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(This post is excerpted from The 5 Coaching Habits of Excellent Leaders.)
Consider this scenario:
It’s early February. Jack Samuels, a sales director for a large logistics company, just landed back in Chicago and is now driving to his suburban home from the airport. He pulled off a successful pitch to a new customer in Dallas earlier that day, his final ticket to punch before the promised promotion to a VP role. The thrill of victory is running through his veins as he considers not only the pitch but also how he arrived on time against all odds.
As he sits in standstill traffic with worsening road conditions from ice, Jack reflects on his team. Team members pulled off a big win by reliably performing their roles despite a series of obstacles, and it yielded the desired result for all involved.
Jack’s mind drifts to all the others he had to rely on today to make the pitch possible. He realizes that he couldn’t have even made it to the meeting in Dallas without a series of people from the airline team doing their jobs reliably: the curbside attendant quickly checking him in and tagging the big box of presentation boards to beat the 30-minute deadline, the gate agent persistently paging his name to ensure he was not left behind, the flight attendants politely hustling passengers into their seats, the de-icers timing their process just right, the pilots doing their dozens of checks to ensure all were safe, the baggage guys who loaded and unloaded his big box of materials, and the maintenance and food service teams who are invisible to Jack but, no doubt, played a part.
Then Jack’s appreciation deepens as he thinks of their monumental task of delivering reliable performance many, many times each day through hundreds of teams and thousands of team members. He is motivated to boost his personal reliability each day so that he can inspire more reliable performance from his team, an even bigger team with his pending promotion.
You might have experienced a similar scenario at some point where, like Jack, you could see and appreciate the connection between personal and team reliability and its profound impact on the customer.
We all inherently value reliability. It goes way beyond our air travel needs. Every day we value:
- Reliable cars that save time and money on repairs.
- Reliable mail that gets delivered on time.
- Reliable investments that deliver expected returns.
- Reliable cell phone service to stay connected.
- Reliable vendors who show up on time.
- Reliable restaurants that serve quality food and give good service.
- Reliable friends and colleagues who do what they say.
Each of these outcomes we value is achieved by a team even though, in some cases, an individual is delivering the service. Reliability is a team sport, and like any team sport, it requires a good coach.
Of course we all know the results of dealing with unreliable people and teams. They cost us more time and money, two things we all would like more of. Further, unreliability costs us more frustration and more stress, two things we would all like less of.
We have coached, trained and equipped more than 100,000 leaders to elevate their leadership since 1999. It has been evident that being an excellent coach is central to being an excellent leader. So, it’s no surprise that much of our time is spent helping clients become better coaches, and ultimately better leaders.
The reliability value chain links leaders and profits:
Reliable leaders coach to
inspire reliable teams that
create reliable services and products that
generate reliable business results that
produce reliable growth and profits.
In today’s environment of high-velocity change, technology, product innovation and unique distribution are only fleeting advantages. In fact, the only sustainable competitive advantage is an organization’s talent and how reliably it performs.
The Reliability Advantage has a multiplier effect … and it’s you! Your personal reliability has a disproportionate impact on your team’s reliability. You must be personally reliable before you can effectively coach your team to generate reliable results.
