Throughout my working life mentors, guides, peers and managers have played an important role in my professional development. During the part of my career spent in the mining industry I had a few great managers, some okay and some not so great.
Working for large companies there were systems and structure in place for feedback and ongoing training and development. I had peers that I could bounce ideas around with. Colleagues with a few more years of experience who I could rely on for some informal advice when I needed it.
Most importantly I had a manager who gave me regular, formal performance feedback.
In addition I had a couple of meetings each years with my manager’s manager about my career.
As I progressed through different roles as an employee I had a support network around me and an employer who provided me with the tools and training I needed to be successful.
For a number of years I had my own team to manage. It was a role that I excelled at and it has always been the thing I missed most by taking the step from employee to independent consultant.
When I had my own team I stuck to our feedback schedule like clockwork. Did you know that having an employee feel that they are genuinely valued and have a voice is infinitely more pleasurable for them than a pay rise? A pay rise is a momentary hit of job feel good and the come down is fast.
The retention rate I achieved was impeccable because I had a team who were not only valued but actually knew that they were. They felt confident that there would be ongoing opportunities for growth within the organisation. They knew that they had some say in their career progression and were clear on what they needed to achieve to move them to the next step.
Something I learned for sure is that a consistent feedback processes equal great employee retention.
Engaging a business coach is a great supplement for a manager when you’re running your own business.
Performance management is an interesting thing. I believe that good performance management and feedback processes are a critical component of maintaining a high performing, professional team.
One of my managers once told me that I could deliver a review where I told my team-member that they were doing a shit job but they’d leave my office with a smile on their face because they knew exactly what they were doing well and what they needed to do differently.
One quiet Wednesday afternoon I had my Manager’s Manager stroll into my office and close the door. He charged me with ‘managing’ one of my team out of the organisation.
At my next review I got a pat on the back for achieving the desired outcome. Not just because the individual had left but because he left on his own terms and with dignity, entirely unaware of that quiet Wednesday afternoon conversation.
Don’t believe that this doesn’t happen. Corporate can be cut throat and if you’re underperforming management will find a way to feed you a bullet.
Another afternoon I gathered my team together and informed them that we’d had to terminate the employment of a well-liked employee. I’d been part of the match review committee and it was the only possible result after a please explain on a multimillion dollar cock up that he’d been responsible for.
A room full of technical professionals. I made the call to bring them together and tell them so that there wouldn’t be any Chinese whispers. I got through it without crying but it totally sucked. The bloke who we terminated was a nice guy with a young family, he was well liked in the office…did I mention how much that afternoon sucked?
Then there was the afternoon when my general manager gathered the entire team together to talk about the upcoming round of redundancies. He didn’t know whether he’d keep his job or not but he did this really tough job in the most eloquent and honest way. It inspired me to have a team that I’d one day lead with same vulnerability and composure, through both the good stuff and the bad.
Over the last 12 years, little by little, I’ve made the transition from mining professional to owning and running a business in a different field. The thing is, I’ve brought the sum total of all my experiences as an employee and independent consultant into this business combined with 12 years of education and implementation of different elements of online business.
The internet has opened up incredible opportunities for everyday people to build and grow their own businesses. Traditional business models are changing and being disrupted. People are working differently, often in a more isolated way to how they may have worked before.
Suddenly so many have become the CEO of their own micro business but without the support of a board of management to help advise them.
The online industry is new and everyone is still learning.
Women in particular are embarking on the journey of building their own businesses in droves. The trouble is we don’t have the traditional support networks that we had in place when we were employees. Sure, for some of us those networks were pretty ordinary, but one way or another they are gone and we’re having to find them elsewhere.
Enter the business coach industry.
Somewhere along the line relationships have gone out the window and there’s an entire emerging industry capitalising on our desire for feedback and support because we’re working independently.
Coaching and mentoring has become a commodity.
A coffee and a chat has become something to be monetised and that is not something I am comfortable with.
I’m more than happy to have a free flowing coffee and a chat, I love hearing about other people’s businesses and sharing ideas. In a business context if you want me to do some work for you, audit something and report back, put together a strategy or implement stuff for you…that’s what I charge for.
Good conversation is win win, I’ve got a lot of experience in the online space across and I’m more than happy to share my stories to help others figure out what their best way forward is.
Don’t get me wrong, as a business owner I think it is really important to have people that I trust for advice and coaching. What I don’t like is that there is an entire industry preying on our human desire for feedback.
I know that having a network of people I trust, people who I can bounce ideas around with, people who will tell me if I should be checking myself is really important. Having a person to pat me on the back or kick me up the bum, depending on what I need, makes a big difference for me.
12 months (or more) ago I started treading the path towards introducing a coaching program. It didn’t take me long to figure out that as much as I enjoy working with people in that capacity marketing that coaching program didn’t sit well with me. I could also see that becoming a business coach wasn’t going to help fulfill my goals for Hardwood Digital.
Marketing a coaching program felt icky. I didn’t want to compete for airtime in a very noisy space. There are some great coaches out there and there are some terrible ones.
Earlier this year I made the choice to focus 110% on serving our Hardwood Digital clients and to develop resources that I could offer in lieu of expensive coaching. As an online marketing agency our clients get the benefits of my abilities as a coach but we provide strategy and implementation services that go beyond coaching alone.
A few months ago I met another business owner who I quickly recognised a perfect mentor for me. I got all teary when the realisation hit me. More recently I met someone who I’ve offered to mentor because I know I can help her on a number of different levels, she’s wearing many hats and I have a good appreciation of how difficult that juggle is.
Little by little I’m forging new friendships and building relationships with a new peer group. People who are just as happy discussing business as life and back and forth in a single sitting.
At some stage, if the right person comes along, I’ll invest in a business coach again. Right now isn’t the right time. Right now I’m focused on growing our client base and working towards employing people within our business, I’m feathering my own nest first.
As nice as the idea of coaching individuals is the only way to grow that as a business is to continually increase the price and give my clients less of myself. There are better ways for me to share my online marketing knowledge to help a people grow their business.
As for the qualities that differentiate an okay coach and a great one…I’ll leave that for another blog post. I waffled on long enough already.
I will leave you with one request. I’d love to hear your stories of leadership, who and what have impacted on your career in positive and negative ways. In your eyes what qualities make a manager great? How much do you feel that having a good manager or coach contributes to your success?
