Robert Hargrove

From Leader as Cop to Leader as Coach

It’s been said that every leader should have a magnificent obsession, a big goal, or world shaking problem that they are totally immersed in almost 24 /7. One of the things I noticed when I started doing leadership coaching was that it was actually hard to get people to talk about a magnificent obsession on any consistent basis. If people were obsessed with anything, it was talking about “the boss.”

One of the conclusions I quickly arrived at was bad bosses create a toxic environment that is highly stressful to employees. In fact, a recent British study shows that people who don’t like their bosses not only have significantly higher blood pressure levels, but are more prone to both heart attacks and depression.

Samuel A. Culbert, a clinical psychologist who teaches at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, throws a spotlight on one of the culprits of workplace stress in his new book: Getting Rid of the Performance Review! Performance reviews are often done in a completely arbitrary way, the outcome often depending on how well an employee sucks up to the boss.

In my opinion, the issue is not the performance review itself, but whether the boss is coming from being a cop or a coach. If the boss comes from being a coach, the employee will tend to look forward to an upcoming performance review as a gift—an opportunity to grown and learn.

If the boss is coming from being a cop, employees will tend to dread upcoming performance reviews and see them as a threat, an event where they will most likely hear about everything they have done wrong and perhaps even lose their bonus or job.

One of the areas we are going to be focusing on with Masterful Coaching this year is a program called “The Leader as Coach” designed to help managers and leaders make the shift from cop to coach, as well as to equip leaders at all levels with coaching skills and attitudes.

We believe this program will not only help leaders and organizations to be more effective, but also help to eliminate the highly stressful, toxic environment that seems to plague too many organizations.