Moving From Command & Control to Coaching & Collaboration: Karen Gordon Of Simpli5 On How Leaders and Managers Can Become Better Coaches
An Interview with Karen Mangia
We also talk about setting ourselves up for success. One small way of doing so is to avoid booking back to back meetings. In our company, for internal meetings, we can either set a meeting for 25 minutes or for 50. If you book your meetings on the hour and half hour, you will be running with your hair on fire all day long, and that’s not the feeling we want to create in our culture, and we know that it doesn’t lead to people being able to bring out their best work.
The number one leadership initiative in any organization today is improved coaching. Coaching empowers employees, empowerment drives engagement, and engagement drives performance. At its core, coaching is about transformation. Leading distributed teams requires transforming how we coach and changing our play calls and playbooks to get things done. As a part of our interview series called “Moving From Command & Control to Coaching & Collaboration; How Leaders and Managers Can Become Better Coaches,” we had the pleasure to interview Karen Gordon.
President and CEO of Simpli5, Karen Gordon, is a force of nature in the corporate world. Karen is never satisfied with “good enough” and instead always strives to create an impact on the organizations that she works with. Throughout her career, Karen has dedicated herself to transforming workplace cultures through the power of collaboration and team performance.
Thank you for joining us to explore a critical inflection point in how we define leadership. Our readers would like to get to know you better. What was a defining moment that shaped who you are as a leader?
In my first large company, we experienced a tremendous amount of growth in a short period of time, but this was at the expense of the wellbeing of the employees. All I cared about was work product and pleasing the customers. I had very little regard for the people who were actually doing the work. I liked them, and I wanted them to enjoy working with me, but I had no idea how to create a culture that they wanted to be a part of. It wasn’t until I met Mike Sturm, the creator of the 5 Dynamics methodology, that I recognized that my way of working and being was not THE way. His methodology opened my eyes to the needs of others in a way that was easy to understand and easy to apply. Mike made me a better leader, and his methodology continues to make people better leaders all around the globe. I started as a customer and after experiencing the power of this methodology, I was driven to create the Simpli5 platform that democratized this type of information for all employees in such a way that it can inform daily decisions and actions. Mike’s guidance gave me a roadmap for how to build trust in all of my relationships and showed me how to coach all of my employees for optimal contribution levels.
John C. Maxwell is credited with saying, “A leader is someone who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” How do you embody that quote as a leader?
Being raised on a farm, I learned the value of hard work early in life. You start your days early and you end them when all the work is done. Back then, I was not afraid to roll up my sleeves and get dirty, and that has never changed. I don’t see leadership as an opportunity to sit back and let others do the work for me, but to show them that I am right there doing the hard work alongside them. However, I also believe in the importance of empowering my team to take the lead and coaching them on best practices, and I do my best to stay out of their way so they feel they have the opportunity to lead in their own ways. To do this, there has to be trust in your team. Trust is the foundation for all great teamwork. I believe in hiring people who are smarter than I am, people who are going to see things that I don’t see or think about things that I have never thought of, and getting out of their way to watch them work their magic, but to do this, I have to trust in each and every one of them and vice-versa. Simpli5 gives me clues as to where people will lean in, what they get excited about, and how they approach any problem or process. I know my big picture thinkers, and I know who can help me plan something in great detail. I know who loves being in front of customers or a crowd of any size and who never met a competition that they didn’t like.
As a high explore/ high execute leader, knowing the way and going the way are the easy parts for me. Showing the way is where Simpli5 has given me invaluable resources as that part did not come naturally to me. It has also empowered my team to remind me when I need to be a little more patient with showing others the way. As a leader, I have chosen an energetically diverse team as I want them to hold me accountable when I am not respecting their work styles. Being vulnerable enough to allow others to show up in an authentic way is what propels teams to do great work.
How do you define the differences between a leader as a manager and a leader as a coach?
A manager sets goals and measures against them, never really going beyond that. A coach guides and directs their players to allow them to bring their best selves to work every day. Taking the time to understand the unique gifts of each player and allowing them to lean into those gifts daily. A manager may see themselves as separate, possibly even better than, the rest of their team, whereas a coach sees themselves as part of the team and knows that you win, lose, or draw together.
We started our conversation by noting that improved coaching is the number one leadership initiative in any organization today. What are some essential skills and competencies that leaders must have now to be better coaches?
I don’t believe that leaders are born. I believe that they are developed over time. Effective organizations value diverse thought and opinions. Historically, we have conflated leadership and charisma. They are not the same thing. Adam Grant recently pointed out that, “the person who talks the most is the most likely to become the leader. Regardless of intelligence and expertise, groups elevate those who command the most airtime. It’s time to stop rewarding people for dominating the discussion, and start valuing quality over quantity.” Oftentimes, the best ideas come from those who are reluctant to speak up. A leader must understand what each team member sees and what they miss, and once they have this data, they need to figure out how to get everyone to work together effectively.
Teams with balanced workstyles are the most effective teams in the long run, but only if a leader is adept at blending those opposing work styles. True leadership starts with understanding yourself. What comes naturally to you? How do you problem solve? What do you see first and what do you miss? We all have blindspots, areas where we need to improve. Great leaders understand their blindspots and they surround themselves with others who see what they miss. A true leader is collaborative. They recognize the gifts in others, and they value those gifts. Humility is also an essential, and sometimes extremely challenging, skill to possess. There can be this pressure as leaders to feel like you have to have everything together at all times and there can be no mistakes or that’s a poor reflection on you, but this simply isn’t the case. There are going to be mistakes, there is going to be conflict, but how you handle those things speaks volumes about who you are as a leader. Do you try to ignore it and sweep it under the rug, or do you face it head on and with an open mind, ready to hear people out and figure out how you can adapt to move forward together more successfully? If you shut down as a leader when those challenges arise, you’re shutting down the ability to coach others and for you, yourself, to learn as well. Leadership is a lifelong learning game.
We’re all familiar with the adage, “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” How are you inspiring — rather than mandating — leaders to invest in upskilling and reskilling?
We challenge each other to remain curious, to try new things, to look for better ways of doing things. You have to create a culture where it is okay to fail. As a leader, you need to set an example by being willing to admit your own mistakes. Transparency and authenticity are vital ingredients of great leadership. I love learning. Just in the past three months, I have attended a two-day conference on AI, along with some of the leading minds in this space, I have completed a course at the University of Tennessee on franchising, and I completed a program at Harvard Business School on Leading Personal and Business transitions. I definitely lead by example when it comes to upskilling and reskilling.
Another tangible way that we do this at Simpli5 is by holding quarterly book reviews whenever anyone comes across interesting new thinking. We meet every other week to review and discuss what we all learned. This keeps our ideas and approaches fresh. It doesn’t matter what stature you reach, there is always more to learn, and I encourage my team to be open to new ideas.
Let’s get more specific. How do you coach someone to do their best work? How can leaders coach for peak performance in our current context? What are your “Top 5 Ways That Leaders and Managers Can Be Effective Coaches?”
1. I talk a lot about setting your intentions with any conversation. What do you want the outcome of that conversation to be? How should you approach that connection to achieve your desired outcome? Just recently, a couple of members of my team were experiencing friction in their working relationship, and I had heard a little bit from both sides about the situation, but they had not yet spoken to one another directly. I encouraged them to have a conversation and to come prepared to that conversation, rather than trying to control the situation myself. They both knew they didn’t want the working relationship to continue the way it had been, and by going into that conversation knowing the desired outcome was for things to be improved, they were more easily able to get to that end result.
2. We also talk about setting ourselves up for success. One small way of doing so is to avoid booking back to back meetings. In our company, for internal meetings, we can either set a meeting for 25 minutes or for 50. If you book your meetings on the hour and half hour, you will be running with your hair on fire all day long, and that’s not the feeling we want to create in our culture, and we know that it doesn’t lead to people being able to bring out their best work.
3. Leaders need to create a safe space for allowing failure. If your people are not failing, they are not trying anything new. Failure for the sake of failure is just stupidity. Failure is only valuable if you learn from that failure, and the only way to learn from it is to revisit it and think through what went wrong, why it went wrong and what can be done differently the next time. That is the value of the 5th dynamic, evaluate. It is important to work through this final phase of any project or process and to look at success or failure not only from your lens, but from the lenses of others. In my early career, I only cared about success, but I overlooked satisfaction. Of course you need to keep your eyes on the metrics, but you also need to review how people felt about the process.
4. If you want someone to do their best work, praise them more often than you correct them. Let them know that you see them doing the right things which makes them more open to hearing where they need to do something differently. To do this, you have to pay attention and notice the things that might otherwise fall through the cracks. Notice when someone really stepped it up and put in the work, or when someone came up with something creative and new, or when someone’s due diligence kept a project from going off the rails. Sometimes all we see is the outcome, the big finish, but you have to pay attention to how your team got there and give praise where it’s due along the way.
5. Leaders need to learn to speak their employees’ energetic languages. Figure out if an employee needs to understand the big picture before they can focus on the details or are they the opposite? Do they need the specifics first? What are they optimizing for? Are they focused on the people within the process first or is it all about getting to the finish line? If you know how they think and what builds trust with each person, and it is very different from person to person, then you will be a much more effective leader. As a leader, my one on ones with my team members are not all structured the exact same way. I know some of them want more time to talk and may want to start off the call with sharing about their weekend or life updates, so I make sure to make space for this on the call. Others want to get straight to the point, to know what they need to know, and to get on with their day. If I tried to approach each person in the same way, I wouldn’t be helping them do their best work.
We’re leading and coaching in increasingly diverse organizations. And one aspect of workforce diversity on the rise is generational diversity. What advice would you offer about how to effectively coach a multi-generational workforce? And how do you activate the collective potential of a multi-generational workforce?
We actually have quite a bit of generational diversity within our team at Simpli5, and by leaning into that and providing anyone and everyone with the chance to speak up and share their perspective, we have found a great deal of success in coming up with new ideas and innovative approaches. Luckily for us, we don’t value tenure and experience over fresh new ideas. We understand that one of the newest and youngest members on the team might actually have the best ideas, and often that is the case because they are unmarred by the typical way of doing things. But it’s also important that they understand there is still much to learn, and someone who has been doing this for a while has a lot to offer and teach. My best advice for this would be to ensure you’re instilling a growth mindset in all of your employees; that the younger generations know there are still things to be learned and the older generations know that it’s okay to grow and to change and to do things differently. By doing that, and by giving everyone a chance to share their thoughts and ideas, you can then work together to meld those ideas into something brand new and better than before.
You’re referring to emotional intelligence, in a sense. What are two steps every leader can take to demonstrate a higher level of emotional intelligence?
I’ve said it many times in this interview already, but I will say it again: the first step is to know yourself and know your employees. Know what you focus on and how you communicate and know what they focus on and how they communicate. You may want to get to the point and get the work done, but they may be looking for an emotional connection first and it’s your job as a leader to make the time and space for what they need (within reason, of course). The second step is to check your ego at the door and just be yourself in all your imperfect glory. We no longer work in an age where you are expected to don your managerial mask and robotically go through the motions, leaving who you are as a person and what you are experiencing in your life outside of the building. Work and life are inextricably connected, and everyone is trying to figure out how to balance the two, including leaders. You have to be human, and you have to let others see that you are a human. If you are uncomfortable with that then you are always going to be keeping your team at arm’s length and they will pick up on that distance. You don’t have to turn your workspace into a therapist’s office, but to demonstrate a higher level of emotional intelligence you must first be comfortable with the whole gambit of human emotion and experience, including your own.
Words matter. And we’re collectively creating a new leadership language right now. What are the most important words for leaders to use now?
Curiosity, empathy, adaptability, and collaboration. Leaders have to emphasize the importance of curiosity in order for an organization to continue to grow and improve. Empathy has to be at the core of everything we do, both for our internal teams and for the people who are affected by what we do at the end of the day. We have to keep humanity at the heart of it all. Adaptability is a must because that’s what we have to do all the time. The best laid plans are just that, and you never know when things may change at any given moment. And collaboration is key to being better than we ever thought possible.
I keep inspiring quotes on my desk. What’s your favorite “Life Lesson Quote,” and why does it mean so much to you?
Eric Hoffer’s, “In times of change the learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” I am a lifelong learner, a continual work in progress. I believe that maintaining a growth mindset is a critical key to success. In fact, it’s been absolutely essential to my own. I have been faced with many challenges in my life, both in business and personally, and without the belief that I can always continue to learn, grow, change, and figure it out, I would not have been able to navigate the things that I have or been able to find success in even some of the hardest of times. I don’t want to allow myself to get stuck in my ways or blinded to the current realities or too afraid to move forward into the unknown. I believe at my core that I can figure it out, and because of that, I always do. I’ve always told my children, “Left foot. Right foot. Breathe.” Just keep moving forward and be ready to learn from whatever comes next, knowing that without a doubt, you can handle it.
Our readers often like to continue the conversation. What’s the best way for readers to connect with you and to stay current on what you’re discovering?
I tend to be the most active on LinkedIn. They can find me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-wright-gordon-1937a66/ .
Thank you for sharing your insights. We appreciate the gift of your time and wish you continued success and good health.
About The Interviewer: Karen Mangia is one of the most sought-after keynote speakers in the world, sharing her thought leadership with over 10,000 organizations during the course of her career. As Vice President of Customer and Market Insights at Salesforce, she helps individuals and organizations define, design and deliver the future. Discover her proven strategies to access your own success in her fourth book Success from Anywhere and by connecting with her on LinkedIn and Twitter.
