Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of

executive coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way

you want to be perceived. I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach, and today we're talking

about capitalizing on differences in styles. When Gregory first called me, we knew about each other. I had coached his boss off and

on for several years, but we had never worked together. Now he reached out to me wondering if I could help him with a task force he was leading.

This task force has the potential to change some of the ways our customers deal with us, he told me.

So of course everyone's got their eye on us from the CEO on down.

But we're not getting anything done.

I knew his company was made up of very smart people,

so I doubted they weren't getting anything

done and I told him so. Oh well sure we're getting some stuff done he

conceded but it's not as good as it could be. I think we're all being polite with each other, so

the work is polite, but polite won't create change."

I asked what he meant by polite. He said,

we are all bright eyes and shining smiles around here, and that's nice. It's a nice place to work.

But if this task force is going to be great, we're going to have to tell each other what's really going on with our work.

That means we're going to have to talk about people and about each other.

We're not used to doing that because we're so darn nice.

He told me he had three co-leaders on the task force and that they were all willing to talk

with me. He gave me a little commentary about each.

First was Lorraine. Gregory said there were times she was ready fire aim. She doesn't

always take the time to analyze things, he said, and his tone made it clear that he put a high value on taking time to analyze things.

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