In This Economy, Be a Coach, Not a Boss

(Photo Courtesy of Keith Rosen)

NEW YORK—To Keith Rosen, “management” is a dirty word. He says that the majority of the managers in the world are managing with a top-down, controls-and-numbers-based, fear-motivated system—one that focuses on the result and not the process.

Rosen teaches leaders how to adopt a coaching method of management. Members of sales-driven companies make up the majority of Rosen’s newest students. Since the economy went sour, Rosen’s business shot up, almost doubling since last year.

Many of the new faces coming to him are from the real estate world. Throughout his career, he has coached people from home improvement companies, commercial real estate brokers, national builders, and real estate agents.

Some real estate insiders based in New York may be tempted to think that they are immune from nationwide market changes, but Rosen cautions them against complacency. “The New York market, as much as people in New York say this is a unique world, that’s not really true right now,” he said. “Top agents will say they can’t make people buy houses, can’t create demand, but what can you change? What’s in your power? You can change how you manage time, how you connect with customers, and the value of your service.”

Don’t settle for losing against down times, either. Rosen asks his clients if they can think of anyone else in their industry doing well right now. As long as there’s someone out there succeeding, “Then the conversation shifts from being a victim of the marketplace to what the top performers are doing,” he said.

“Now people more than ever are willing to make changes. All you need to do is open up any newspaper and you‘ll see the companies that are not embracing that philosophy, are the ones that are losing business. They’re stuck in their own culture, their old ways of doing things. Their managers are telling their people to ’do more,' whatever that means, and then they wonder why they are losing market share.”

Rosen was guilty of the old style of management, too. Long ago, he was managing a team of about 40 people at a design-build company. “We were experiencing so much attrition,” he said. To correct the problem at the root, Rosen began reading more about management, conducting exit interviews with former staff, and asking more questions of his sales people. Through this process he discovered what style of management drives people away and what style motivates them.

He revamped the interviewing and recruitment process, but more importantly, he changed how he interacted with his people. “I was coaching on the numbers—how many calls did you make? How many appointments did you have? How many sales did you close? What’s in your pipeline? And those questions by default coach to the result—you gotta coach the process and the person.”

And that’s what many managers are coming to realize in these tough times. “In good times, anyone can sell, and anyone can manage. It’s only in tougher times that we are challenged—our character, skill set, our level of perseverance.”

“I believe that true success is a combination of not just changing and upgrading what you do, but who you are and how you think.”