The Leader as a Coach

Friends, associates and partners, my first article since the winter (for those of us down here) and the summer for those in the northern hemisphere. This hiatus was caused by time spent onboarding some new coachees, an increase in the training load and property conveyance. All good stuff to be busy with, but I have missed the time to be able to stop, breathe, reflect and put my thoughts down on paper.

This article is borne out of some July, August and September work with many young leaders. I’ve been helping them move from being the answers guy or girl, into more of a coach for their team who can develop talent and empower staff to lead problem solving efforts.

We all experience, or have experienced, that point in our careers when we moved from being paid for what you know, into being paid for delivering through others. The problem is, most of us approach this threshold unknowingly and thus fail to maximise our leadership and the team’s potential; We continue to drive the solution (and thus own the outcome) as opposed to building the team by driving them to find the solution (in which case the team owns the outcome).

I won’t be too specific with the recent examples which are front of mind, but you are probably reading this and “you know who you are”.? Examples include:

• A young manager who is already benefitting from changing the approach with his 2IC such that the planned new organisational structure will be more sustainable to him stepping back and letting his 2IC and the new leadership team run with the day-to-day operational decisional making.
• A team leader who is looking to step away from day-to-day decision making to give more time for long term team health and strategic thinking, but still insisting they are involved in quality checking and reviewing, rather than training the new leaders to be able to perform this task.
• An experienced manager who, whilst believing he had delegated the ownership of an improvement task to a subordinate, did not realise that his continued level of fascination with the scope had actually led the subordinate to believe they were just doing the work, rather than in charge of leading it.

To support this thinking, I’d also like to share a great HBR article that I re-listened to this month. Co-written by an authority on leadership and career development and by an ex-banker, now psychologist, it talks to the many aspects of ‘developing and empowering your people’. I have added below a summary of the article as it is a 30-minute listen. If you wish to invest that time, I have also added a link to the full text which you can either read (or listen to). It goes into more detail on the above and really builds on the approach of ‘asking and listening’, rather than ‘telling and selling’.

Executive Summary

In the face of rapid, disruptive change, companies are realizing that managers can’t be expected to have all the answers and that command-and-control leadership is no longer viable. As a result, many firms are moving toward a coaching model in which managers facilitate problem solving and encourage employees’ development by asking questions and offering support and guidance rather than giving orders and making judgments.

The authors explain the merits of different types of coaching—directive, nondirective, and situational—and note that sometimes no coaching at all is appropriate. They describe how managers can use the four-step GROW model to become more skilled at listening, questioning, and drawing insights out of the people they supervise. The article concludes with recommendations for making coaching an organizational capacity—effecting a cultural transformation by articulating why coaching is valuable for the firm as well as individuals, ensuring that leaders embrace and model it, building coaching capabilities throughout the ranks, and removing barriers to change.

Full article

https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-leader-as-coach

Please get in touch if you are currently dealing with this challenge, or if you know someone who is whom you would like to help. I’d love to hear of your own experiences with this so please also comment below and/or get in touch. I’d be only too happy to assist.

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