By Michael Neill, CSE
This is our next-to-last "Missional Monday." Today I want to follow up on our
CUES Symposium: A CEO/Chairman Exchange session on missional leadership by initiating an exchange with you about the idea that missional leaders move the organization from over-managing to coaching.
Missional Leaders Understand the Difference Between Management and Coaching
We have previously presented the differences, as they relate to missional leadership, between coaching and management.
- Management focuses on outcomes.
- Management focuses on processes.
- Coaching focuses on behaviors.
- Coaching focuses on people.
It is important to note here that I am not in opposition to management. Management is a good thing. However, many organizations I have worked with have a strong tendency to over-manage and under-coach, by a significant factor. Over-management and under-coaching creates disengaged employees who do only what is required.
Missional leaders and missional organizations create super-engaged employees who are intellectually and emotionally invested in their work. For a review of employee engagement, re-read
Missional Monday 3.
Missional Leaders Create an OrganizationThat Flows Back to Mission
Here is an example of how over-management creates improvement that is limited by the wisdom and machinations of strategies and tactics. Secondly, I’ll provide a sample, using the same scenario, of how coaching creates improvement in employee
behavior to drive performance.
Our goal: “We need more loans.”
In response,
over-management says: "Let’s lower the interest rate on our auto loan to 1.99. Get marketing to put together a promotion to make sure our members are aware of this great rate. Let’s run a competition between our branches so that the one that gets the most auto loan dollars this quarter gets a pizza party.
Hey, I know it works. That’s why we keep doing it. However, it doesn’t work best. It leaves the employees disengaged in the purpose of their work. They may be engaged in getting enough loans to beat the other branches. Of course when next quarter comes around, auto loans decrease or you run another promotion. This effort creates temporary improvement, not engagement.
In response to the same goal,
a missional leader says: “We are not doing the kind of job we need regarding our mission to improve our members’ financial well-being. I can tell that because we are not refinancing our members' high-rate loans from other institutions. We need to do a better job here in living our mission."
As Missional Leadership Emerges, so Will Missional Coaching
- Missional coach to his or her employee: “This quarter we want to improve the way we live our mission with our members by saving them more money than ever before by refinancing their higher interest rate auto loans. The credit union has decided to lower our best rate to 1.99 to save our members the most money we can. I’d like you to give me a game plan on what you are going to do differently this quarter to live out our mission with our members."
- Then the missional coach will focus on catching those who are doing it right and challenging those who are not engaged. The result is super-engagement because the employees are no longer simply trying to win a competition, but serving and finding relevance in their efforts.
Lastly, those who are not engaged in living our mission must be held accountable for failure to do so. There is no degree of balancing, job knowledge or volume of work that can excuse behavors that are not in alignment with mission. (Read more about this in
Missional Monday 4.)
Michael Neill, CSE, is president of Michael Neill and Associates, Atlanta.
Read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 and part 7 of the missional leadership series.
Learn more about ServiStar, a joint offering of CUES and Michael Neill and Associates.
