“Here's a blinding flash of the obvious,” writes executive coach Susan Cramm on the CIO website. “If you want to dramatically improve the performance of your team, get to know them as individuals.
“Although most leaders talk the talk about the importance of developing others, their actions demonstrate that they are mostly interested in developing themselves. When I challenge executives to tell me about the people they depend on to make them successful, I get little insight and a lot of guilt.
“Leaders have to know more than the names of spouses and ages of kids; they need to understand the employees who are entrusted to their care: their dreams, disappointments, goals, motivations, fears, and the activities that build (and drain) their energy.
“If leaders benefit by developing others - and developing others requires insights into what motivates them - then why aren't more executives taking the time to understand individuals' interests and link them to the enterprise's interests?
“One-on-one coaching is the least-used tool in the managerial toolkit because most executives think a conversation about an individual rather than about a shared task ‘doesn't look like leadership’."
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