How First-Time Managers Can Embrace Coaching

Leadership

May 23

Episode 403 | Author: Emilie Aries

So many first-time managers I work with are used to being the star player, not the coach.

They were the highest-performing sales associate, so now they're tasked with leading the sales team. They were the most organized project manager, so now they're in charge of leading all the project managers. Or perhaps they excelled in the lab as an analyst, so now they're running their own lab.

Many of these high performers find themselves promoted into the role because they excelled at a totally different individual contributor role. And they're thrown into the deep end with no training on how to navigate this massive shift.

When you become the boss of others, you're no longer leaning on your tactical mastery of the work at hand. Your job now centers on cultivating mastery in others.

The modern manager is a coach

As one of my favorite all-time leadership scholars, Herminia Ibarra, put it in a recent article in the Harvard Business Review:

Twenty-first-century managers simply don’t (and can’t!) have all the right answers. To cope with this new reality, companies are moving away from traditional command-and-control practices and toward something very different: a model in which managers give support and guidance rather than instructions, and employees learn how to adapt to constantly changing environments in ways that unleash fresh energy, innovation, and commitment.
The role of the manager, in short, is becoming that of a coach.

Managers today must embrace their role as coach. You're no longer the star player, but instead are on the sidelines, in a way, tasked with unleashing the full potential of their teammates on the field.

If you were to pull aside a star athlete who seemed to be having a bad day, how would you coach them? Would you start telling them what to do that they're not doing right? Would you explain that the end zone is that way? Or that the goal is to throw the basketball through the hoop? I truly hope not, no! You'd start by asking questions to help diagnose the problem, and enlist the athlete in the process of solving it.

As Ibarra put it in HBR: "An effective manager-as-coach asks questions instead of providing answers, supports employees instead of judging them, and facilitates their development instead of dictating what has to be done."

How to practice leading by coaching

So what does that look like in your everyday conversations as a manager?

I've found the GROW model, put forth by Sir John Whitmore, to be a helpful framework for adopting coaching as part of your leadership practice.

GROW stand for Goals, Reality, Options, and Way Forward, and it can be handy little acronym to refer to when having coaching conversations with a member of your team.

I think of GROW as a guide for asking powerful questions.

GOALS: Help them clarify their goals.

"What is it that you want, really?"

"If you could wave a magic wand and have everything turn out perfectly, what would that look like?"

"What is the best case scenario you're hoping for with this?"

These are the kinds of open-ended questions to ground your team member in purpose and direction. A lack of clarity is often at the root of many workplace challenges and performance issues, so start by creating space for others to become clear on their ultimate goals.

REALITY: Identify current realities

"Where are things working already?"

"What barriers are in your way right now?"

"Who else can you turn to for support on this?"

When you're feeling stuck at work, it's easy to default to catastrophic thinking, as though nothing is working and you're never good at anything like this and there's no hope for getting through it.

A manager-coach can ask questions focused on assessing the reality of the situation to help yank people out of such binary thinking. Be their reality check. Help them take stock of what they're working with and what resources may be available for helping them navigate their challenge.

OPTIONS: Expand their purview

"How else might you approach this?"

"Are those really your only two options?"

"Have you considered trying X instead?"

This is the part of coaching I personally love the most: helping people expand their purview and broaden their approach. Essentially, this is a little brainstorm you're leading. Just be sure you're not the only one sharing ideas. You want to ask expansive questions to draw out ideas from your team member, even if you feel like you already have the "right" answers in mind.

Side note: for any fellow parents who ascribe to the philosophy of "emotion coaching," first written about by John Gottman in How to Raise an Emotionally Intelligent Child, which has in some ways evolved into what's now known as "gentle parenting," this is a big part of that approach! It's not our job to tell them the answers, it's our job to enlist our kids - and our colleagues, for that matter! - in the ideation process in order to grow the problem-solving skills of everyone involved.

WAY FORWARD: Establish an action plan

"What is the first step you're going to take to move forward?"

"If you had to choose between these two paths right now, which would it be?"

"When would it be most helpful to check back in with me on this?"

This is the time to help your colleague by forcing decision. In contrast to the open-ended, expansive brainstorm you just had to develop more options, you want to end a coaching conversation with a concrete set of next steps.

That's why I alway reserve at least 5 to 10 minutes at the end of every one of my coaching calls to literally document next steps. I'll ask the person I'm working with to walk me through what they feel are their next steps, based on everything we'd already discussed, while I write them all down. I synthesize and read back to them what I heard, and then help them remember whatever else came up that they might have forgotten about.

I follow up after the conversation with the list of action steps in writing, too. That alone has proven to be, in my experience, a powerful motivator to get people on track and moving swiftly in the right direction.

Ask questions and listen actively

I recently had the pleasure of going through an immersive training program offered by Lifebound on Inclusive Coaching and was reminded of what a gift coaching can be. When you give people the gift of your undivided attention and care in the form of asking powerful questions, listening actively, and then goi ng even deeper with more questions to help them move forward in achieving their goals, it's such a rare act of kindness in this world.

All managers should embrace the responsibility that comes with the power of being anyone else's boss and practice being a manager coach.

If you put any of these strategies into practice for you....I want to hear about it!

And if you want more support to become the best manager you can be, check out Level Up, our 6 month leadership and management accelerator for aspiring and first time women managers.