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 the burden of leadership. Once again, executives were complaining about Sarah's group.

A new line of products had been submitted to Sarah's development team,

and the only thing that had come back was chaos.

During our conversation about coaching Sarah, her boss said,

I need her to get her group under control.

When I asked him to tell me a little about her management stuff, under control.

When I asked him to tell me a little about her management style, he said, Sarah is a creative

type, and that's why she's so great at her job and we love her, but creative types don't always make the best managers do they?

When I asked him to elaborate he said her brain has a million ideas shooting off all the

time and that's great for brainstorming but that's what happens when she talks too.

She says all sorts of things that just aren't appropriate.

He told me how during a meeting with her peers about one employee's poor performance,

she had said the company ought to, quote, just fire his sorry ass.

That had riled enough people that HR had come to talk to her.

Another time, she shared confidential information about the possible elimination of a project her team was involved in.

Many hours of many meetings over many days were spent controlling the damage from that

comment. Another time in a public hallway she had told a colleague that on an

upcoming international trip she was going to take her team

to a particular karaoke bar and quote, get him so wasted, we'll probably miss our flight home.

...