Dear Farillio member,

You asked our amazing guest Bill Eckstrom on the Go Far Fast Show:

“My manager is making everyone on our team miserable right now, and we never know where we stand or what sort of mood we will encounter. Some days I'm not sure we're all still going to work. Do you have any advice?”

And Bill said:

Be mighty always, Farillio

Transcript:

“Those are the toughest ones, and one of the best things I tell people is, and I'll share an anecdote along with this, but first of all, understand what great managers are, what great coaches are and what they should be doing. I sat down with a collegiate athlete one time, and she was lamenting on her coach and how the coach didn't get to know her, the coach had said some things that had offended her, and the coach really should get to know her because if he knew her he would understand where she was coming from. I think my response caught her off guard because I said, ‘so what you're saying is, you know the importance of relationships to your growth and performance’. And she said, ‘Well, yeah, sure, of course, that that's why I'm talking about this’.

So I said, ‘if you understand how important that is, you have to own it. You can't blame the coach if you know what's right. You have to then go to the coach and you crawl into his life. You have to get him to know you because right now you're being a victim’. And I said, ‘you've wisely understood the problem, but you can't sit back and then point the finger because you know the answer’. And that's one of the things I tell people when you're on a team in business too is that, ‘if you know the right thing to do. You start to do it’. And as you referenced, maybe coaching up or coaching the coach or however you want to describe it. But you have to take charge and you have to take accountability for it, and if you just can't work within it, then you've got a few choices: go above the person and have a conversation, or you can accept it and just manage your emotions around it. Or you can trigger complexity (Merlie knows what this is about) and leave, and do your own thing!”

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Want more from Bill?

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