:33:31
Speaker
They're expected to be done on the leader's time in addition to their day-to-day work.
00:33:37
Speaker
Many organizations have access to online training programs, but that's on the leader to carve out the time, be self-motivated, and complete those activities that they might find interesting.
00:33:48
Speaker
They're not necessarily prescribed or developed around
00:33:52
Speaker
a professional development training program that a coach might help a person find there are a couple of hallmarks that i would say are important in developing a cost-effective frontline leadership development program one you have to make time for it it has to be built into the job that for x hours a month you are expected to attend some
00:34:14
Speaker
level of professional development according to a plan that should consist of a couple of things it should consist of self-directed self-introspective learning it should include some group training it should include group coaching where frontline leaders are working together on developing their relationships and problem solving and decision making skills together through experiential
00:34:40
Speaker
learning environment.
Components of a Successful Leadership Program
00:34:41
Speaker
And it should consist of some individualized coaching.
00:34:44
Speaker
It doesn't have to be every week or even once a month.
00:34:46
Speaker
It could be once a quarter where they're meeting with their own professional coach.
00:34:50
Speaker
You also bring up a great point that, yes, the organization has to have this commitment.
00:34:54
Speaker
The frontline leader has to have equal commitment to this.
00:34:57
Speaker
If they're not willing to engage in coaching, they're not willing to do the follow through.
00:35:01
Speaker
coaching programs, a lot of development programs.
00:35:04
Speaker
There's quote unquote homework.
00:35:05
Speaker
There's an investment that frontline leader needs to make in their own development.
00:35:09
Speaker
That's one of the big challenges when it comes to how can we make this coaching effective?
00:35:14
Speaker
We also have to get buy-in from those frontline leaders.
00:35:16
Speaker
You have to do some sort of assessment.
00:35:18
Speaker
They have to do a self-assessment.
00:35:20
Speaker
If we can, 360s are amazing because you're now getting perspectives from different areas, helping identify what are these pain points or where are these opportunities for development?
00:35:30
Speaker
Once you have that assessment, once you have that starting point of where we want to focus our energies, develop programs to meet those needs.
00:35:39
Speaker
It can be through one-on-one coaching.
00:35:41
Speaker
It can be through this group coaching model, which I really appreciate and like the group coaching model.
00:35:46
Speaker
When I've done this in the past, we utilize Dilemma Labs, which is gain an opportunity to order the people being coached, the frontline leaders, to go through a scenario that's going to
00:35:57
Speaker
activate their ability to problem solve, their ability to collaborate, their ability to take a step back, look at the whole situation.
00:36:04
Speaker
In addition to that, utilizing formal training, utilizing online, in-person, interactive or lecture style trainings, but ensuring that also implementation of the program is effective.
00:36:17
Speaker
And understanding if we are asking team members to make the commitment and go through this training, that we also have to make sure that we can commit
00:36:25
Speaker
the time for them to be able to do the work.
00:36:27
Speaker
So often I've seen programs get built and they're not effective because the people who are going through a program aren't given the time, aren't given the space to actually go through the training, to go through the coaching.
00:36:39
Speaker
It's less, let's make sure it fits your day instead of make your day fit this.
00:36:44
Speaker
And often that's where you see that dropout.
00:36:45
Speaker
That's where you see that ineffectiveness of the programs.
00:36:48
Speaker
Ultimately, you also want to evaluate your program.
00:36:51
Speaker
Are you addressing those needs, those challenges or the areas of development that you want to build up in these leaders and not to be afraid to make adjustments?
00:37:00
Speaker
There is no one size fits all when it comes to developing leaders.
00:37:03
Speaker
We often think that, oh, the answer's in a book, the answer's in a podcast, the answer's in sitting with a coach.
00:37:10
Speaker
It's going to vary leader to leader.
00:37:11
Speaker
For leaders of organizations, understanding that we have to make adjustments.
00:37:16
Speaker
We have to tailor our approaches to the needs and the challenges that our frontline leaders are encountering.
00:37:23
Speaker
And the reality is a lot of our leaders need that one-on-one attention.
00:37:26
Speaker
So being able to provide formal coaching and making sure that it's not just providing feedback or just a mentorship, real coaching and have a profound impact on not just the media, this person's career trajectory, organization's trajectory.
00:37:40
Speaker
You said something about real coaching.
00:37:43
Speaker
I think that's something that's important.
00:37:44
Speaker
What is real coaching?
00:37:45
Speaker
A lot of people can call themselves a coach without any real formal training, without any true experience.
00:37:52
Speaker
Real coaching means using evidence-based approaches that are proven to work, assessments,
00:37:59
Speaker
tools, a framework that has been borne out through research.
The Cycle of Effective Leadership Development
00:38:04
Speaker
So it's important that a coach that is developing these strategies has the right credential, whether that's a PhD or whether that's a professional certification.
00:38:13
Speaker
That's an important part.
00:38:14
Speaker
You can't just bring in your sister-in-law's friend because you know that they're a coach.
00:38:19
Speaker
It has to be somebody with the right credential.
00:38:21
Speaker
As we've talked about this, Dr. C, I've picked up on a few hallmarks we both
00:38:27
Speaker
think are important here.
00:38:28
Speaker
There has to be an assessment.
00:38:30
Speaker
There has to be some individualized approach that is working on the things that are important to that person.
00:38:35
Speaker
It needs to be evidence-based.
00:38:36
Speaker
It needs to be scientifically rigorous.
00:38:38
Speaker
That has been demonstrated in the real world that it is actually going to be effective.
00:38:43
Speaker
There has to be an experiential component.
00:38:45
Speaker
There has to be a group coaching component.
00:38:48
Speaker
There should be some individual coaching component.
00:38:51
Speaker
There has to be time built into the person's day, week, month,
00:38:55
Speaker
to dedicate specifically to this as part of their job.
00:38:59
Speaker
Lastly, there has to still be mechanisms for feedback and mentorship from that person's boss and from other people within the organization.
00:39:09
Speaker
Those people need to be trained on how to be mentors and how to provide feedback
00:39:15
Speaker
and how to develop other people that training needs to exist as well so a well-rounded training program has to consist of all of those things for coaching has to provide education for those that are doing mentoring and provide education for those that provide feedback to others so what you're telling me is you shouldn't have the blind leading the blind yeah
00:39:35
Speaker
That is exactly right.
00:39:36
Speaker
Many organizations perpetuate inefficient, untrained leaders in leadership, leading other leaders who are untrained in leadership.
00:39:45
Speaker
We can stop that cycle.
00:39:47
Speaker
It just takes focus, attention, and investment.
00:39:50
Speaker
I'll add to that.
00:39:51
Speaker
It also takes a commitment.
00:39:53
Speaker
If people are not committed to the development of their leaders, not committed to that investment, it does become challenging.
00:39:59
Speaker
If you're not committed, it becomes very difficult for you to get other people to commit.
00:40:03
Speaker
They can truly see that.
00:40:04
Speaker
So I think for a lot of organizations, you're in a unique position.
00:40:08
Speaker
Make a huge impact if you're willing to make the investment.
00:40:11
Speaker
If you're willing to make the commitment.
00:40:12
Speaker
I'm going to say that we have leaders listening that are willing to make the commitment, that are willing to invest, that are willing to share this with other leaders who find this important and are going to make a change within their organization to find a way, whether it's a pilot program starting small, who can invest.
00:40:33
Speaker
bring about change within their organization by investing in frontline leadership in the way that it deserves to be invested in for all the right reasons.
00:40:41
Speaker
And if you're a leader struggling with this, seek outside support.
00:40:45
Speaker
Because ultimately, if we're able to take care of leaders, we're able to develop our leaders through coaching, through training.
00:40:52
Speaker
We truly are having a huge impact on a lot of people's lives.
00:40:55
Speaker
And my hope is we're creating a
00:40:57
Speaker
better workplace.
00:40:58
Speaker
Well said, Dr. C. On that note, I think we're done here.
00:41:00
Speaker
So let's close it up.
00:41:02
Speaker
I'm Dr. D. And I'm Dr. C. And we'll keep dissecting leadership.
00:41:06
Speaker
So your time at work sucks a little less.