Ignite! Newsletter—September 2009 Article
Why Aren’t Managers More Coach-like?
Considering all of the advantages of being more coach-like—self-reliance, enjoying your job more, and better performance—you would think that managers would be more open to using coaching skills with their direct reports. But the reality is that many managers do not coach their employees at the levels they could. There are three reasons according to Linda Miller, Global Liaison for Coaching at The Ken Blanchard Companies.
- They have competing priorities and don’t feel that they have the time to coach.
- They believe they are already acting in a coach-like manner.
- They aren’t sure that coaching their employees is necessarily in their best interest.
Competing Priorities
When managers are asked to add coaching skills to their repertoire, their initial sense is usually that it takes too much time. This may be true in the beginning, especially for working managers who face a wide variety of competing priorities on the job, including hitting their numbers, getting results, and managing their own personal tasks and responsibilities. Developing people—while important—is something for which they are not compensated. Compensation is normally attached to numbers or results, and developing people is not usually one of those results.
Still, organizations need managers to develop their people. If organizations want their people to grow and progress, they need to find ways to encourage managers to spend the extra time to connect and coach team members. And, while it takes time in the short term, coaching saves time in the long term because managers are having more productive, more effective, and more focused conversations.
Already Coaching
Most people don't understand what coaching is. If you ask 100 people, you get 100 different answers. That’s part of the reason why so many managers believe that they are being coach-like and why they are surprised that they are not getting different responses. For example, many people think of coaching like the athletic model, where a coach stands on the sidelines and yells.
In the Blanchard model, coaching means making the shift from telling people what to do to asking people for their ideas. If managers believe it is their responsibility to do all the thinking, or to be the only one who comes up with options, they won’t get the benefit of others’ ideas and solutions. But if managers believe it is their responsibility to draw out options from others they will benefit from the creative ideas that result when people are asked for their opinions rather than being told what to do.
Not in Their Best Interests
Making the shift from telling to asking is one of the hardest shifts that there is, according to Miller. As she explains, “For many managers, solving problems is part of where they get their value. So it's really hard for some mangers to shift from telling and solving to asking and drawing out.”
The result of managers only giving direction and solving problems is that people working for these types of managers don’t grow and develop as quickly as they could. Instead of gaining skills and moving on to other assignments within the organization, these people are held in place.
What is especially bad about this management style, according to Miller, is that the employee doesn't have a choice. “If the manager feels threatened at all, for any reason, that doesn't give the employee the choice to move forward. It also stymies the organization by keeping people at a restricted level rather than moving them toward self-reliance. The only person really being served in that case is the manager because the team member is still on the job. I also think this is one of the reasons why people leave organizations: there are no growth opportunities.”
To illustrate her point, Miller described her experience working with the manager of a retail chain. As Miller explains, “Susan has been with her company for 14 years and feels that she has gone as far as she can go in her present position. She loves the company but she is going to start looking somewhere else because she isn’t being considered for other positions inside the company. As a result, they are going to lose Susan. It's really shortsighted, and it doesn't serve anyone except Susan’s manager, who doesn’t have to be threatened by people who are developing and growing.”
Becoming More Coach-like
So how can organizations get started on changing the way they do business? Miller has the following three recommendations:
1. Change mindsets: Encourage managers to see coaching as a part of their job instead of a threat. Miller describes another leader she worked with in the financial arena a number of years ago. “Bill was known as a manager who developed people. He was so good at it that he knew exactly how much time it would take for him to develop the person until the person would get recognized by the company and promoted into a new position.” In Bill’s case, Miller explains, the good news is that he actually got excited about having this be his legacy. Instead of dreading the loss of people he had worked to develop, Bill considered it part of what made him a valuable leader.
2. Model coach-like behavior: Organizations can promote coach-like behaviors in frontline managers by encouraging senior leaders to be more coach-like. If senior leadership fully understands what coaching is and uses coaching as part of their management style, they can help actively develop the managers below them so that those managers can then coach the teams they are working with.
One of the common experiences of every Blanchard coaching engagement to date is that managers who are coached want to use coaching with others. This is a secondary gain beyond that of the leaders who are receiving the coaching. The people who are being coached take the same behaviors that they are experiencing, and use them with their teams. The team members are always incredibly appreciative. So, model it!
3. Provide incentives for managers to develop their people: Coaching impacts the bottom line of an organization by improving morale, efficiency, and productivity. In the same way that managers are tracked and evaluated on their ability to manage results, they should also be tracked, evaluated, and rewarded on their ability to develop people. Managers who develop people feed the leadership pipeline. Many companies know they are going to be short on leaders in three to five years. If so, anyone who can develop people that will feed into the succession pipeline is hugely valuable.
Making the Shift from Knowing to Doing
Looking over the current work environment, Miller believes that people have a strong sense of wanting to contribute. Coaching is a way for managers to help people feel that they are making a different kind of contribution and to have a different sense of ownership and responsibility for their work. While organizations have taken some steps in that direction, Miller believes that there is more that can be done. As she explains, “I think managers know that they need to be more collaborative and coach-like than in the past, but I don't know if they're making the shift yet. I think they are in the middle of that shift.”
Would you like to learn more about bringing coaching skills into your organization?
Then join us for a free webinar on September 9.
Essential Coaching Skills for Managers
September 9, 2009 (Event Complete: View On-Demand Webcast Below)
9:00–10:00 a.m. Pacific Time, 12:00–1:00 p.m. Eastern Time
5:00–6:00 p.m. UK Time, 4:00–5:00 p.m. GMT
Today's managers need to bring many skills to the day-to-day management of the people who report to them. One of those skills is coaching. It's through day-to-day coaching that you help your people monitor their progress and systematically move toward success. One of the common barriers to being more coach-like in your management style is the inability to shift your mindset from telling, advising, and solving to asking, drawing-out, and promoting self-discovery.
In this webinar, Linda Miller, Master Certified Coach and Global Liaison for Coaching at The Ken Blanchard Companies, will show you how to adopt a coaching mindset and use focused conversations to create an environment that results in individual growth, purposeful action, and sustained improvement.
You'll learn how to:
- Get into the coaching mindset
- Identify when coaching is the tool to use, and when it isn't
- Consistently use behaviors that build trust and confidence
- Apply a foolproof structure for action and results
By learning how to assess yourself on a directive versus supportive scale, you'll discover how to challenge management beliefs in a way that creates an action-based mindset for moving forward.
Don't miss this opportunity to develop your coaching skills—it is the best way to help accelerate others toward a higher level of performance.