WHY DEMANDING PERFORMANCE DOESN'T WORK

Whether it was your first job, your current job or somewhere in between, we've all worked with the demanding manager at some point in our lives.  The demanding manager approaches employee leadership with a do-it-because-I-said-so mindset. If your parents were anything like mine, then seeing that phrase just sent you on a flashback to your childhood. As a kid, hearing “because I said so” uttered in any conversation meant I had just successfully asked enough “but why do I have to” questions to get my mother to her breaking point. However, my mother using “because I said so” is nothing more than a parenting tactic to keep her sanity, but a manager deploying “because I said so” as a leadership style is anything but a strategic move.

For example, it's typical for a demanding sales leader to walk into a staff meeting and tell the staff: “C’mon everybody we need to get our numbers up. We need to start closing more sales!”

At this point every sales person is thinking “well duh!” It’s as if this manager assumes his or her sales people are missing all of these really great opportunities because it never occurred to them that closing sales is a great way to get numbers up (insert eye-roll)! This is the demanding manager, expecting performance to improve simply because he or she said so.

The fact of the matter is demanding performance, no matter how it’s done, will never produce significant results because it is an end to a means but, when an employee has hit a roadblock, telling him or her to sell as a way to get sales, is useless. What employees need is a means to an end, and coaching does just that. When an employee cannot move past a barrier, they need a coach to help them explore other avenues (means) to get to their sales goal (end).

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