The problem
Barry is a manager who is newly trained in coaching. Although he enjoyed the training, he rarely uses the coaching he has learnt. Instead, he sees it as a tool that will take up time and effort in an already pressured schedule rather than saving him time by helping him gain extra powers of delegation.
As a senior member of staff Barry is under a great deal of pressure to make things happen; fast. He finds it hard to resist offering solutions to his employees just to get the job done more quickly.
“In this organisation there is a long-standing habit of telling people what to do; and telling them off if they do it wrong,” he says. “That is what my teams expect to happen when they come to me as their manager.
“The hardest part for me of managing in a coaching style is to remember not to jump in with a solution when they ask me a question, but to get them to discover their own answers. When we are under time pressure, which is most of the time, it seems quicker simply to bark out the answer, and that is what the teams seem to want.”
The solution
I would point out to Barry that managing in a coaching style does not mean exploring every exchange. If someone runs into the room shouting “Fire!” you don’t stop to ask, “What do you think we should do about it?” just because you did a coaching course the previous week.
I would also reassure him that although there are times when a spin through the Grow or similar model is a worthwhile investment, at others people simply need a straight answer to a straight question.
I would help him to realise that all communication can be in a coaching style, even when giving an order or firing someone, because coaching is about engaging emotional intelligence; one’s own and other people’s.
People are treated with respect in a coaching culture, and leaders manage in a way that builds confidence and makes people feel safe, paradoxically so they can take more risks. I would share with Barry how an Asian manager, from a country and a company where directive management is the order of the day, recently told me that if he was able to remember nothing more than the following two questions, the coaching process took care of itself:
- “What outcome do you want from this?”
- “What have you done so far?”
These can be reduced even further in times of real pressure. The simple answer, “What do you think we should do?” to a crisis question will probably elicit all the information needed from the employee dealing with the crisis. Barry needs to develop his confidence that coaching should always be the tool of the manager, not the master; when in doubt, he should follow his intuition.
CAROL WILSON
Managing director, Performance Coach Training
While I agree that a coaching approach is not the ideal in every situation, I am wondering how Barry will recognise the right time to introduce a coaching style, particularly when he is under pressure “most of the time”.
Sometimes it’s difficult to change a habitual response, especially if it fits in with an organisation’s norms. But that makes it even more important for Barry to instigate a new response as his preferred behaviour. After all, a manager’s key role is to achieve results through other people.
In doing so, Barry, like other managers, will probably find that time pressures are gradually reduced, as people begin to accept more responsibility and learn to solve problems for themselves, rather than coming to him for a “quick fix”. He will then free up more of his own time to be proactive with his coaching conversations, rather than merely reacting to the time-sensitive questions.
One way to help Barry kick-start a coaching style is to decide in advance how he will deal with specific people. Initially he may give certain people less or more responsibility for finding solutions, or coach a specific person on an often asked question. In this way he can gradually increase the time that he coaches as opposed to time taken offering solutions.
It would also be useful for Barry to let people know in advance that he is changing his approach. If they arrive expecting him to adopt a coaching response, they are more likely to have possible solutions to their problems. Next time someone asks Barry a question, he must first ask himself: “How could a coaching approach help here?”
ANGELA DUNBAR
Course director, Clean Coaching
Volume 3, Issue 2