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 showing teeth.

Dina paused over her salad.

She had invited me to lunch to talk about an executive I had heard a lot about but had never

met.

Richard.

During the years I had coached there, many people had talked to me about Richard, often at length.

Even Dina had talked to me about Richard.

Dina and I had known each other for years.

As an HR leader in her company, she had coordinated the

coaching engagements I'd done in her division.

The word about Richard was that he dithers, not a good thing in a senior vice president. His

dithering caused initiatives under his leadership to language and the output from his group to lag.

Richard dithers when it came to people too,

so his team was full of struggling performers he never fired.

At the beginning of this lunch conversation,

Dina had said, I'm trying to find a new way to talk with him about his dithering.

He's heard all the feedback. There's nothing new to say. I just thought maybe I could frame it up differently

I laughed and said you mean instead of hey Richard stop dithering

...