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Over the course of this book, we will provide you, the manager, with a new and improved road map for coaching and development. We'll start in chapter 1 by exploring how every manager, regardless of level, industry, or geography, follows one of four approaches to coaching and developing employees. In chapter 2, we will discuss why the Always On manager, which has been promoted as the right model to improve employee performance, actually does more harm than good. In chapter 3, we will reveal what Connector managers do differently to achieve vastly higher levels of team performance. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 will serve as your "how to" for becoming a Connector manager. As part of that, we will share our research, as well as numerous real stories from a diverse set of Connector managers. Finally, we'll conclude with a chapter on how to create a Connector organization through the acquisition and development of Connectors, and how senior leaders can become "Super Connectors" by using their reach and influence across their organizations to create the infrastructure to enable more Connectors.

Whether you are an aspiring manager or have been managing people for decades, this book will provide you with the techniques you need to become better 'and' create more Connectors across your organization. Those Connectors will build higher performing, more engaged, and more productive teams—outcomes we would all like to see in our organizations. Our impetus for writing this book was rooted in our own desire to become better managers within our teams. We are eager to share our research, learning, and new management approach to give you an advantage in your job and help you to become the very best manager you can be.

April 10, 2019

Sari Wilde

CHAPTER ONE

WHAT TYPE OF MANAGER ARE YOU?

Socrates, Greek philosopher

THE WILD BOARS

On Monday, July 2, 2018, an elite cave diver reached the end of his dive line deep in the belly of an underground cave along the border of Thailand and Myanmar. As he swam up to the surface and poked his head above the murky water, he saw thirteen pairs of eyes staring at him out of the darkness. A wave of emotion washed over him as he realized he'd located the Moo Pa (Wild Boars) soccer team—a group of twelve young boys and their twenty-five-year-old coach who had been stranded after exploring the entrance of the six-mile-long Tham Luang cave when a flash flood struck ten days earlier. The boys and their coach were huddled together in an elevated area known as Pattaya Beach, sheltering on a ledge surrounded by water more than a mile from the main cave entrance. Cave divers navigated two miles of narrow, flooded passageways that separated the Wild Boars refuge from the cave's main entrance. The whole world fixated on the international rescue effort and breathed a collective sigh of relief when the discovery revealed the best possible outcome: all thirteen Wild Boars were alive and well in the cave.

There was little time to celebrate, however, as the cave remained flooded and the boys were still stranded and needed to be rescued. While search-and-rescue operations are often urgent and risky, the Thai cave rescue effort was exceptionally so. The number of children missing (many who couldn't swim, let alone dive), the rapidly shifting weather conditions, and the sheer complexity of the underground maze of barely navigable caves required a team of diving experts to coordinate a rescue. Efforts to pump water out of the cave began immediately as rescuers tried to take advantage of a break in monsoon rains. Regardless, a day of heavy rains would again flood parts of the cave with water so murky the divers would sometimes compare it to swimming through coffee. The rescue took a fatal turn when a former Thai navy Seal, Saman Kunan, died during the mission to place oxygen tanks along the route to help access the boys. In the process, his own oxygen tank ran out—starkly illustrating how perilous any rescue involving diving gear can be. Around-the-clock water pumping paid off with parts of the cave made walkable, but extracting the boys still depended on their ability to breathe into scuba equipment despite having no diving experience. After eighteen days in the cave, with rescuers at times facing an eleven-hour round trip, the boys and their coach were miraculously escorted to safety.