Beth Armknecht Miller is a Vistage Chair in Atlanta who provides a great role model of leveraging social media to create a personal brand around being a Vistage Chair. She does a great job using social media tools to amplify her message as a Vistage Chair in her community. One of the blogs I follow is the Great Leadership Blog by Dan McCarthy. I stumbled across this guest blog post by Beth on that blog titled “Don’t Let the Pebbles Cover the Rocks“.

Beth talked about the importance of not letting the urgent overwhelm the important in this article. If you’ll remember the writings of Steven Covey in the Seven Habits of Effective People, this was one of the key downfalls of most individuals – they let the urgent dictate their lives.

My focus was on a particularly interesting comment Beth made in her blog article that stuck in my mind. Many of you know that I coach High School Girls Basketball. We just finished our league season. The comment Beth made me reflect back over the last 6 months on my personal leadership, my ability to “control” my emotions and the other coaches I’ve observed in 100s of high school basketball games since the beginning of September. We have 3 levels in our program and each level has played over 50 games each. I announce all of our boys games for home games at our High School. Plus I run a youth club team with over 100 kids. That’s observing a lot of games. Here’s the comment Beth made about leadership:

And finally, having the skill to manage your emotions in times of the urgent is critical to leadership success. Many leaders forget that they are “on stage”. Their employees are always looking to them for emotional and behavioral cues. So when something or someone becomes that pebble, you need to kick up your level of emotional intelligence. Step back and think before you react.

I realized that the girls who played for me looked to me for guidance, inspiration, and focus. The lessons I’ve learned from coaching have helped me in my personal business, executive search practice, and in coaching my clients to be more effective in retaining top talent.

Observations:

Very few basketball coaches have good control of their emotions and are able to effectively communicate with their teams. Their style is measured in extremes – from pure joy to outright anger. They talk about being ethical and value-based in their style out one side of their mouth, and out the other side swear at their players, abuse the referees, and trash talk the opponents. I have to ask myself what type of contradiction that sets up in the minds of young student-athletes. Perhaps, it prepares them for a lifetime of abusive and terrible bosses. Is there a significant difference in this aberrant behavior by coaches of high school girls vs. CEOs at entrepreneurial companies.

I may sometimes wonder if the girls on my team are paying any attention to what I am saying or doing during practices or games. I then realize they are focused on me with laser attention – every action, word, verbal or non-verbal comment is absorbed, analyzed, digested, and filed away for future use. I create a very open team environment where my girls can feel free to say anything they want without the feeling of retribution for being open. I am reminded of being on stage for them when I hear things like:

Why is that other coach yelling at his team?

Coach Barry – don’t forget to breath

Can you believe what that coach just said to the referee? How about that parent behind us who just yelled that comment – isn’t that inappropriate?

Coach Barry – when you sit down on the bench we feel you’ve given up on us.

My coaching peers frequently ask me why I don’t yell at the referees when I am upset about their calls. I tell them that the referees are doing their best job and sometimes they make mistakes under difficult situations and pressure. I ask them how they would feel if I yelled at them every time they made a mistake.

Top talent will not put up with a boss who cannot control their emotions. Members of a sports team will stop working hard when they don’t trust or believe in their coach. Employees are no different. If you’re going to be a “nut-case” and not coach/manage from a values-based approach all the time, then you should just forget about ever retaining top talent.

One of the top 3 reasons top talent decides to leave is that they lose their trust in you as THEIR leader. Not being able to control your emotions and not being able to “walk the talk” of your values is one of the fastest methods to lose good people. How many of your managers and executives have no clue how to manage with values and control their emotional state? Are they capable of learning? Should you send them to charm school? OR is it time to move on and hire better managers. You managerial and supervisors will dictate the caliber of team that delivers the front line of your service. If you’ve got “BAD” managers in those roles, you’ll never achieve long term continual success since they will only be able to hire and retain average and mediocre candidates who can’t find a job elsewhere.

Have you ever played on a team for a coach who couldn’t control their emotions – have you ever worked in an environment where the CEO or manager couldn’t control their emotions? What did you do about it?

My experience is that the entire culture/style/values of the team, group, department, or organization is set by the coach or leader? Do you have managers in your organization contributing to dysfunction?

If you would like to read the full article, click the link below:

Don’t let the Pebbles Cover the Rocks

Barry Deutsch

If you would like to read the full article, click the link below:

Don’t Let the Pebbles Cover the Rocks

Barry Deutsch