“Moving the Middle” for Strategic Growth

I heard about a bank marketing vice president who had a sign on her desk that read: “It’s lonely in the middle.”

Too often leaders focus on rewarding the top performers and dealing with accountability issues for the bottom performers. More than half the workforce that performs somewhere in the middle is often overlooked, yet it might be your best opportunity for growth.

Our approach is to help managers strategically focus: keep challenging and rewarding the top performers and holding bottom performers accountable. Maximize your investmet of time to help middle performers make gains that have a larger impact on the bottom line.

A coaching client told me of her struggles to motivate a direct report who was not meeting expectations. She was frustrated that the employee consistently reported to his desk 8 minutes later than the start of the workday and related that to his results being lacking.

So focused was she on the symptoms of the employee’s actions, that her efforts at “coaching” did more to further disengage the employee. My approach was to help the leader understand how to affect change by identifying the root cause, and invest in her people with her heart.

Through our personality profile work and other assessments of the employee, I discovered the root cause was a situation at home and he was paralyzed by the fear of taking risks that might jeopardize being able to support his family.

Guiding this employee on his personal voyage of self-discovery, and providing him with the tools and training and reinforcement helped turn a troubled employee into a re-engaged performer who exceeded goals and expectations.

“When the goal seems unattainable?” Lessons from my Marathon Training

As I meet with an organization about a workforce challenge, the question of what to expect from our engagement creates an opportunity for dialogue.

I want to know, “what problem are you trying to solve?” before I open our training toolbox: Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, DiSC, Situational Leadership, Lominger 360; Strengths Finder, ROI Coaching and 5 Dysfunctions of a Team.

Enhancing an organizational culture, aligning the workforce to strategic initiatives, and guiding teams through transformational change should not be viewed as short-term fixes. I liken our approach to working with your company to my training as a marathoner and triathlete.

I am a process person. I like to help leaders think about change as a series of incrementally supported steps for sustained success that leads to achieving the goals established.

I have run many marathons, but when a friend challenged me to compete in an Ironman Triathlon, I had to break the training down into component parts and timelines before I could commit.

“What would I do on Day One of my training? What would my first week look like?” I wondered. “How would I fit the training for the swim, bike, run into my schedule?” As a marathoner I understood the running part. But I had to figure out how to overcome doubts about my ability to go the distance. This is really no different than trying to accomplish a big business goal that is daunting.

Too often when training employees in new process during times of transformational change we forget to answer their most important question: “what do I do differently when I get back to my desk, or my workstation?” They want to know, “where is the book, or the support that helps sustain the new change and how do I know I will be successful if I change what has worked so far?”

That is where coaching comes into play, to create systems for sustained performance so that workers feel supported through efforts to make transformational changes.

For my Ironman training, I was initially overwhelmed with the thoughts crowding my head about sustaining pace to meet qualifying times. My training partner urged me to limit my focus on doing the daily things I needed to get in the best shape and the times would follow.

I discovered that internal mastery comes from achieving what I did not think possible, when the sum total of my training miles piled up, and continued coaching gave me the confidence. So I continue to be pleasantly surprised when I hit my personal and business goals and am most satisfied when I can enable others to achieve their goals.

Sustaining organizational change should be viewed as a marathon, not a sprint.

Our goal is to help you and your organizational put in place systems, process, supported coaching and documented solutions for sustained success.