Coaching for Leaders and Managers: What is the Benefit and How do I get Started?
Why is coaching so important for leaders and managers?
Being a leader or manager is a rewarding but challenging role, and one that many don’t receive specific training for, or any real ongoing support. For such an important role, most leaders and managers are promoted for their technical and professional skills and experience, and very rarely people management skills or experience.
And it is an important role, with studies regularly telling us the impact of line managers on their team, like this one by Gallup, where 65% of respondents said getting rid of their boss would make them happier than a salary increase.
Even before the pandemic, the world of work was changing. Manager and leaders have to deal with multiple challenges, navigating an uncertain landscape where change is now a constant. Advances in technology are radically changing how we work, and will take us into a future that is increasingly difficult to plan for. Staff demographics are also changing with people wanting and expecting more from their work. At the same time demands have increased, demands to deliver more, often with less resources and less time.
The pandemic has accelerated that change, and there is not an organisation that I am working with now who is not going through significant change (and often a series of change initiatives). Managers and leaders find themselves trying to navigate a changing and transitioning workplace, often with managers thrown in at the deep end and learning on their feet how to manage remote and blended hybrid teams, and all the potential challenges that can bring.
So, how do we know coaching makes such a difference?
I’ve been supporting leaders and manager’s development for over 25 years, and facilitating coaching skills training since 2007. As well as providing 1-1 leadership coaching, I’ve supported well over 1000 managers and leaders to go through coaching training programmes.
When I started delivering coaching programmes in 2007, coaching was still relatively new and we therefore invested a lot of time and energy into evaluating not only our approach but the impact of coaching for those on the coaching skills programmes, their teams and the organisation. I went on to build on this in my research based MSc, which was focused on coaching in organisations and the leader as coach.
What did we find?
We found that managers wanted a coaching approach that could cover a range of situations. They didn’t want to become formal coaches. They wanted the skills, techniques and frameworks that would help them have conversations in everyday situations like this:
when a member of staff came to them with a problem
when they wanted to develop the skills of their team members
when they were having performance management conversations, either formally scheduled as part of the organisational performance management process, or when something cropped up and a conversation was needed
when they felt a staff member (or members) was disengaging and not contributing to meetings, or coming up with ideas
when staff used challenging behaviour, to them, other members of the team or their customers or clients
when they had to help their team work through change, transition and uncertainty or face difficult news
when they and the team were facing something new, or really challenging, and as a manager or leader, they didn’t have the answer
when they had to have a difficult conversation, those conversations that are very often put off because they are ‘too hard’
And they wanted it to be quick and easy. They didn’t want a one hour coaching conversation, they wanted to be able to have shorter but impactful conversations, named memorably by one of our managers as ‘corridor conversations’.
What is a coaching approach?
The leader or manager as coach guides and facilitates, asks questions and supports and encourages staff, rather than directing, telling and dictating.
It’s a move away from the traditional ‘command and control’, with the leader or manager seen as the expert, the person in charge with all the answers, directing their team, instructing and telling them what to do. Put simply, it is the leader or manager holding back, asking more questions, listening more and helping the member of their team come up with and implement their own ideas and solutions.
It seems simple when you see it written down but is often very challenging for managers and leaders to implement and for many is a major shift in both their mindset and behaviour.
The culture of the organisation impacts on this as well. If the style of the organisation is command and control it can be very hard to move away from that. And let’s face it, even if most organisations claim to have a facilitative, open door, open leadership and management culture, and regard the idea of ‘command and control’ management outdated and not the approach in their organisation, that’s not what is seen in practice. In my experience, too many organisations are still stuck in command and control, blame and micro-management cultures, and it is very difficult to shift.
What’s the benefit of adopting a coaching approach?
Now coaching training for managers has entered the mainstream and there is a wealth of research evidencing the benefits. Coaching skills equip managers with the tools to facilitate employee development, improve performance, enhance engagement, communicate effectively, and support their team through change.
As a manager, adopting a coaching style of leadership, will help you:
Improve Employee Performance: Coaching focuses on developing individual strengths and addressing areas for improvement. By providing personalised guidance and support, you can help your team members enhance their skills, overcome challenges, and perform at their best.
Increase Employee Engagement: Coaching-style leadership empowers employees to take ownership of their work and development. By involving them in goal-setting, decision-making, and problem-solving, you can increase their sense of ownership, engagement, and commitment to the team’s success.
Strengthen Relationships: Coaching builds strong relationships based on mutual respect, trust, and support. By demonstrating genuine care for your team members’ growth and well-being, you can strengthen your relationships with them, leading to higher levels of collaboration, loyalty, and job satisfaction.
Better Conflict Resolution: Coaching equips you with the skills to navigate issues, conflicts and disagreements effectively. By fostering open communication and facilitating constructive dialogue, you can address challenges and conflicts early on, prevent escalation, and maintain a positive work environment.
Enhance Your Effectiveness as a Leadership: Coaching enhances your leadership effectiveness by focusing on developing others. By empowering your team members to take on new challenges, make decisions, and contribute their ideas, you can leverage their talents and expertise to achieve shared goals and objectives.
Think you are doing all of this already?
We have now delivered coaching skills programme to a lot of managers and leaders. The same experiences, barriers and learning come up time and time again. And time and time again, many participants at the beginning of our courses overrate their abilities in coaching communication skills. For example, just today, as part of a coaching programme assessment, I listened to a recording of a short coaching conversation, where the person commented in their reflection on their good use of open questions – each question listed was actually closed.
It’s hard to rate and evaluate soft skills such as listening, giving feedback, asking open questions, the skills that are at the heart of coaching. We often find that managers take time to understand the nuances involved in coaching skills and behaviour and often overrate their own natural abilities. This is backed up by a recent large study of 3,761 leaders, where 24% of the leaders overrated their skills. Interestingly, those who underrated their skills were above average in their overall coaching effectiveness, whilst those who had overrated themselves were significantly below average.
Maybe you think you are already very facilitative.
Take a look at these statements and see which ones you use most regularly. If in doubt, ask your team for some feedback.
Coaching requires you to really hone your communication skills. Telling someone to listen more and ask more open questions seems really simple, but actually for most people it is incredibly difficult. We’re almost programmed to jump in and offer advice, we’ve got so much going on that it’s difficult to clear our heads to listen, we sympathise rather than empathise, and we ask closed questions without even realising it.
Coaching skills take practice, reflection and time to embed – which is why we don’t tend to deliver 1 day or half day courses.
But once you have started to adopt those skills, conversations and interactions become very different, with hugely more productive outcomes.
What’s the benefit for me as a manager or leader?
In a large anonymous evaluation exercise we carried out, 100% of those who responded said that they would recommend our coaching skills training to colleagues. That’s a phenomenal response. So the next question is why, why would they recommend coaching skills?
Coaching works.
Here’s a taste of feedback from managers and leaders who have attended coach training.
One of the biggest barriers to leaders and managers adopting a coaching approach is their mindset. They are trapped in this vision of managers and leaders as the person who has to have all the answers, who has to be able to sort everything out and who should know the best approach in every situation. That’s an exhausting, stressful and impossible task, especially in our current transitioning world of work.
Once managers and leaders were able to let go of this, they described coaching as “freeing” and a relief to realise that they don’t need to direct staff all the time or need to know all the answers. They realised that, in fact, coaching helped their staff to come up with even better ideas, solutions and suggestions – and that, in itself, helped build engagement, morale and motivation, the things they had been trying to encourage but often with little success.
Just imagine if you were able to let go of all that self-generated responsibility, what the impact would be?
How do I become a leader or manager who uses a coaching approach?
Here’s my tips on getting started:
Build relationships with your team.
Relationships are at the heart of coaching. Take an interest in your team them as individual people, be authentic in your actions and approach, and focus on developing trust. This is especially important if you are managing a remote or hybrid team. It is absolutely possible to build good relationships over Team, Zoom etc, but it takes effort, time, and a real focus on this as an explicit goal.
Hold back.
This is difficult, I know, but try not to jump in all the time. As a manager and leader it is not your responsibility to do all the work, have all the answers or direct all the work. Your responsibility is to empower and enable your team to perform to the best of their ability. That means developing their skills, so hold back and ask what they think, or what they have tried, before offering your suggestions and advice.
Ask questions.
Ask open questions – they don’t have to be powerful, or quantum, terms you often hear in coaching. Instead of telling or directing, try asking a question instead. Even better if it begins with what or how. It might feel like it is taking time that you don’t have, but even a couple of questions can chance the tone and outcome of a conversation, and help a team member feel engaged and involved.
Listen.
You are not as good a listener as you think you are. Sorry, that might sound harsh, but it is very likely to be true (there is always the odd outlier!). Focus on listening to understand, rather than just waiting for your time to speak. Make eye contact, encourage using non-verbals and use summarising to make sure that the person feels heard and understood. Look out for what is not said as well, that can be really important.
Focus on what is going well and build on it.
Just doing this can make a major difference to relationships, trust, commitment and performance. Give feedback about what is going well. Have conversations about how individuals and the team can do more of that, or build on that. Too often we only think of feedback in negative terms, but positive feedback can transform engagement and performance.
What’s your first step to taking a coaching approach?
Coaching is all about small steps, leading to big changes. Have a think about your situation, and where you would most benefit. Build your self-awareness, think about your usual approach and the impact that it has.
Then identify one small step or change that you could put in place. Don’t try to do too much at once. My suggestion – in the next conversation with your team, try holding back before you give a suggestion, idea or advice and ask ‘What do you think?’. Then watch the magic of coaching unfurl in front of your eyes!
If you are interested in learning more about coaching skills for leaders and managers, get in touch, we run a range of programmes to suit organisational needs.
By the way, coaching is about communication. So, it doesn’t just work in work! Try some of these techniques at home and with family, and you will see the same impact there!!