By Michael Lang

It’s a question I ask business leaders and sales leaders often.

And guess what, very few leaders know the difference. Not surprising because they have not been properly mentored or coached themselves in their working life.

They see coaching as in what happens on a sporting field - a person telling/yelling at their players.

They see mentoring as a person telling, guiding or sharing.

Sales Leaders: do you feel you take your salespeople’s monkeys off their backs onto yours time and time again?

Some days, it must feel like you have a 10 pound gorilla on your back. No wonder you are so tired at the end of the day. Dare I say you have some frustration built up as well.

Guess what - YOU the sales leader are to blame.

Every time a salesperson comes to you with a problem, you take it on-board and fix it – and why not – you know how to fix it. You reward your salespeople’s behaviour by doing this time and time again.

Sales Leaders: now if you want to walk taller, easier and have more energy at the end of the day something needs to give – the monkey transfer to start with.

To STOP the transfer, you need to assist your people in solving their own problems.

You can either do this by mentoring or coaching them.

Mentoring is easier and quicker. Mentoring is telling or showing someone how to do something.

We are sales leaders are naturally good at it.

For example, I once as sales leader received an award for mentoring – the Nike Award. My team awarded it to me. The “just go do it” award. I would say to them many times – “just go do what I do” or “here let me show you”. Oh, how young and naive I was.

My take on mentoring now is..

If I believe, through questioning and observation, that someone does not have the skills, the understanding or the process to do something; then I will instruct and/or demonstrate how to them.

From this, I will confirm if they know understand and have the skill set to perform the task.

My take on coaching..

It’s not telling/yelling/sharing/educating/instructing.

Coaching is the most powerful tool you can have as a leader because if done correctly it will create sustainable outcomes.

If I believe, through questioning and observation, that someone has some understanding, skills and/or process inclination then I will conduct coaching.

Coaching is all about asking great questions to assist the salesperson to bring out their understanding and put it together in a way that can be utilised moving forward.

Importantly, coaching is about assisting salespeople to understand their limiting beliefs or rules (which they made up some time ago) and assisting them to recreate new beliefs that will serve them even better going forward.

Coaching takes effort, patience, time and focus.

You need to create a safe environment for salespeople to be vulnerable so they will open and share freely.

Many sales leaders struggle with coaching once shown. Leaders are always too much of a hurry.

To be a great coach you need to be self-aware and aware of other people’s emotions – you need to be empathetic and have emotional intelligence.

The goal with emotional intelligence is to create a balance so you have an even more harmonious and balance life. Like anything, you need to be aware of where your gaps are so you can focus on your growth areas.

If you truly want to be an even better leader by being a great coach, you will need to improve your EQi.

Click here to reach out to me on how you can gain an EQi evaluation.