The One Thing That Will Make You A Better Coach or Manager

Is the way you coach helping or hurting?

A recent Olgivy and Mather blog post got me thinking about this – specifically the gap that can occur between the words we use to coach and the results we anticipate.

The post “’Content’ is a terrible term. Please stop using it” from John Long was about the nebulousness of the word “content.” If you accept that the present definition of the word evolved from web developers who used it as a placeholder for anything that wasn’t code, then its vagueness isn’t surprising.

Thus “Content” can mean just about anything – from a “Lorem Ipsum” to something profound.

“Content” is a word we use a lot in radio.

We tell talent they need good content on their shows.

We talk about developing and repurposing content for other platforms.

There’s social content, marketing content, commercial content, and the list goes on.

So while “content” is ever present in our daily language, stating specifically what our definition of “content” is, isn’t.

As Long writes, “it’s absurdly vague. Is a tweet from Arby’s or The Iliad?”

This brings us to coaching and how, an attempt to simplify a complex concept into a word or phrase, can cause improvement to come to a screeching halt.

At some point if you’re a talent or a programmer, you’ve probably heard or said the equivalent of, “You need more/better/relatable/topical/interactive/engaging/unique/fill-in-the-blank content.”

But what exactly does that mean to the person hearing it?

A pitching coach doesn’t stand in the dugout and yell out to the person struggling on the mound to “throw strikes” because isn’t helpful (what, the pitcher isn’t trying to throw strikes?).

Instead, the coach will study everything from release mechanics to the position on the mound. And from this, he’ll give his pitcher specific instructions in order to get the desired result.

Similarly, if we want to increase the content output from our talent, we too need to be specific.

The end of a school year can make for timely content. But simply suggesting this as a broad topic idea isn’t nearly as helpful as offering specific ideas. For example:

• Tell a story about the day you graduated from high school. Your goal is to help listeners re-experience the emotion they felt at that time and how the experience still impacts their lives today.
• Share something emotional about how graduating made you, your friends, or your mom and dad feel.
• Build a story around something that happened right before, during or after that you haven’t forgotten after all these years.
• Revisit the best/worst/funniest/most embarrassing of that point in your life and its relationship to your life today.

Better, right?

Being specific shouldn’t limit creativity, it should unleash it.

Similarly, we can look at a ratings book and say that we need more cume or TSL. But again, this lacks specificity to really drive actions.

Even “We need to increase cume by 10,000” is still too vague. We have a better chance of increasing cume – or anything – if we have more specifics to work with.

For example, how many more diaries/meters will we need to capture in order to reach the goal? Where are these going to come from and from whom? What are the best strategies and tactics to seize what we need?

Before your next coaching session or management meeting, consider how you can add specifics when challenging your team to “increase sales,” “get more web traffic,” “build a database,” “write better copy” or “improve productivity.”

The “devil is in the details” may be true.

But also within those details are not only the specifics that drive success, but also those that will help your team dramatically improve their own self-coaching abilities.

The one thing you can do tomorrow that will make you a better coach or manager?

Be specific.

More on Coaching from A&O&B:

How Political Analysts Can Help Coach Talent

Hearing vs. Listening: Providing Quality Feedback to the Question, “Did You Hear The Show Today?”

Caring as a Strategy for Managers and Talent