By now you’ve heard people talking about executive coaching, business coaching and life coaching and you might have seen coaching appear in the workplace in various forms. Perhaps you’ve been wondering if these popular new skills would make a difference to your impact as a manager. Is coaching simply the latest management fad that will come and go, or will these newly articulated skills form a foundation for all managers? Is it a warm and fuzzy focus for the very people-oriented managers, or is it a practical tool for working leaders who are trying to get results? In this article, I’ll describe the symptoms that indicate coaching for managers and the key differences between traditional management methods and coaching methods.
From my experience over the past few years working with managers and leaders, I’ve compiled a list of common management issues that coaching skills and attitudes can address. Do you recognize any of these symptoms?
Common Management Issues Addressed by Coaching
Trust and Support:
- You want to understand and support your employees but they won’t open up to you.
- You usually find out about your staff’s personal problems when their work quality starts to suffer or when someone else tells you.
Motivation:
- Your team members wake up at the end of the day. They have more energy for after work activities than for their workplace role.
- Your staff members are running on autopilot. They are not very engaged in their work and consequently not very creative or inspired.
- Some employees spend time playing politics, or on other distractions, instead of getting the job done.
Empowerment:
- You feel stressed when you delegate work because you cannot be sure how well your staff will complete it.
- You want to raise the standards of your team’s work but you don’t want to control everything.
- You want to challenge your staff to produce better results but you’re worried that if you push them too much they’ll cause other problems, or quit.
Development:
- You think certain team members have the potential to do more than they do.
- You’re frustrated that staff members don’t learn as fast as you’d like. You secretly wonder if they are stupid.
- Your employees seem to make the same mistakes over and over again, despite your corrections.
In many ways coaching skills are simply advanced people management skills. Managers have been addressing the problems listed above for decades with varying degrees of success. However there is a big difference between traditional management methods and coaching.
Key Differences Between Traditional Management Methods and Coaching
- Coaching managers match the job to the person rather than changing the person to match the job.
- Coaching managers create safe opportunities for learning rather than controlling by fear or consequences.
- Coaching managers develop understanding for their people’s problems rather than judging them.
- Coaching managers collaborate with their people rather than directing them.
- Coaching managers set boundaries and raise standards rather than tolerating poor performance.
- Coaching managers help employees find and use their natural motivations rather than imposing their own.
As you can see, these differences are largely a matter of the manager’s attitude and approach. And they are easier said than done. To implement the change, coaching managers borrow a whole range of skills and tools from management theory, psychology, counselling, sports coaching, and organizational behaviour to philosophy. Thankfully, there are many skills, models and concepts that support managers to make the change and new tools are being developed all the time. What differences would you see in your team if you were to fully implement coaching management strategies?
From my own leadership experiences and from those of my clients, I’ve noticed significant improvements in levels of trust, support, motivation, empowerment and development when coaching skills are used by managers. In addition, I’ve noticed coaching managers tend to enjoy the experience of coaching, reduce their own levels of stress and find spin-off benefits in their personal relationships as they master the coaching approach. Of course there are also challenges and pitfalls to avoid. I’ll be writing more about my client’s experiences with coaching in coming issues of the Coaching for Managers newsletter.