Coaching and developing people is core to any leader’s role, and it requires communication.

Not sure where I heard this, but the phrase; “the ability to get people promoted is the best sign of a great leader” couldn’t be more accurate.  I know I heard it back in the 1980’s during my College Pro Painters days when we spent a lot of time coaching & mentoring franchisees.

Coaching done well is an art, and it helps build communication skills. You take in the information from a coach and turn it into real-world action. By developing the ability to take in that kind of information and turn it into results is a precious skill, and one that should be developed in each of your employees.

The best athletes in the world have coaches and still learn from them. Employees in a growing organization need the same skill development. Learning how to adapt our coaching styles to different situations and give constructive guidance and feedback are important every day because it helps us process information and that turn that into action.

We spend time coaching someone in a business setting because we need the learner to increase their results so we can hit our goals. At the end of the day, coaching will assist us in hitting the results leaders are supposed to hit, too, because we’re communicating our vision for our organization.

There is no question that preparation is one of the most important areas of coaching. If not done properly, the coach is merely flying by the seat of their pants and the learner knows this. This is what I do as I myself, coach and mentor CEO’s in running their businesses.

This video of Daniel Pink’s is one of the most important ones that business people will watch. 10 minutes. Watch it. Comments ?

On Saturday I got part way to my dream of speaking at TED.  I was able to speak at TEDx Edmonton about something I’m super passionate about.

As a kid in school I was always told I wouldn’t do well because I didn’t fit the system.  In high school & university I figured the system out and beat it – graduating while being able to run little companies on the side.

The problem was the school system never say nor nurtured my entrepreneurial traits.  They also never showed starting & owning a company as equal to careers like law, medicine, dentistry etc.  Amazingly they actually felt working for government was a better career move that starting my own business.

Thankfully my father & grandfather nurtured – or perhaps forced is a better word – me into running my own business.  I grew up feeling sick thinking about having a ‘job’.  So an entrepreneur I’ve been. And having been able to run a successful business, I started coaching CEO’s on how to run their own.

My TEDx talk which I’ll post soon was about “Raising Kids to Be Entrepreneurs Instead of Lawyers Will Change the World”.  And my TED Wish if I’m giving the chance to speak at TED (nominations are welcome) is to see Entrepreneurs be viewed as equal to professions that schools push kids into currently: Law, Engineering, Medicine, Dentistry, Teaching, Finance, etc.

Were you raised as an entrepreneur?  What’s your story?  I’d love to read your comments…

The best potential employees aren’t looking for a job because they’ve already got one. That’s why you have to poach them.

In close to thirty years of my professional life, I’ve only had two job interviews. The rest of the time I was poached by one company while working for another.

I always advise the CEOs that I mentor that there are lots of reasons why finding the right people is hard, but if you want your business to be exceptional, your staff must be exceptional people. It takes work but it’s worth the investment of time.

I had to remind someone of this while on a multi-city speaking engagement. At a talk in Sydney, Australia, a member of the audience commented, “What you don’t realize is we have a really tight economy in Sydney right now, and there are just no employees out there. We have the lowest unemployment in forty years.” I replied that I felt her pain—in Vancouver, we were at the lowest in fifty years! But honestly, I asked, what difference does it make? Even in tight job markets the great employees still exist, they’re just working somewhere else.

Poach them!  Show them why working for you is WAY better!

As a business coach and mentor, I always assure my clients that open spaces will always create transparent and energized work environments.

This leads to the development and transmission of office culture across people, departments, and finally, the entire organization.

Years ago, at 1-800-GOT-JUNK? we had all our employees on two wide open floors in an office. There were no walls.

Then we moved into a downtown office tower and had to use the 14^th floor of the building for the better part of a year while our real office space was constructed.

For the first time ever people had private offices, and it was interesting to see what happened.  For the first week or so, people loved having their own space.  They felt more focused, appeared to get more done and had the quiet they needed to think.  Then, after a week, the chatter started. People said, “I miss everyone,” and, “Where is Greg? I haven’t seen him in ages,” or, “Is so-and-so sick today?” It went on and on.  After about three weeks, it was unanimous: private offices killed the buzz and employees wanted their open workspace back.

Everyone knows you’re hiding out in your private office playing on FaceBook, Twitter or surfing porn.  So go join the rest of your team – open up your entire office space.  When I mentor CEOs I push them all to get rid of private offices.  Including their own.

Some of you will balk at the suggestion to make it easier to socialize at your office, but it will quickly help you develop culture. Provide your people with a BBQ that is always kept clean and ready to use with propane so people can cook casually for lunch or dinner. This kind of interaction builds culture in an authentic and relatable way. With even less effort, have your kitchen stocked with free fruit, cereal, various coffees, teas and more. You can even have the food delivered weekly by the grocery store. Whatever you do, make people feel at home and they’ll work longer and harder for you.

One of the businesses that I coach and mentor is a company called  I Love Rewards. Two years in a row they’ve been ranked as one of the top companies to work for in Canada.  They actually create rewards programs to help employers create great cultures – so they get it.

One of the things I love most about I Love Rewards is that they have an employee area called the Red Point Lounge. Every Friday at 3pm, you can go have a drink there.  Their company drink is called the Red Point.  They have these little crystal glasses with Red Point etched into it, and all the employees – I’ve got one too – carry a little card that has the recipe for a Red Point drink on it.  A Red Point is one and a half shots of Crown Royal, one and half shots of Sour Puss Red Raspberry, and 3 shots of Red Bull. You have a couple of those and you’re cranking out some extra work at the end of the day.

In addition, the folks at I Love Rewards don’t take themselves so seriously that they can’t have a little fun. They have white leather sofas in their office. They have a casual dress code that they call “First Date Dress Code.” If you wouldn’t wear it on a first date – don’t wear it to work.  They get culture.  No-one quits I Love Rewards.

Building a magnetic and infectious culture isn’t accidental; a company has to make a conscious decision to foster and grow it.  Once a company decides to actively cultivate culture, the process required to grow it is sort of like chasing the horizon: you never quite ‘get there‘ since it’s always moving, but the journey is wonderful.

In every industry, there are companies with fantastic cultures and others with terrible ones: Google gets it, Microsoft never has—but both are tech companies.  Both have about the same amount of money and both do roughly the same thing.  However, Google decided that they wanted their culture to differentiate them from the Microsofts out there, and they succeeded.

When you walk through Microsoft’s main campus, you can actually feel a cultural void.  Everyone at Microsoft sits in the dark in their private offices cranking out code without anyone around them to engage them in simple human interaction.  Google, on the other hand, has open space and whiteboards everywhere so people can put up ideas when the spirit moves them, and have unstructured discussion time.

As one of my first mentors, Greig Clark, the founder of College Pro Painters said, “Building a great company means creating something that is slightly more than a business and slightly less than a religion.” What Greig was saying was that culture has to be more than a passing trend or some ideal to which you pay lip service—like any aspect of culture outside of the workplace, it has to be lived, experienced, and grown in order to be sustainable. It has to be a cult.  Cult-ure.

Your Painted Picture should include ALL aspects of the type of culture you want so that you attract people who fit your culture and repel those who don’t.

Pic: Tommy Panetta

Every company has them.  Most CEOs don’t know who they are.  In fact most companies miss the diamonds sitting right in front of them.

Instead of going outside your company and recruiting people, companies need to really get to know their own people first.  Every company has diamonds in the rough.

The other day I met with an employee from a well known Vancouver company.  The employee is fantastic.  Yet due to some internal politics they are being kept in ‘their box’ and aren’t getting any visibility with the CEO and leadership.  Shame.  Because if the leaders don’t quickly see what this person has to offer a) they’ll leave and b) someone else will ‘hire a superstar’ from outside.

I coach CEOs that they should be spending time each week getting to know the talent they have 2-3 levels beneath them on the Org Chart.  CEOs should be figuring out who they have on their bench that are not being challenged yet by their VPs & Directors.

Years ago I found numerous employees who were diamond in the rough but worked in completely different business areas than they do now.  By spending time with them on the floor, going for coffee with them, getting to know their personal dreams, and as Tom Peters challenged us to do in his book In Search of Excellence with MBWA (Management By Walking Around), I uncovered the diamonds.

Who are your company’s diamonds?  Who will find them first?  You or the competition?

A few years ago one of my mentors was telling me about a story at Starbucks.  He was a Senior VP at Starbucks reporting into Howard Schultz.

Years earlier, Howard had called my mentor on his cell phone and asked ‘Why is the letter B not working on the signage at the 50th & Wallingford location’ in Seattle.

My mentor laughed out loud and responded ‘Really?, Howard is that really the question you should be asking me when you’re CEO?’

Howard frustrated replied ‘Yes, why isn’t the sign working?’  And my mentor replied ‘I don’t know. I’ll check. And I’ll get it fixed. However, if we’re really going to grow this brand our leadership team needs to ask leadership questions.’

‘Howard, instead of asking why isn’t the letter B working we need to be asking questions like this instead…’

‘I noticed the letter B on a sign at 50th & Wallingford isn’t working.  What systems do we have in place to ensure that all letters, on all signs, at all locations, in all countries, are always working?’

My mentor was right.

Entrepreneurs all too often ‘Major in the Minors’ and get stuck asking questions about the details.  And yes, the details matter.  And the details will always get fixed.  However, instead of just asking the question about something specific like a letter on a sign not working, try using the details as specific examples to ask larger more systemic questions. People don’t fail, systems do.  Look deeper in the systems that need to be fixed or created.

As a business coach and mentor, I suggest that you start asking the right questions and you’ll grow your company too.

I walked into my friend Kimbal’s company in Boulder, Colorado. He was an employee of mine 15 years ago and he’s been quite successful at building and selling companies since then.

Upon arriving at Kimbal’s office, I couldn’t help but notice the plethora of Herman Miller Aeron chairs—which used to go for about $800 USD. When I saw Kimbal, I remarked, “Wow, you’re really burning through cash on this new business of yours!”

Kimbal said, perplexed. “Why do you say that?”

“I saw your Herman Millar Aeron chairs everywhere!” I said. I was convinced he was already spending the millions he’d made in business.  I love Herman Miller chairs—I even have one—but I couldn’t imagine buying one for every employee.

So then Kimball asked, “You didn’t see the desks did you?”

I hesitated. “No, I didn’t see the desks.”

“Go take a look,” he said knowingly.  So I walked outside, took a look, and noticed he had all these white plastic fold-up tables pulled up to those fantastic $800 Herman Miller chairs. So I walked back to Kimball and said, “What’s with all of the fold-up tables?”

Kimbal paused for a moment. “Well, everyone wants to have an amazing chair.  You want to attract amazing people and keep them happy? Don’t give them a $200 chair.  Everybody out there buys $1,000-$2,000-$3,000 workstations or desks and they buy crumby $250 chairs.  So I buy $100 desks from Costco and Ikea, and $800 chairs.

My employees love me, never quit, and everybody walks in and sees we’re successful, but they don’t realize we spent $850 on each desk and chair while other companies spend $3,000 on their desk and chair – do the math!”

Expensive desks won’t support your back and make you more productive, expensive chairs will.