CHAPTER 7Creating Unity, Trust, and Buy‐In: The Art of Enrollment
Managers are certainly a directive bunch. Given the pressure they're under at work and at home, who can blame them? They have valid reasons for being this way. As someone who is extremely overprotective of the leadership community and my clients, I get it. On top of personal responsibilities, managers are also competing with countless meetings, reports, forecasts, project deadlines, business plans, performance reviews, joint sales calls, unsupportive bosses, time to coach, and other departments vying for their time. There are also monthly team scorecards to evaluate and goals to achieve.
When you consider all of these responsibilities, it's no surprise why managers are so stressed out and feel the time pressure to get everything done now. Unfortunately, this often comes at a cost.
As we discussed in Chapter 4, great managers lead with questions, rather than with answers; that's the premise of coaching. Whether you're coaching someone around an agenda they bring to you or you initiate the discussion (your agenda), it's an occupational hazard to default to directive mode.
Before we dive into the steps to conduct an enrollment conversation, let's recap what enrollment is, what it sounds like, and why it's essential for every leader to master this communication strategy if you want to create alignment, consensus, trust, and a unified front that is focused on one core objective and shared vision.
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