How to coach a comeback story

Is your company ready for a great comeback story? Then you as a manager are going to need to coach a comeback player of the year. In essence, you need to help them to reinvent their career. To do that, you need some specialized tools in your reinventor’s toolkit.

When I advise the CEO of a company about a derailed executive, I warn him or her that comebacks don’t happen overnight. But with persistent actions on the part of the manager/coach and the executive, it can happen. I have seen it time and again.


Meet Bill, Comeback Executive of the Year

Take Bill for example. In my book The Prodigal Executive I talk about Bill (real story, but not his real name) who was president of a marketing entertainment business that is a subsidiary of an international company. The skills that enabled him to succeed early on in his career backfired on him, derailing him from his career track.

Bill was a driver. He was very achievement-driven and wanted the best for the company. He was willing to do whatever it would take for the team to be successful. Bill believed that the only thing in business is getting the job done. He believed that emotions do not belong in business and if someone can’t get the job done they need to be replaced.

When I met Bill there were quite a few negative comments coming from his direct reports. His boss at the parent company was being briefed on a weekly basis on what a horrible leader he was, and there was starting to be some turnover. So the boss called me and said, “What can you do?”

So I went in to see him and went over the entire process as an overview with Bill. We found during an initial assessment stage that Bill had no idea what leadership was about. He thought that leadership was nothing but results, and his results were outstanding. So his belief system was that as long as he got the numbers to work, he was okay.

What Bill came to realize is that he could get better numbers, and he didn’t have to be seen as a cold, distant, aggressive leader to do it. Truth was, Bill actually wanted to be seen as a personable, likable, engaging leader. He just never had a higher-up sit down with him and tell him how to do it. So Bill and I worked together for about six months and did a lot of work around him spending more time with each of his staff on a regular basis, asking about their career and really showing an ongoing interest in the welfare of each individual.

I shared with Bill a couple strategies for a comeback. One, you’re going to have to act for a while. The second thing is that I started off small. In psychology there is a model for behavior change called Successive Approximation. What that means is that if you want to change your behavior, you break the larger behavior up into smaller segments. You get the person to have some successes in small ways so that when they get to the big ways they’re feeling more comfortable.

So Bill and I started off about five minutes a day with just one of his direct reports, and that went well. So we added another one. Then we added team meeting, which he had never done. He learned how to make them more sociable, like by having food at the meeting. Bill did these steps on faith and then just started noticing that it was working. He was getting more positive feedback, and people were more productive.

Bill is a classic example of a derailed executive getting back on track with the help of a coach. He was such a great contributor, the management of his company just assumed he would make a great leader too. Wrong assumption. But with guidance, Bill made it back.