Serve Up, Coach Down

CHAPTER 3

Serving Peers, Coworkers, and Customers

For four years in a row, I had spoken at my client's annual senior leadership meeting—a high-level meeting of managers who manage managers. After my last event with them, we discussed the serving up, across, and out mindset, and they decided to take action on what we discussed the following year: They would have senior leaders of all the different divisions share what they do and then discuss how they could serve one another better.

Serving across to peers and teams in other departments and divisions in order to gather different perspectives and see new opportunities and ways of doing things is an important concept. The intent is not to share what a leader of a department needs from others, but ...