In our July post we outlined 4 common and costly behavioral traits that we notice consistently in our executive coaching engagements that stall or kill a leader’s career. It was one of our most read posts and people wanted more. In fact, one subscriber even said, “Aren’t there more than four?”

The answer, of course, is yes there are more than four career killers. We've noticed 16 pretty common derailers as we work with people across leadership levels, gender and industry. So, we decided to dedicate this post and the next post to introducing those derailers. They are avoidable, but you have to know about them first. 

Here are the first 9 derailers.

The Peter Principle, first formulated by Laurence J. Peter, predicts that you will get promoted up to your level of incompetence. For most people, that’s far too late.

Unite! The 4 Mindset Shifts for Senior Leaders is now an international Best Seller hitting the top of the Amazon leadership and management categories in the US, Canada, Germany, Japan and Australia! Thank you for supporting our very successful book launch.

If you’ve been reading my recent posts, you know they’ve had a coaching bent to them. We’ve seen the value of coaching in the workplace and now recognize business coaching as the single most important differentiator in performance based organizations.

This is a wonderful time of year to apply your coaching skills - toward your team members, others in the workplace and yourself.

As we wind down 2016 and slide into the New Year it’s a perfect time to reflect on the past twelve months and plan for the next. As our gift to you, there’s a link at the bottom of this post giving you access to our 50-page goal setting guide. I created this guide as I was seeking to intentionally make changes in my life personally and professionally. It’s yours as our gift.

If there’s one leadership skillset that differentiates good from great organizations, it’s the ability for your managers to be coaches. That’s precisely what today’s post is about. But to get there, managers have to recognize some of the common and costly challenges that often slow them down or stop them from coaching others.

Challenge #1: Problem solving is a problem. Managers are often great problem solvers, but the problem with problem solvers is that they don’t address issues until a problem rises to a certain level and grabs their attention. Coaching is less about problem solving and more about ongoing dialogue that helps people be successful before problems arise. So when leaders don’t address issues until they become problems, they miss out on great coaching opportunities.

We all know that the annual performance review is going by the wayside. The cumbersome process leaves managers feeling drained and employees devalued. Let’s face it, this dreaded beast of a process provided little in the way of measurable results compared with the time and effort required. Even the stalwarts who set the annual review standard, such as General Electric, are changing their approach.

Leaders get what they expect, and they get what they tolerate.

What are you tolerating? What are the low expectations that you are “putting up with” that shouldn’t be happening?

Maybe you’re telling yourself a story that allows you to tolerate unacceptable behaviors. “Well, I don’t have the skillset on my team to backfill for this person?” Or, “I need to choose my battles.” Or “It’s no big deal.” Or, “I’ll burn the relationship if I give her feedback.” How about this one - “I can’t hold her accountable for (fill in the blank) because she’s a good producer.”

When we asked executive leaders to describe what effective senior leaders do, their responses centered around empowering people (versus micromanaging) and building others up. Here were a few of the raw comments from the executives we surveyed. 

The effective senior leader…

In our last two posts we've focused on how to make the mindset shift from consensus or compliance (depending on your tendencies) to commitment. The first of three focus areas was to provide intentional and structured communication to help win the hearts and minds of your people. The second was explaining the Big Why. 

Allow for Dialogue

In our last post, we began the discussion on how to actually make the shift from consensus or compliance (depending on your tendencies) to commitment. The first of three focus areas was to provide intentional and structured communication to help win the hearts and minds of your people. 

The second, outlined here, is to explain "The Big Why."