TLC Coaching Call 14 - Communication & Feedback, Motivating Managers, Reframing the Slow Season

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Coaching Call #14 — July 8, 2024

In this week’s coaching call, we discussed:

• A change in the TLC Coaching Call structure around weekly themes to maximize our time together. We will introduce a new monthly pattern to each call, to focus our thoughts and growth on key leadership topics on a regular basis.

• Handling communication and feedback, especially when it’s frustrating and causes us to react quickly. Leaders focus on slowing down, asking more questions rather than immediately jumping to statements/solutions, and welcoming the engagement (rather than being triggered by it). In order to help others see value, we have to practice overcoming our initial reactions and get better at making smarter responses to assist others.

• Motivating Management teams who may be stalling during the mid-year or mid-market cycle. We discussed doing a mid-year checkup for managers, that reviews “both sides” of their leadership: operational performance and values/vision/strategy. Take a pause to re-calibrate their thought during slow seasons, and reconnect with their personal vision for success, as well as their business-plan’s progress six months into the year.

• Reframing the concept of a “slow season” from the “lazy days of Summer” into a period of training, incubation, strength development and growth. Use the slowdown in some activities (like sales) to reevaluate values and goals, perform a SWOT analysis, recalibrate marketing and sales plans, and bulk up on training. It’s only a slow period if we stop all activity, rather than substitute one kind for another.

• Don’t forget to check out all three upcoming webinars in July (click the banner below) and register early

• Also, we have a new TLC Topic Index to make it easier to find past topics, content and tools.

Here’s the recording, session notes and resources. If you have questions, let me know in the comments or by email.

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Quick Reminder to Register for THREE upcoming webinars

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This Friday is our next TLC Deep Dive. Then two more special Summer events that TLC members attend free. Register for all of them by clicking the banner below.
(Be sure to use the same email you use for your Substack account so we can validate you.)

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In Focus This Week: New TLC Weekly Coaching Themes

First, a re-commitment that TLC Coaching Calls will always include “ask me anything” opportunities. So you can bring any topic, any week, and we’ll work on it together.

And, after three months of TLC Coaching Calls, we’ve decided to try adding a little structure to our conversations by adding weekly themes. These themes will repeat each month, we we constantly cycle through four areas of leadership development. The idea is that having a weekly theme will make it easy for participants to identify growth opportunities and questions by concentrating on a certain “piece” of leadership each week.

Here’s what the weekly themes will look like:

• First Monday of the Month: Leading “yourself” as a leader - focusing on emotional intelligence, stress, time management, values, strengths, critical thinking, resilience, creativity, etc.

• Second Monday of the Month: Leading “your people” focusing on situational leadership, coaching, training, business planning, difficult conversations, sales strategies, developing trust, retention strategies, communications and more.

• Third Monday of the Month: Leading “your organization/firm” focusing on operations, change management, recruiting, talent, operational metrics, business analysis, planning, technology, competitive analysis, market data and marketing

• Fourth Monday of the Month: Leading “your marketplace” focusing on consumer trends, public relations, messaging, diversity, association engagement, governmental affairs, philanthropy, industry trends, ancillary data, social trends

We plan to start this thematic approach “formally” in August, but we might “lightly” practice it for the next three weeks of July.

We’ll start next week with a light trial around “leading your organization/group.”

If you weren’t on the call this Monday, but have thoughts about this format, please email me and let me know what you’re thinking (matthew@mflearn.com).

In-depth Topics this week:

Handling Communication & Feedback (especially when it’s challenging)

How can leaders handle their “initial reaction” to frustrating or difficult communication situations, coaching and training of others? Here are some suggestions to help resist the urge to simply “react” with a snappy response:

1. Slowing down dramatically. Use any technique - count to five, take a deep breath, drink a sip of water - to create an intentional pause. Give yourself to process the situation and to calm your initial emotional reaction.

2. Practice listening deeply: it will not only slow you down, but it might reveal more to the situation (and relationship) that will guide your response. Sometimes you have to answer the “real” question which you can only discover by deeply listening.

3. Use questions rather than statements. Your first “reply” should be a question, even if you know the right “answer.” A follow-up question shows you’re listening and asking for more input, taking the situation seriously. It also helps the other person deepen their “care” for the situation so they become “open” to an answer you provide (especially if you’ve provided it before but they didn’t take it).

A great Book Recommendation on this topic is: Exactly What to Say: The Magic Words for Influence and Impact, by Phil M. Jones

Keeping Management Motivated in “Slow” times

1. Do a midyear analysis of their performance and their mindset.

2. First, examine their operational performance. Use fresh, accurate data to compare results to expectations and set realistic expectations. Be sure to celebrate wins and close wins, not just identify problems/misses. Invite adjustments and rewrites to their operational plan, which they can make during the “pause” in slow times.

3. Check-in with their “mindset” performance. Review and reaffirm their vision for themselves as leaders; assess their typical day’s performance (use a journaling exercise to review a good/bad day); and challenge managers to identify personal activities they need to take to maintain and strengthen their personal commitments during slow times.

4. Give responsibility to managers to address the situation. Help them recognize the challenge of getting off-track/demotivated, then ask them to “step outside their own perspectives” and coach themselves. What advice would they give an agent in this situation? How does that translate to themselves? Manager, heal thyself!

5. Hold learning webinars/sessions. Use “slow sales” times to create “fast learning” times. Read books together, take a refresher course, host a mastermind exchange, or engage colleagues across your network/industry. Learning something new unlocks ideas, energy and motivation.

6. Review the production calendar for the rest of the year. Managers may need to adjust plans for budgets and goals when slow times cause them to review. For example, in an election year, we need to meet budgets before Halloween, when the election and holiday hesitations will begin earlier than a typical year.

7. Create Sales Contests and manager competitions including incentives for their sales teams’ performance, their own recruiting/retention goals, or other milestones they can put the “slow time” to good use.

Learning Tip: Here’s my favorite “listen deeply” activity, taken from an activity I learned from an improv workshop years ago: