You spend plenty of time talking with your employees, right? You talk, talk, talk about everything under the sun. “How was your weekend? How was your kid’s birthday party? Did you watch that TV show?” You probably talk about personal matters in order to build a friendly rapport with them. But that approach bleeds into your management relationship, so when the subject matter turns to work, you tend to soft-pedal your authority. When you have a difficult task that you must press upon an employee, or, even worse, there is a problem that you must address with him or her, you suddenly shift gears and start talking seriously, urgently, and sometimes heatedly about the work. That’s when the employee is likely to say, “Hey, I thought we were friends!?!” And all the rapport goes out the window.

This is what I call the “Jekyll and Hyde” problem. If you do all of your rapport building with employees by talking about personal matters as if you are personal friends, then, when the conversation turns serious—as it always does—you have to adopt a whole different personality. You go from being Mr. Nice Guy Friend to Mr. Jerk Boss, at least until the dust settles and you can go back to being Mr. Friend again. The problem is that Mr. Friend starts feeling like a fake and Mr. Boss struggles for legitimacy.

Talk, Talk, Talk about the Work

If you want to be Mr. Friend to your employees, go out for a beer with them after work. But at work, you need to be the boss. Your role is keeping everybody focused on the work and each person performing at her best every day. The good news is that the best way to build rapport with your employees is actually by talking about the work. Work is what you have in common; in fact, it’s the reason you have a relationship at all. When you build rapport by talking about work, you are making conflict less likely and, at the same time, building rapport that will survive conflict when it does occur. So talk about the work that’s been done and the work that needs to be done. Talk about avoiding pitfalls, finding shortcuts, making sure resources are available. Talk about goals, deadlines, guidelines, and specifications. Talk, talk, talk about the work. Things will go much better.

How Do the Most Effective Managers Talk?

Many managers tell me, “I’m not a natural leader. I’m an—.” (You fill in the blank: accountant, engineer, doctor, etc.) They say, “I don’t really enjoy managing. It involves a lot of difficult conversations.” What these managers are really saying is that they don’t know how to talk to their employees about the work in an effective way.

Only the rarest of managers has that special brand of charisma, contagious passion, and infectious enthusiasm that inspires and motivates people. What about the rest of us? You may not be able to learn how to develop charisma, but you can learn to talk about the work in a straightforward and effective manner. You can learn to say the right words to your employees at the right time in the right way.

The most effective managers have a special way of talking. They adopt a special posture, demeanor, and tone. They have a way of talking that is both authoritative and sympathetic; both demanding and supportive; both disciplined and patient. It is a way of talking that is neither Mr. Friend nor Mr. Boss, but rather nearly exactly in the middle. This special way of talking looks a lot like performance coaching.

“I’ve never had a great coach,” managers sometimes tell me, “so I don’t know what coaching sounds like.” I can describe it for you: The voice of performance coaching is steady and persistent, relentlessly methodical and hands-on, enthusiastic and pushy. It is the constant banter of focus, improvement, and accountability. Think about the best boss you ever had, or the best teacher or camp counselor or pastor. Hear the sound of her voice, her tone, her honesty, her clarity. Remember the impact she had on you.

When I think about performance coaching, I think of Frank Gorman—the greatest teacher I have ever known and the über-coach. As long as I’ve known him, Frank has been focused on one thing: karate. He happens to have that special charisma, passion, and enthusiasm that characterizes strong leaders. He is a master at getting people to share his focus, and work intensely on one short-term goal for hours on end without even considering a break in the action. How does he do that?

“The only thing that matters is your thumbs,” Frank would tell me over and over again for weeks. “Pull in your thumbs; press them hard against your palms, so hard the tendons in your forearms raise up.” Here I would be sweating and straining from physical exhaustion, trying to keep my eyes straight ahead, chin down, shoulders back, elbows in, back straight, hips square, feet pressed into the floor and twisting to tighten the leg muscles. And Frank Gorman would be yelling, somehow in a whisper, “Your thumbs; pull in your thumbs…The only thing that matters is your thumbs.”

Then one day, the only thing that mattered was…something else: my eyes, my chin, my shoulders, and so on and so on. Finally, some years ago, I asked, “How can my thumbs be the only thing that matters in karate? How can that be, when what matters changes all the time: It’s always something different!” Frank smiled and said, “Nobody can learn karate in a day or a year. All we have is today. What can I teach you right now? What can you focus on right now? What can you improve right now? The only thing that matters is what we are doing here right now.”

What I learned from Frank is that the unyielding force of your persistent voice leaves the person you are coaching with no choice other than to focus acutely on whatever he or she is doing right now. For those being coached this way, the demands are intense, but the payoff is incredible. When you coach people to success in this manner, they have no choice but to get “into” their work because you, like few others in their lives, require them to be great. You remind them to be purposeful about every single detail. You help them build their skills one day at a time. From focusing, they learn focus itself. They become black belts at whatever they do. Perhaps long after they work for you, they will carry your voice of constant feedback in their heads: “The only thing that matters is what we are doing here right now.”

Obviously, some people have more natural talent than others when it comes to coaching. But talking like a coach is something that can be learned. Should you imitate that performance coach from your past? Yes. Try it out. It’s a great place to start. Over time, you’ll develop your own style.

You Don’t Have to Holler, “Rah! Rah!”

Sometimes managers worry that if they try to talk like a performance coach, they just won’t seem genuine, that they’ll sound contrived. As one senior manager in a software firm put it, “There’s no way I’m going around the office hollering, ‘Rah! Rah!’ I’m just not the coaching type.”

But performance coaching has very little to do with hollering, “Rah! Rah!” around the office. It’s simply a technique. And here’s the really good news: In order to be effective, coaching simply cannot be contrived. It must be totally genuine. Often it is so genuine that you don’t even realize you are doing it.

That’s how I responded to this software manager. Then I asked him to recall some of his best management interactions over the years. As he began describing some of his management high points, a smile slowly crossed his face. What do you know? His descriptions sounded a lot like performance coaching: “I was really thinking about the person as an individual. Where was he coming from? I was trying really hard to focus on the performance, not the person. I was choosing my words so carefully. I wanted to make it very clear exactly what I already knew about the situation and what I didn’t know. I was asking questions, but mostly pushing toward some concrete next steps. We were right in the middle of this project, so I made really sure to spell out exactly what he had done right and exactly what was done wrong. Then we worked out a detailed plan of next steps and I kept following up to check in on those next steps, one by one, until they were done.”

That is exactly how a performance coach talks:

• Tune in to the individual you are coaching.
• Focus on specific instances of individual performance.
• Describe the employee’s performance honestly and vividly.
• Develop concrete next steps.

Don’t Wait for Problems to Start Coaching

Early on in our work with managers, we learned that some managers are simply masterful at coaching, but most were not so great at it. Yet whether managers were good or bad at it, it became clear that when it comes to managing people, so much of the real action takes place during these coaching conversations.

The problem is that most managers only coach employees when they encounter a recurring performance problem, such as missed deadlines or poor work quality, or a behavior issue, such as a bad attitude toward customers or coworkers. When it starts to look like a problem isn’t going away, that’s when the manager decides to bring the employee into her office and coach the employee: “There is a problem with your performance, and we need to have some sessions until ‘we’ coach you out of this problem.”

By this point, there are probably some bad feelings. The manager might be thinking, “What is your problem?!” And the employee might think, “Gee, why didn’t you talk to me about this sooner?” Often the only next steps the manager can articulate amount to, “Don’t do this again.” This leaves both the manager and the employee wondering when the problem will recur. Don’t forget, if this is a recurring problem, that’s probably because the employee either doesn’t know what steps to follow to avoid the problem or else he has gotten into one or more bad habits that cause the problem to recur.

By the time a problem is recurring, it is too late to start coaching. The time to coach an employee is in advance so you can set her up for success. For example, if you have an employee who chronically misses deadlines, don’t wait until she misses the deadline to coach her. Start coaching her when the deadline is first set. Help her establish intermediate benchmarks, such as deadlines along the way. Every step of the way, help the employee make a plan for completing those intermediate deadlines. And check in with the employee frequently. Talk through the accomplishment of each step in advance. Do that and 99 percent of the time that employee is going to start meeting her deadlines.

Stop coaching employees when problems develop; coach employees when they are doing great or doing just okay. Coach people every step of the way and help them develop good habits before they ever have a chance to develop bad ones.

Get Extraordinary Performance out of Ordinary People

I’ve had the tremendous honor of working with many leaders in the United States Armed Forces over the years. One of the stunning things about the military is its remarkable ability to teach huge numbers of young and relatively inexperienced people to be extremely effective leaders. Take the Marine Corps, for example. With a one-to-nine ratio of officers to enlisted people, the Marine Corps is forced to depend a great deal on enlisted leaders. At any given time, nearly one out of eight marines is a corporal in charge of a fire team of three marines. The Marine Corps transforms ordinary nineteen-year-olds into effective leaders all day, every day. How do they do that?

New recruits are coached aggressively from day one. Every day, all day long, for thirteen weeks in boot camp, new marines are told exactly what to do and how to do it; they are monitored, measured, and documented every step of the way. Problems are not tolerated, and even the least reward must be earned through hard work. After boot camp, marines are still coached aggressively, thoroughly, and thoughtfully all day, every day.

When it comes to building new enlisted leaders, like everything else they do, the Marine Corps is painfully methodical. Marines are trained in the techniques of performance coaching before they ascend to the role of fire-team leader. They are taught to tune in to each individual Marine, give constant feedback on his performance, and provide step-by-step instruction to improve it. The new fire-team leader takes full responsibility for that team, knows exactly who is doing what, where, why, when, and how. He spells out expectations; monitors, measures, and documents his Marines’ performance; and addresses problems as they come up. The fire-team leader takes care of his marines. As a result, the average Marine fire-team leader is a better manager at age nineteen than most senior executives with decades of experience.

“We have to get extraordinary performance out of ordinary people,” one Marine officer told me. “The only way to do that is to squeeze that out of every single person every single day through relentless in-your-face leadership all the way down to the lowest level.”

They call it relentless in-your-face leadership. I call it performance coaching. Learn to talk like a performance coach and squeeze extraordinary performance out of every person.