The Leadership Power of “I Believe In You!”

High performers love to be challenged and coached!

If you want your high performers to truly excel and be loyal to you and your company, make sure you are a great mentor and coach for them. If you don’t, they will be out the door in a heartbeat. I learned this early in my career when I mentally trained elite athletes – including 31 Olympians, a few Olympic teams, and a professional sports team.

The athletes who sustained greatness over a long period of time, always thrived by taking on big, new challenges and either really appreciated, or loved to be coached by people they deeply respected. Truly high-performers continually seek out who and what can make them better. If you follow football, Tom Brady is an illustrious example of this!

After three decades of not only coaching executives to become high-performers but also teaching leaders at all levels how to coach others to bring out the best in them, I’ve found one coaching model that is focused on the three most important foci for employees to be high-performers. It’s the EOS® Quarterly Conversations. The three areas are 1) living the values, 2) exceling in their five or so most important major roles for their job and 3) every quarter successfully completing their three to seven most important priorities referred to as Rocks. You can read more on Quarterly Conversations here.

Another vital piece to coaching a team member who reports to you (or athlete, musician, child, etc.) is having such strong rapport with them that you can challenge, critique, correct, praise and reward them, and they always know that you care about them and are helping them become their best.

My first experience with being challenged, when someone cared about me and could see I was capable of being so much better, was with my gym teacher in grade school, Mr. Shabel. He was unlike any of my previous gym teachers who just had us play games. He was a very fit and likable guy and had a strong focus on fitness and play, rather than just play. I liked him. Early in the year he put us through some physical fitness testing. Pull-ups were one of the tests, and many kids couldn’t do one. When it was my turn, I approached the bar with confidence, reached up and did one really good pull-up. Mr. Shabel smiled. I smiled back. Then he created a magic moment that changed me for life. He said, “That was a good pull-up, and, if you practiced I’ll bet you could do 10!

Wow! Mr. Shabel believed I could do 10 pull-ups! He believed in me. I’d never even thought about trying be stronger, my whole body buzzed with excitement!  I’d never had a fitness goal or been offered an “I believe in you” challenge. From that day on I slipped into the gym every day and practiced pull-ups until I could do 10.

One day after gym class, I asked Mr. Shabel if I could show him something and he said, “Of course, what is it?” I led him to the pull-up bar and did 10 pull-ups. The biggest smile came across his face. He said, “You can be very proud!” I was.

Over 50 years later, Mr. Shabel’s “I believe in you” challenge is still a big and important part of my mindset, however, I do the challenging for myself. I love challenges of all kinds, including business, personal, and physical challenges. Recently, in my 60’s, I did the longest/hardest workout of my life, a 32.3 mile roller-ski on the bike path from Breckenridge to Copper Mountain and back, just because I liked the challenge to be that fit at my age.

The reason I create challenges in my life all goes back to where it began, Mr. Shabel seeing my potential, challenging me to be better, and expressing his belief in me. He changed my thinking for the better, forever. He helped me become more than I realized that I could; I’ll always be grateful to him. That’s what a great mentor/coach can do.