Episode 866 - Lifeguard vs. Coach: Leading with Urgency and Ownership

0:04 Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of performance through strong human relations, team building, and goal achieving. This is the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast with your host, Paul Falavolito.

0:22 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast. It's episode 866. I want you to picture two very different people. The first person is is sitting in a lifeguard chair. They're watching the water. Somebody suddenly goes under. There's no meeting. There's no lengthy conversation about personal development. The lifeguard doesn't yell, hey, this would be a great opportunity for you to work on your swimming skills. They jump in. They take control.

0:51 They get the person out of the water. Now picture a coach standing beside a swimming pool. The swimmer isn't drowning. They're trying to get better. Their breathing is off. Their stroke needs work. Their turns are costing them time. The coach doesn't jump into the pool, grab the swimmer, and swim the laps for them. The coach watches. They give feedback.

1:16 They make corrections. And then the swimmer gets back in the water and tries again. That distinction might be one of the most important things you can understand about leadership. Some moments require a lifeguard. Other moments require a coach. And a lot of leadership problems happen because we use the wrong one. Think about your workplace. An employee is about to make a mistake that could injure somebody, damage equipment, cost the company thousands of dollars, create a serious customer problem, or violate an important policy. That's a lifeguard moment. You intervene immediately. Stop. Don't do that. Step away. I'll take it from here. There are moments when leadership needs to be incredibly direct because the consequences of allowing the situation

2:05 to continue are too high. You're not taking away somebody's ownership, you're protecting the mission. Lifeguard leadership is built around urgency. Something is happening right now, and allowing the employee to figure it out on their own could make the situation worse. I come from emergency services, so this makes sense. perfect sense to me. If somebody is doing something on an emergency scene that creates an immediate safety problem, I'm not scheduling a coaching session for Thursday. I'm stopping it. There will be time to explain later. There will be time to teach later. There will be time to talk about what happened and how we prevent it from happening again.

2:45 Right now, we need to fix the problem. That's lifeguard leadership. The problem starts when leaders stay in lifeguard mode all the time. Some leaders spend their entire career jumping into the pool. Employees struggling with something, leader takes over. Employee makes a small mistake, leader fixes it. Employee has a difficult decision, leaders make it. Employee encounters a problem, the leader solves it. And eventually you have a workplace filled with people standing around the edge of the pool waiting for the lifeguard. And then the leader complains that nobody takes ownership. Well, why would they? Every time they had an opportunity to develop ownership, somebody jumped in and took it away from them. That's where coaching leadership becomes so important.

3:35 Coaching requires something that can be uncomfortable for leaders. You have to allow people to struggle a little. You have to allow them to think. You have to allow them to make decisions. Sometimes you even have to allow them to make a small mistake because your job isn't to create employees who need you standing beside them every minute Your job is to help create employees who can operate successfully when you're nowhere around. A coaching moment sounds completely different from a lifeguard moment. Instead of saying, here's what you need to do, maybe you ask, what do you think you should do? Instead of immediately solving the problem, ask the employee to walk you through it. What are you seeing? What options have you considered? What do you

4:20 think happens if you choose that option? Now the employee has to think and that's where ownership starts. You're still leading. You're still responsible. You're still watching the pool. You've changed your role from rescuer to developer. I think leaders need to start mentally labeling situations, lifeguard moment, coaching moment, because once you recognize which situation you're dealing with, your response becomes much clearer. Ask yourself one question, does this require immediate intervention? If the answer is yes because there's a serious safety issue, ethical problem, major financial exposure, significant customer consequence, or immediate threat to the mission, you're probably in lifeguard territory.

5:07 Step in. Be clear. Take control of the situation. And then once the immediate danger has passed, switch roles. Become the coach. Talk about what happened. Why did it happen? What did the employee see? What did they miss? What will they do differently next time? That second part matters because if you only rescue people, they will never learn how to swim. Now, let's flip it around. Suppose an employee is struggling with something where the consequences of getting it slightly wrong are manageable. Maybe they're learning how to run a meeting. Maybe they're handling a difficult customer. Maybe they're learning a new operational responsibility. Maybe they're making their first real leadership decision. Your instinct might be screaming, move over.

5:53 I can do this faster. Of course you can. You've probably done it a hundred times, but they haven't. And that's the entire point. If you take over every time somebody moves slower than you, nobody around you will ever become as capable as you. Leadership development takes patience. And yes, sometimes it's painful to watch. You're sitting there thinking, come on.

6:16 Come on, you're almost there. Let them work. Let them think. Give them enough room to develop their own judgment. That employee might take 20 minutes to solve something you could solve in two. Those extra 18 minutes might be one of the best leadership investments you make that day because next time, maybe it takes them 10 and eventually they don't need you at all. That's the goal. There's another danger here too. Sometimes leaders disguise control as coaching. They ask the employee what they think, but they've already decided there's only one acceptable answer, so the conversation becomes a guessing game. What do you think you should do? The employee answers, no. Then try again.

7:00 No.

7:01 At that point, you're not coaching them. You're making them guess what's inside your head. Real coaching gives people room to develop judgment. You can set boundaries. You can establish standards. You can define what success looks like, then give them some space to get there. This is also where leaders need to understand that different employees may need different amounts of lifeguarding and coaching. A brand new employee may need more direct intervention because they don't know what they don't know yet. An experienced employee should probably have more room to work through problems independently. And when somebody consistently demonstrates good judgment and Give them more ownership. That's how trust grows.

7:44 And here's another way to think about this. Lifeguard leadership protects the present. Coaching leadership prepares the future. You need both. If you never become the lifeguard, problems can get out of control while you stand there trying to turn an emergency into a learning exercise. If you never become the coach, you create dependency. And dependency eventually becomes a leadership bottleneck.

8:10 Everything comes back to you. Every decision, every problem, every question, every conflict. Then one day you're overwhelmed, your employees are frustrated, and you're wondering why nobody can operate without you. There's a good chance you spent years jumping into the pool when you should have been standing beside it coaching. Great leadership requires knowing when somebody needs to be rescued and when somebody needs to be allowed to swim. That judgment matters.

8:39 And tomorrow when somebody comes to you with a problem, resist the automatic response. Before you solve it, ask yourself, is this a lifeguard moment or is this a coaching moment? If somebody is drowning, jump in. If they're learning to swim, stay on the deck and coach them because eventually the person you've been coaching might become the person capable of saving somebody else. Leadership isn't about proving that you can solve every problem faster than everybody around you. Sometimes your responsibility is immediate intervention. Sometimes your responsibility is developing somebody who won't need your intervention next time. Know the difference.

9:29 Protect people when the stakes demand it. Coach people when growth requires it. And never rescue someone from a lesson they're capable of learning. This has been the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast, and I thank you for listening.