Chapter 4
Breaking Down Silos Through Horizontal Service
Leadership isn't just about vertical relationships-it's also about serving across to peers and other departments. This horizontal service creates organizational strength through different perspectives and opportunities. The key is adopting a giving rather than receiving position-discovering what your team can do for others instead of what you need from them.
When Ken, a sales leader, was frustrated with the design team over customer order issues, he was advised to focus on improving his own team's performance rather than blaming others. By asking the design manager what his team could do better to help designers succeed, Ken initiated collaboration that transformed their relationship. The design manager even offered to accommodate special requests, demonstrating how serving across departments creates mutual support.
Breaking down silos doesn't require waiting for major changes-it's about consistently making decisions with the intent to serve others. When Patrick (retail director) and the author (indirect distribution director) partnered despite historical conflicts between their divisions, they transformed the California market from one of the worst to one of the best performers by implementing a "serve out" mindset that even affected customer perceptions.
To break down organizational silos: 1) Share and mandate the serve across mindset with your team as a non-negotiable principle; 2) Proactively approach other departments to share your intent to serve and ask how your team can help them; and 3) Expand this approach throughout the organization, requiring your team to do the same.
True customer service requires becoming customer servants-a fundamental mindset shift. Your team must genuinely want to serve customers, regardless of how they're treated in return. A servant's mindset (ABS: Always Be Serving) means making customers feel special, appreciated, important, and cared for. Most customers judge us solely on how we serve them, not the behind-the-scenes work.
Chapter 5
Coaching Down: Beyond Management to Excellence
Most leaders wish their employees cared about business success as much as they do, yet few invest time in developing them. True coaching goes beyond post-event feedback-it involves preparation, practice, and continuous improvement. While managers merely provide after-the-fact feedback, coaches prepare employees for success through regular "scrimmages" and role-playing. These practice sessions might include simulated customer interactions, mock presentations, or problem-solving scenarios that mirror real workplace challenges.
Consider the stark difference: managers wait for customer interactions to happen and then provide feedback on what went wrong. Coaches conduct practice sessions beforehand, preparing team members to excel when it matters. A coach might spend an hour role-playing difficult customer scenarios with their team, workshopping responses, and building confidence before real situations arise. This proactive approach breaks the comfortable but dangerous habit of managing, which slowly clogs an organization's arteries and prevents excellence.
Leaders resist coaching because of time constraints and ingrained habits-managing is comfortable like eating French fries, but ultimately leads to organizational mediocrity. Many leaders fall into the trap of believing that being busy with daily operations justifies neglecting employee development. The coaching mindset requires shifting from passive management to active development, demanding excellence while providing support. This means blocking dedicated time for one-on-one development sessions, creating learning opportunities, and consistently following up on growth goals.
A coach's fundamental intent must be helping team members become their best selves-pushing good performers to greatness and great performers to even higher levels. This involves identifying each individual's unique strengths and growth areas, then crafting personalized development plans. There's no finish line in employee development. The coach's job isn't merely hiring good people and letting them work, but hiring great people and making them better through active preparation and skill development. This might involve creating stretch assignments, providing exposure to senior leadership, or facilitating cross-functional training opportunities.
This requires finding balance between micromanagement and hands-off leadership by clearly communicating expectations, providing development frameworks, and creating mutual trust where employees feel comfortable being honest about their needs while still being held accountable to high standards. Effective coaches establish regular check-ins, set clear metrics for success, and create safe spaces for failure and learning. They document progress, celebrate wins, and adjust development plans based on changing needs and circumstances. The most successful coaches also recognize that different team members require different approaches - some need more guidance and support, while others thrive with greater autonomy and occasional course correction.
Chapter 6
Creating a Culture Where Teams Thrive, Not Just Survive
Just as plants need good soil to thrive rather than merely survive, employees need a nurturing culture created by leaders who coach down effectively. This culture must be built on team unity, positive attitudes, and daily commitment to excellence.
To create a thriving culture, leaders must mandate positive attitudes from everyone on the team, removing negative influences when necessary; implement a "we will" belief system where people focus on solutions rather than problems; and apply the "Maddon effect" (named after baseball manager Joe Maddon) by making winning fun while maintaining focus and accountability.
Unlike sports coaches who focus on top performers, business leaders often spend time with struggling employees, making leadership attention seem like a consequence of failure. When leaders instead prioritize time with high performers, it creates an environment where others strive for that attention.
While athletes practice 90% of the time, business teams practice less than 1%. Practice differs from training-training teaches something new, while practice improves existing skills. Weekly practice sessions should replace boring staff meetings, focusing on soft skills like customer engagement and communication.
Scrimmaging isn't role-playing to test employees; it's preparation without pressure. It allows teams to try approaches before stakes are high, identifying what works and what needs improvement. Whether preparing for client presentations or difficult conversations, scrimmaging builds confidence and effectiveness. Great leaders scrimmage everything, showing their own willingness to learn and improve alongside their team.
Chapter 7
Holding Teams to Higher Standards Through Structured Development
Many organizations face a troubling disconnect: they demand higher standards from job applicants than from current employees. Companies often accept lower performance from existing staff than they would tolerate from new hires. This happens because leaders fear that holding people accountable might cause them to quit, creating short-term challenges.
But great coaches know that expecting less breeds mediocrity. The solution is coaching down-taking time to develop teams proactively rather than merely correcting mistakes after they occur. Two powerful tools for this are one-on-ones and floor days.
One-on-ones are weekly meetings between managers and direct reports designed to review activity, prepare for the coming week, address accountability issues, and focus on personal development. Unlike unplanned conversations that deal with urgent issues, these planned meetings create long-term learning and better prepare for urgent situations. The power lies in nothing being urgent-the focus is solely on making people better and more successful.
Floor days involve leaders leaving their offices to connect directly with their teams. Like Lawrence Shipley, the humble owner of a successful donut franchise with over 250 locations, leaders should regularly walk their operation floors, engage with employees, and stay connected. This practice improves production, morale, and leadership effectiveness.
Whether it's joining outside sales people, walking factory floors, riding in cars with team members, or knocking on office doors, getting out of your office to coach from the floor is essential. Leaders must also demand coaching from those they serve, as no one is beyond coaching.
Chapter 8
Leading Through Uncertainty and Change
Change has always been a business constant, but now occurs at unprecedented speed. Whether it's technological shifts, workplace diversity, customer demands, or global competition, most organizations change direction multiple times annually. The serve up/coach down mindset helps leaders navigate this uncertainty and lead not just at the speed of change but through it.
Leaders in the middle should forget about the "what" of change, as past experience rarely translates to today's challenges. Similarly, endless "why" questions often lead nowhere productive. When people ask "why," their intent is frequently not to understand but to find flaws, demand proof, or simply continue questioning without listening.
Instead, leaders should focus on the "how"-the practical implementation that drives results. With a serve up/coach down mindset, you understand your responsibility isn't to question organizational changes but to implement them successfully. Leaders who embrace this approach create cultures ready for change rather than resistant to it, maintaining momentum through transitions rather than getting stuck questioning them.
When a new VP without industry experience was hired to lead a team of frontline managers, the CEO worried about potential resistance. However, because the managers had been coached with a serve up mindset, they were prepared to transfer their trust to the new leader. During a preparatory meeting, managers were reminded to suspend doubt, avoid focusing on "how it used to be," and use any disappointment about not getting the position themselves as motivation to learn from the new boss.
The result? The company achieved its best results ever under the new VP, with top managers who embraced serving up experiencing the greatest success. The belief in leadership created a culture that produced positive behavior, demonstrating that leaders in the middle who maintain a serve up/coach down mindset don't lose power during change-they enhance it.
Chapter 9
Bridging the Knowledge Gap: From Learning to Implementation
Companies frequently implement new technologies or management tools, requiring teams to attend training programs-yet six months, weeks, or even days later, the knowledge is gone. This "knowledge gap" is the space between knowing what to do and actually doing it. The gap exists due to three factors: lack of will, lack of skill, and lack of coaching needed to create and sustain high-intensity environments.
Most organizations struggle with implementing and sustaining new knowledge. Leaders attend training, get excited about new tools, but fail to maintain implementation. To bridge the knowledge gap, leaders must first determine if the problem stems from lack of will, lack of skill, or both.
Will is your desire to fight and win-the fuel to your fire and purpose that drives performance. It's the energy that makes you sacrifice time to achieve greatness, the feeling that "I love my job and am part of something bigger." Some dismiss this as unnecessary, claiming they work to support their families rather than for fulfillment. However, passion for work and being the best doesn't have to come at the expense of family.
Unlike lack of will, lack of skill is fixable by strong middle leaders. This requires a coach-down mindset because while anyone can choose to have will, leaders must develop skills. Managing or protecting your team without addressing skill gaps is a cop-out-like pushing a child into the deep end without floaties.
The critical difference between creating high-tension versus high-intensity environments is coaching. High-tension environments combine high expectations, activity, and accountability without coaching, creating stress. High-intensity environments add coaching to those elements, producing positive energy where people succeed and have fun. These "pockets of greatness" always have strong middle leaders coaching down and serving up at their center.
Chapter 10
Mastering Time Management Through Prioritization
Despite generations of time management experts, leaders still struggle with managing time effectively. The author argues we don't need new systems but different mindsets-time management isn't a skill problem but a will problem. Leaders in the middle must choose to prioritize serving and coaching tasks, distinguishing between what they must do versus what seems urgent.
The author challenges readers with a thought experiment: what if your boss asked you to attend 5,040 forty-five-minute appointments over four years? This seemingly unreasonable request (1,260 appointments per year) is exactly what we expect from high school students, who complete this many classes in just 180 days per year. This perspective shift introduces a core theme: time management isn't about impossibility but about prioritization.
Most leaders struggle with competing demands-serving the boss, handling customer issues, completing HR tasks-and fail to distinguish between urgent and important tasks. Important tasks are proactive activities that develop business, people and ourselves, while urgent tasks are reactive responses to problems. Leaders often choose urgent tasks because their consequences are immediate, while important tasks have devastating but delayed consequences.
The author distinguishes between to-do lists and must-do lists. While to-do lists contain mostly urgent tasks that become more pressing with procrastination, must-do lists contain important tasks that have no immediate consequences but significant long-term impact. Creating an effective must-do list requires developing the right mindset (owning your time), maintaining discipline (writing out priorities and scheduling them), and execution (refusing excuses and staying committed).
When leaders properly schedule their must-do items, they not only find time for them but discover they have more time overall. Leaders who succeed are never "too busy" to take on more responsibility, while those who struggle are always "too busy" to do what they're already supposed to do. The difference lies in their choices.
Chapter 11
Balancing Loyalty, Accountability, and Performance
Leaders must balance the human need to feel significant and appreciated with the necessity of demanding high performance. Respect matters more than rewards, and loyalty should be based on contribution, not tenure. Leaders with a serve up/coach down mindset understand this balance-they show appreciation while holding everyone accountable to high standards.
During a coaching workshop, a leader questioned whether constantly recruiting new talent showed disloyalty to current team members. The author explained that loyalty should be based on contribution, not tenure-people must be both succeeding AND giving their best. Leaders mistakenly show loyalty to two types of people: those giving their best but not succeeding, and those succeeding but not giving their best.
For the first group, it's cruel to keep them where they can't succeed. For the second, accepting less than their best sends a dangerous message to the entire team. Many leaders use "loyalty" as an excuse to avoid difficult conversations and conflict.
When employees feel entitled due to tenure, they become toxic. Like the store manager who complained about not feeling "the love" despite regular recognition and paychecks, entitlement breeds resentment. This approach eventually corrupts the entire team, as others either emulate the bad behavior or leave feeling undervalued.
Leaders must recognize that choices have consequences. When people claim they "sacrificed family" for a job, they actually made their own decisions-enjoying status, nice houses, fancy cars, and vacations that came with working 80-hour weeks. You don't get to blame bosses or organizations in hindsight for your decisions. No one is owed anything but a paycheck for services rendered. As soon as we think we're entitled to more, we stop giving more to earn that paycheck!
Chapter 12
Owning Your Power and Committing to Growth
Leaders in the middle who feel powerless aren't true leaders-they're middle managers who've given away their power. The difference between middle management and leading from the middle is simple: power. Your power is completely yours to own or give away.
When a leader declares "I don't have the power to make decisions. They do. All I am is a highly paid sales rep," they lose their power as an effective leader. Not because of company decisions, but through their words and actions. They stop serving up and coaching down, instead blaming the company for their lack of influence.
Claiming power as leaders in the middle requires a serve up/coach down mindset. Owning that power means executing key tasks: understanding titles are irrelevant to power, following directions as if they were your own, and demanding accountability without excuses. Keeping power means sustaining this execution and continuously working to exceed expectations.
Every leader will face situations where they feel like a cog in a wheel. But we only become that cog when we act like one. Great companies don't want "yes people" who blindly follow-they want "how people" who ask questions to understand and then fully commit to execution.
Just as Warren Buffet reads 500 pages daily, Mark Cuban reads three hours per day, and Bill Gates reads fifty books yearly, leaders must commit to continuous improvement rather than settling for "good enough." Personal development requires both humility to recognize room for improvement and discipline to make time for growth.
Complacency is a mindset that destroys the will to improve-it's the enemy of serving up and coaching down. When leaders believe their people "already know their jobs," this contagious attitude spreads, causing poor morale and results. Contentment, however, is based on gratitude for current achievements while maintaining ambition for growth.
The challenge for every leader in the middle is clear: be your best version today and an even better one tomorrow. By mastering the art of serving up while coaching down, you'll transform your leadership position from the middle into the most powerful and influential place in your organization.
