Holding your team to high standards requires a coaching mindset

Sarah walked into her office one morning and noticed the newest team member, Alex, was visibly distressed at his desk, head buried in his hands. Concerned, she asked, “Is everything OK?” Alex, with a trembling voice and on the verge of tears admitted, “I messed up the presentation for our big client pitch. I didn’t double-check my data, and now I feel like I’ve let everyone down."

This presented Sarah with a long list of choices: should she comfort, punish, jump in with a solution, brush it off, motivate, lay down the hammer, change Alex’s work scope? All potentially viable. And all problematic. 

Short-answer: Sarah must adapt a coaching mindset. Leaders cannot avoid challenging emotions for fear of inefficiencies or distractions, nor shame team members. Leaders, instead, must address those emotions and use them as a springboard for development conversations.

When we’ve shared this approach with leaders, a common question is, “Won’t I just become everyone’s therapist who just excuses-away everyone’s mistakes?“ 

Well, a coaching mindset aims to explain behaviors (versus excuse them) to identify the real root of the challenge, and create a culture of accountability to high performance. Ann Russo, a professor at DePaul University, asks, “What if [accountability] became synonymous with taking responsibility…making things right, being willing to understand, change and transform the behavior and its underlying motivations?” This shift drives self-agency to meet high expectations.

Three key steps to take in that moment when challenging emotions surface among a team member include:

Check-in with yourself

Our own subconscious emotions can often muddy the waters and escalate conflict. When we react with fear, stress, anger, insecurity or frustration it has a direct impact on how we communicate and the effectiveness of solutions. 

Your action plan:

• Take a deep, belly breath. This slows down your brain and body’s survival instincts, giving you the space and perspective you need to respond (instead of react) to the situation.
• Then ask yourself: what is my knee-jerk reaction to this situation? What am I feeling? What judgements am I making? What fears or anxieties are creeping in?
• Then ask yourself: What will be most important a few months from now? What is the outcome we want? What needs to happen immediately to resolve this current situation? And what needs to happen to prevent it from happening again?

Build trust

Situations like these prove that a leader’s role extends far beyond day-to-day operations and strategic planning — we are partnering with other human beings who come to work as whole people. Addressing emotions, without centralizing them, bolsters belonging and trust, ultimately fueling high performance. 

Your action plan:

• First, honor your team member's experience and reinforce that struggle is normal — we all make mistakes. This is especially powerful when you share a personal story about a mistake you made and the lessons you learned. 
• Second, remind your team member that change is possible. While this struggle is hard, it is temporary, and you are there with them to drive solutions. 
• Third, partner with your team member to develop the short-term action steps, and the proactive long-term steps. Use the words “together” and “we” to highlight the snowball effect or ripples that these changes will have long-term to help solidify the new actions.

Establish clear expectations

Leaders often spend significant time jumping to solutions, and doing so puts the ownership of the problem in the leader’s hands. Therefore, leaders must first identify and communicate what the expected outcome is, thereby empowering the team member to develop a plan himself to achieve it. 

Your action plan:

• Share concrete, specific feedback about what expectations were met and weren’t. Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist, found that feedback is 40% more effective when prefaced with, “I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.” Just 19 simple words that are a game-changer in providing critical feedback.
• Partner with your team member to establish their goals. Kick-off that conversation by asking, “What do we as a team need to accomplish coming out of this situation? What is the outcome we need to see? And what is your role in that?” Then follow-up with probing questions like, “What is the first step you need to take? What is one thing that might get in your way? What is one thing we can do differently next time?”
• When you remove your own emotions from decision-making, build trust, and co-create goals to give team member agency over how those goals are reached, your feedback delivery when things go sideways can shift to, “I’m giving you these comments because both you and I have very high expectations and we both know that you can reach them.”
• We’ve outlined these three steps as an immediate response to emotions that surface in the office — but they also can be used proactively. Consider doing daily personal “gut-checks” of your emotions, integrating trust-building exercises into your 1:1 and team meeting agendas and establishing quarterly goal-setting initiatives. These intentional practices will reinforce a culture of accountability to high expectations.

Courtesy images

Kristen Lessig-Schenerlein is an executive coach, keynote speaker and founder of Koi Coaching and Consulting. Hannah McGowan is a professional trainer, coach and founder of Hannah McGowan Coaching. Together they founded CORE Leadership, a transformational leadership development program designed to unlock hidden potential in the next generation of leaders in the Sarasota community.