HATTIE: Give our viewers some self-coaching techniques as they're walking through their businesses and trying to solve problems on a daily basis in real time.
TOM: I think there are four steps, that if a small business owner misses any one of these four steps, then their relationship with either their employees or their spouse, which is critical in any business is at risk.
The first is to understand the other -- the expectations of their employees. Truly understand what do they expect out of being here, rather than just, "Hey, you need to do this, you need to do that."
What do they expect.
The second is what they expect of them. Being clear. We sometimes think employees should be mind readers. They really need to be able to understand, "Okay, what do you like in terms of hours?" What about your specifics -- what kind of things you want me to do? You know, those kind of things really need to be clear.
Then the third step is to be able to give them feedback on how their doing.
HATTIE: That's the coaching.
TOM: Yeah, that's the coaching. I mean, giving them the immediate feedback … that we talked about earlier.
The fourth step is asking, "How we're doing as managers or leaders or coaches?" We rarely ask that one. "Hey, how am I doing?" And you know what they usually say, 'Oh, you're doing fine.'
Okay. Then what a leader should say -- there's an old, called a rule of three. People will lie until the third time. So you ask him, 'How am I doing?' They say, 'Great.'v
Then you say, 'Are you sure? Come on.' 'Yeah, you're doing great.' 'Come on, you're not telling me there isn't -'
So finally they say, 'Well there are a few things.' So you say, 'What are the three things you like about how I'm doing? And, what are three things that I can do better? And, you start saying that to certain employees, wow, you're going to hear some powerful things.