Manager, Burn Your Cape - Sandler Training - Canadian Energy News, Top Headlines, Commentaries, Features & Events

Written by Hamish Knox; President of Sandler in Calgary, Canada

Creating accountable, sales focused organizations in Calgary

A manager’s number one priority should be creating a self-sufficient team.

The biggest problem a manager faces in creating a self-sufficient team is their tendency to rescue, especially if they have domain expertise like a salesperson promoted to sales manager.

Managers come by this tendency naturally. It is a hardwired human trait to want to help others and it also helps us get our emotional needs met. It feels good to have someone, direct report or not, say, “thanks, I really appreciate your help.” (Note – they could be lying, but don’t want to hurt your feelings)

To create a self-sufficient team a manager must give their direct reports their two most powerful gifts – permission and protection. Permission to fail and protection that when they do fail their manager won’t play “gotcha management” with them.

Using a sales example, a manager who gives their team permission to fail would not step in and rescue one of their reps in a meeting with a prospect for two reasons.

The rep might figure a way out of their predicament on the spot, which allows them to grow and develop on their own
The rep and manager have a coaching opportunity to discuss during their post-call debrief

Using a marketing example, a manager who gives their team protection will ask questions like “so what will you do differently next time?” when one of their team shares that they ordered promotional items for a trade show too late so they incurred extra charges to ship directly to the trade show instead of “what? I told you to order those six weeks ago!”

Because the lure of rescuing is so strong a manager may have to “trap” themselves to prevent them from unintentionally stunting their direct reports’ growth by saving them. A manager I work with who has a technical background had his technical team take away his access to the organization’s technical systems so he would be trapped into delegating instead of rescuing.

A manager might believe that creating a self-sufficient team will make them redundant. After all, if everyone on the team operates at 100% efficacy, what use is there for a manager?

Well, no individual operates at 100% efficacy, at least not for an extended period of time. Also, just like an orchestra needs a conductor to pull the separate musicians into a unified whole even the most effective team requires a manager to coach, mentor, supervise and train them.

Managers, let go of your need to rescue, burn your cape and create a team that will achieve more without you swooping in to save the day.

Until next time… go lead.

Lunch-and-Learn

Leadership for Organizational Excellence
When: Thursday October, 25
Time: 11.15AM-1.30PM

The Roadmap to Organizational Excellence

“Excellent” caliber businesses are growing and expanding, and constantly moving beyond comfort zone to adjust to changing technology and market conditions.

Join us on Thursday October 25, 2018 from 11:15am-1:30pm for an interactive discussion on the 6 Ps (Planning, Positions, People, Processes, Performetrics and Passion) that support mitigating or eliminating the 13 common leadership blind spots.

This workshop is best attended by CEOs, Owners, Presidents and their leadership teams:

Investment