Policeman or Coach. Which are you?

In the past couple of days, 2 pieces of writing caught my attention. The first is by a dear friend, Paresh Baghel, on the series ‘13 Reasons Why’. His article links the series to some hard-coded data and inferences thereby. Very interesting read.

The other article, ‘Silicon Valley has idolized Steve Jobs for decades—and it’s finally paying the price’, is by Krister Ungerboeck, CEO of Courageous Growth. This is the first, very simple, yet effective articulation I have read about Jobs’ style of leadership being flawed.

Both articles, though unrelated on the face of it, have a very strong underlying subject – coaching. One may argue that Hannah Baker’s case was a mix of situations that drove her to commit the unthinkable. How I see it is as breakdown of the coaching part of parenting. Make no mistake, her parents loved her and were concerned about her; she was their princess. However, from what I saw in the series, they did not do one important thing right – take interest in her life. They were overburdened with the deteriorating financial condition of the family and rising competition from Walplex, and thereby declining business in their pharmacy business. They fulfilled her needs but her greatest unfulfilled need was someone to open her heart out to. Can parents fill this space? May be not but they can sure find a solution – a friend that they can approach to help her emerge from the ‘spot’.

In case of Jobs, I have always maintained that he has done more harm in organisational dynamics than good. People have idolised him for who he was. They have ‘adopted’ his style of working and made it their own. What they couldn’t adopt, what they couldn’t make their own was Jobs’ brilliant mind and foresight. The real reason why Jobs was successful in creating a company like Apple is because he had a mind like no one else. This made his repulsive behaviour towards staff just something that could be overlooked. The managers today who adopt the Jobs style of management do not have half the brilliance. What they end up doing is create an extremely unhappy and gloomy work environment.

In this fast-changing world, the only way forward for all managers and leaders is to take up active coaching.

Coaching should not be confused or mixed up with parenting. There are shades of overlap but they are not the same. Parenting has one aspect that coaching completely lacks. This aspect is of fear of loss. Parents are always fearful of the loss of the child. Coaches are not and they shouldn’t be. Coaches should emotionally invest in their teams but not be emotional about them. No team member would stay forever and coaches should not want that either. For the team to continue to perform better, old talent needs to make way for new talent, and coaches have an important role to play in that.

A coach thinks of development and not result. A manager thinks about result and hopes development is a by-product. The coach knows that when individuals are given room and are trained to develop, results will follow. It may take time but results will definitely follow. If a coach starts thinking about results, he ceases to be a coach and the future of the team becomes uncertain. To meet targets, therefore, coaches must decide the training path and ensure that the development happens in time for results to follow.

Knowing every team member as individuals is critical for a coach. Canned development programmes fail to deliver results. This is precisely the reason why the Learning and Development team only does what the former part of their name is. L&D cannot influence development. Development is very personal and has to be the responsibility of the superior. Every team member is unique and the coach must know each member inside out – what makes them click, what distracts them, when are they the best, what causes gaps in performance, etc. This is exactly what a sports coach does and there is no reason why corporate world as to be different.

The coach needs to be a friend. When Gary Kirsten became the coach of the world cup winning Indian cricket team, one of the first advises that the legend Sachin Tendulkar gave him was to be a friend to every member of the Indian team. In offices where bosses are incommunicative, unapproachable and cold, the staff will always remain demotivated and, in most cases, will underperform. When the boss is warm, approachable and takes interest in the team’s development, the team not only feels motivated but gives it more than 100%. Knowing the team member as a person is very important. Do not get personal but know the person.

Coaches need to set targets and not necessarily define how to achieve those. I had the good fortune of a small meeting with the ‘Wall’, Rahul Dravid. He is in a coaching role now and the under 19 India cricket team is already benefitting from his coaching. In the meeting he said that coaches were getting too technical about cricket. Dravid’s effort are towards making players more effective. He tells them what is to be done and leaves it for them to discover how it needs to be done. “Play a cover drive between these 2 cones”, that’s his instruction. Post that, only if something goes terribly wrong in technique, he corrects it. Many managers don’t allow their team members to take breaks or go out on the break for tea/coffee. You aren’t a policeman, you are a manager. Stop telling people what not to do. Tell them what are their targets/deliverables and leave it to them to achieve the same. What they do en route achieving the target is none of your concerns.

Create a welcoming atmosphere at work. Let people enjoy work. Don’t limit them by setting rules that do not have a direct impact on performance. Let them choose how they work. If they don’t achieve the goal, take them to task but don’t define limits of behaviour. They are mature enough to know what is not welcome and what is.

Bosses are on their way out. The corporate world needs coaches. Be a coach and change lives – yours and theirs!