Building Better Bosses
The following article was featured as in the News-Gazette Central Illinois Business Magazine June/ July 2023 issue as one part of a series on female-owned businesses. It was written by Dave Hinton.
People in lofty positions may have skills to operate a company, but leading human beings can be like herding cats.
That’s one area where Annie Monyok, owner of Monyok Leadership, can help. CEOs, executive directors, shop or shift supervisors “call and say, ‘I feel a little crazy right now. I don’t know what to do with this employee,’” Monyok said. “That’s where the coaching comes into place.”
Monyok-led training is designed to help people solve some of the problems themselves so they feel more confident in their abilities. “It’s designed to give people hard skills for leading in those roles,” Monyok said.
The most common thing Monyok has leaders work through is interpersonal issues with an employee, providing a strategy on how to lead an employee or rebuild a relationship.
One thing to realize: Every employee is different, Monyok said. Some people need a lot of pressure to get things done; others need a lot of space. And then there are others who are somewhere in between.
The workplace dynamic can be a war zone of the generations. Those of the Generation Z (born in the late 1990s to the early 2010s) are not necessarily more difficult to work with, but they tend to be more vocal about what they need to be comfortable, Monyok said.
The Baby Boomer generation, which is starting to retire, meanwhile is more observant of the workplace hierarchy, and they might be less inclined to tell their higher-ups, “This is what I need to be successful.” “It’s not necessarily wrong; it’s just different, Monyok said. “I think it’s important for people to ask for what they need. It’s learning to understand what motivates Gen Z differently than the boomer generation.”
Monyok, a Catlin native who continues to live in that community, coaches/teaches clients in small business, but primarily works with manufacturing, non-profits and municipalities. Coaching, consulting and training are her bailiwick. Among her offerings is a Leadership Out Loud class for first-time leaders who want to learn how to set expectations and keep people accountable.
“I try to focus on the client and their organizational need,” she said. Monyok’s background included working for an automotive manufacturer in Danville for 12 years before she branched out on her own. “I lived in this (human resources) realm and spent a lot of time supporting these types of endeavors,” Monyok said. “Somewhere along the way I came across the tools for coaching leaders,” and went to school for that.
She realized, “I can do this as a job” and built her client base while working at her other job. “I didn’t set out to be a consultant,” Monyok said. “That happened along the way.”