Coaches Corner: Inspiring and Supporting Your Management Team

Inspiring and Supporting Your Management Team

Managers have a tough role…they must be leaders as they carry the vision of the company to their teams. They must be tactical, process driven and know what to measure and track. All while using critical thinking skills to make decisions that can impact a department as well as the entire company. Owners play an integral role in the success of the manager. Providing ongoing inspiration and open/transparent communication will demonstrate your support and belief in them.

It can be difficult to balance the needs of the team along with initiatives coming from owners/senior leaders.  Providing clear expectations, such as, sales, accessory and maintenance goals will inspire your management team and fuel their motivation to pursue these specific targets. This motivation has a rippling effect to their team members who also want to achieve success. 

Managers (and their team members) must know you, as an owner, support them.

This means:

• Trusting them to make decisions.
  • Knowing they put thought into the decision and will be accountable for the outcome.
  • If you do not agree with the decision, have a one on one discussion to reflect on the result, establish criteria for making decisions based on how it fits best within the organization.  Do not become upset in public or in front of their team members.
  • Praise publicly and coach privately.
• As their experience level and your trust level increase, allow them to make bigger decisions without seeking your input and approval.
  • In the beginning you may want them to “bounce ideas” off you before making a decision.
  • Some decisions may always require your input or discussion before being made, such as terminating an employee or adding headcount.
• Give them guidelines to work within as part of their job description.
  • People function better and are less afraid to make decisions when they know their boundaries.
    • Examples of boundaries include- budgetary (i.e. tool or training budgets, number of hours spent (i.e. downtime, training time), etc.
• Supporting your management team also means holding them accountable and expecting them to do the same with their team.
  • Set clear, specific initiatives for team members.
  • Goals are set, attempts to achieve them are expected.
    • Encourage team members to ask question or help when needed
  • Accountability may be uncomfortable for some, because many organizations don’t practice this regularly.  Not intended to be threatening, but as a tool to ensure the team stays on task.

Managers will be inspired to follow you and rally behind your mission if you show you care about them.

• Be a cheerleader for your managers and encourage them to do the same for their team.
• Earn their trust.
  • If someone shares something with you in confidence – keep it that way
  • Be an active listener and deliver on promises you make
  • Sometimes this means admitting your own flaws and concerns
• During Profit Launch, bring your management team along and set goals that stretch their skills to help them grow in their roles and as people
• Celebrate the wins along the way!

Support and inspiration come down to building up our teams, giving them respect and tools, and holding them accountable to achieving company goals. To quote Henry Ford: “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”

Chris Koch

Head Coach

To learn more about how you can set your managers up for success, check out our workshop, Creating the Next Generation of Company Managers.