Chapter 9: Coaching Your Manager

Overview

Ben, the senior vice president of sales for a financial services organization, was in the process of recruiting a replacement for the regional VP covering business development and sales in the Eastern Region. This senior position required a professional with expertise in consultative selling, sales development, account management and expansion, client service, and staff management, and budget and P & L accountability in the $20 million range.

While the selection process was going on, Ben’s boss, Ryan, told Ben to consider Ryan’s 23-year-old, just-graduated daughter, Sally, for the open regional VP position. Ben reviewed Sally’s r sum and realized that this would be her first professional job; while she had been a great student and had received a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts, she had no business development experience, no account management experience, no client service experience, no staff management experience, no budget experience, no P & L experience—and no financial services experience either.

By the time Ben contacted me as a coach to help him work through this dilemma, he had already given the problem a great deal of thought. If he responded to Ryan’s request in the negative, he was in danger of insulting his boss (by rejecting the boss’s daughter), being directed to hire the young woman anyway, or both. If he hired the woman, she would require an enormous amount of Ben’s time for training and direction; other than sales clerk in a trendy clothing store, Sally had no workplace experience.

Ben decided that the best way to deal with this problem was to use a coaching approach. Even though Sally would not have been included in the interview process had Ryan not insisted that she be considered, Ben scheduled Sally to participate in the process, along with three other candidates. Standard procedure when hiring a regional VP was to conduct a full day of interviews, first with Ben, then with the regional VP’s peers, and then with the client service team. When the interviews with all candidates had been completed, Ben returned to Ryan for a discussion.

“I think that your daughter is bright, enthusiastic, and articulate,” he said. “While she is not as experienced or as qualified as the three other candidates I have interviewed, I think she may be able to grow into the job. Clearly, though, it will take a lot of help and assistance from her peers and from me. Let me make sure I understand why you think she should be considered for this particular job. What do you want for your daughter in this role?”

Ryan said, “I want my daughter to have a head start in a solid company, I want her to be successful, and of course I want to help her in any way I can.”

“Well, since we are unable to reduce the requirements of the job for your daughter,” Ben said, “she will be held accountable for producing the same results as anyone else who held the job, even if that person has had several years of experience. Will this be fair to her and help her become successful?

“Another point to consider,” Ben said, “is that no matter how hard we try to avoid it, and regardless of how hard she works or her results, every time she walks into a team meeting, a company meeting, or a client meeting, people will look at her and say, ‘She has this job because she is Ryan’s daughter.’ How can we make sure that she is evaluated as objectively as her peers are, yet has an opportunity to build a reputation of excellence on her own? If she is offered this VP position, are we cheating her of success based on her own merit?”

It did not take long for Ryan to see the potential disaster this appointment would have created. He wanted to help his daughter, but if he forced her into a job for which she was patently unqualified, he was virtually ensuring her failure. Sally’s name was removed from the selection process; the decision to eliminate her was Ryan’s. After this discussion, Ben’s relationship with Ryan was stronger than ever, because Ryan knew that Ben was loyal and honest, and that together they had come to the right conclusion.