Manager as a Coach – Coaching Situations

 It was a cold foggy evening in Chandigarh on 31^st Dec, 1998. I was in office. I was served an official order from High court of a state at almost 6 pm. This High Court order gave us ( my company) directions to act in a particular manner. It meant that our Pre decided action intended in early hours of 1^st Jan 1999, based on another Superior Court Order, cannot be executed.

By this time, people had started leaving office, eagerly looking forward to a officially sponsored fun-filled evening. In fact I was also supposed to attend the same party with family. Wishing New Year to others, I also left for home.

At 7 pm reached home too. I had no option now but to read, interpret papers and then take a final call on going ahead. Acting on new order served, meant that we are in contempt of other court order, higher court. It was after good 2 hours of reading, say around 930 pm, I called my General Manager. It was a call of a life time for me. Over the next 2 hours I kept answering his questions. All open ended questions. He asked me initially on what needs to be done on 1^st Jan morning.  He did not share or indicate his agreement with my views, instead kept asking me a series of questions.

My family meanwhile left for party, while I was still on phone. It was around 1130 pm and I almost felt exasperated with my GM not being sensitive to need to validate my decision quickly. Finally he said that let us go ahead with what you consider as appropriate and we will face consequences, if any.

I kept the phone and called my officer at Shimla and asked him to go ahead with our original intended action, irrespective of High Court order.

I rushed to the party & enjoyed myself with family and friends.

On 7^th January, I met my GM in his office at Delhi. I pointedly (with a bit of humour) asked him about the long call on 31^st Dec as to why he took so long and asked me so many questions. In any case he finally agreed with my view. He could have agreed and we would have been free in few minutes to enjoy our respective evenings.

He smiled.

I realized later that he had used those 2 hours to coach me in that situation. All his questions made me think hard. His questions helped me share my thought process and helped me get few more insights. New insights helped me fine tune my action substantially.  And finally when I ended the call that night, I felt completely responsible & accountable for the decision and its consequences. So when decision went right, I was elated.

I am reminded of this incident almost 15 years back, as someone asked me to share a practical example of coaching. This to my mind is a perfect example of being coached in situation. In today’s world arguments of targets / timelines, stakeholder pressures are extended by managers to defend that there is not enough time or situations to coach people. This situation that I have narrated is an example of most inappropriate time, event and with both time and stakeholder pressures. Still someone felt I need to be coached.

The learning which is now validated many years later is that coaching situations can be sensed by Manager Coach only when the agenda is team member (Coachee). Whenever Manager overlooks a situation perfect for coaching, blaming time and stakeholder pressures, he is driving his own agenda. My own experience suggests that we can coach our team members as long as we think about them, their development and growth.

So next time when you are rushing in to provide answers and solutions to your team members, think hard. Think of them. It will be easy. Believe me.

Coaching in Action

Coaching intervention at various levels of organization would need to be tailored based on maturity & responsibility levels of staff (coachee) levels. There are enough and more situations that provide an opportunity to coach our team members. When applied, coaching is:

• Holding a conversation and engaging in dialogue. Coaching is not about telling the staff member what to do. Rather it is about encouraging them to reflect and learn. As adult learners, we generally like to create our own solutions rather than be told what to do.

• Collaborative. Coaching is about brainstorming issues together. Share your experiences of similar situations. Jointly identify possible solutions to problems.

• Focussed on achieving outcomes. You want the staff member to leave your meeting with a course of action to take. Look for specificity and certainty.

• Present and future-oriented, with consideration given to the past where appropriate. When we dwell on the past and a problem, the problem often ‘gets bigger’. If we focus on the way forward and a solution to the problem, the problem becomes more manageable and we have the energy to deal with it.

• Challenging to the individual, in a positive way. Ask open-ended questions of the staff member to encourage them to reflect on the issue or situation and think through the possible options. This is your opportunity to enable the staff member to see the situation differently, to embrace a different way of dealing with it, and potentially to change their approach or behaviour.

• Focused on the staff member. Your aim is to focus on their needs and learning requirements as well as facilitating ways for them to find the answers (rather than you providing the answers or directing). You want the staff member to take ownership of the problem and to take action to solve it. From this they learn and are more likely to develop capacity to find solutions to problems independently.

• Dependent on high quality feedback. Positive feedback builds self-confidence and makes people want to take more action. Review how implementation of the action plan went. Identify learning’s. Celebrate successes.

• Encouraging the individuals to achieve. We learn better when we discover for ourselves. Enable your staff to ‘extend’ themselves and remember ‘blame’ has no place in coaching!

To be effective, coaching depends on a positive relationship between the Manager-Coach and staff member being coached. The relationship needs to be based on trust - where the staff member knows he/she can come to you and brainstorm issues in a supportive environment and leave with encouragement and your support to take action on a chosen solution.

Do your team members feel this? Much before a manager attempts to coach , he needs to think himself, new. Rewire himself. Old wiring is virtually impossible to be deleted or erased. Begin.

Transforming Manager as Manager Coach

I am quite confident that by the time I finish writing this blog article, there will be new insights for myself and perhaps some readers too. These insights well could well confirm my doubt or perhaps give me some hope and answer on what it takes to transform managers of today to be manager -coaches. I believe it is awareness and understanding.

There seems to be an inherent contradiction between these two. Managing and coaching are two different activities. One is about directing & other has to be about teaching. Managing is all about telling, directing, authority, immediate needs, and a specific outcome. Coaching involves exploring, facilitating, partnership, long-term improvement, and many possible outcomes.

The manager focuses primarily on strategy and managing the flow of the work. He decides who does what.  He allocates the work based on role & competencies. Manager goes about providing resources and ensuring outcomes.

 How many times have we heard a Manager almost shouting on phone to his sales guy on 25^th of the month “I don’t know how you do it, but I want you to achieve your target by end of month” . The poor sales guy has no idea how to do it but is shut up by his manager who is not willing to understand that probably this person needs new ideas to get the numbers.

In my experience with Managers at senior level, I have often heard that coaching team members is time intensive while we grapple with issues and challenges that have to be resolved on yesterday basis. The Tyranny of Urgent. This explains their prescriptive style of management. Managers start believing that there job is to provide answer. In all situations & all the time. I am reminded of a senior manager who even shared that as soon as his subordinate starts speaking, he is already giving him back instructions on what is to be done. To be fair, he wanted to change this. I wish everyone sees this as a problem first for themselves. This problem of not coaching the team members in creates bigger and long term problems for Managers

A Manager Coach normally coaches his team members in situations. It is an approach where he chooses the situation based on its criticality and developmental opportunity for his team members in that aspect. He would discuss & encourage the role holders to think differently and plan action, but they are then free to implement those (using their skills and knowledge) as they see fit. During the situation, he offers encouragement, support, and suggestions. And he suggests on how to react to many possible outcomes depending on what the other team does.

In business, we have to be both coaches and managers. To lead effectively, we need to know when to wear which hat.Managing involves a more directive, task-oriented style that should only be used under certain conditions. It usually produces the best results in a crisis situation, when someone has never done the task before, or when they have little or no confidence in their ability to get it done.

Coaching works best for developmental purposes, especially when you have a team of competent professionals already performing at a reasonably high level. Once you define winning for your organization, team members may need your guidance and support. But in most cases they shouldn’t need direction.

In today’s world though with pressures on goals & outcomes most of the managers tend to stay in the Manager mode over a prolonged period, which almost becomes their style of management. Prescriptive. Directing.Task Oriented. This impacts the team members who just seem to understand their role as just executing the directions of Manager. If and when sparingly they adopt coaching style to lead & develop team members there tends to be certain degree of surprise for team. They almost don’t believe him. Perhaps it is too late for them to react, as they are already hardwired with predominant way of Manager to direct and be prescriptive.

To be a Manager- Coach, knowing when to direct, delegate or develop is critical to managerial effectiveness. Determining which style is appropriate based on the task at hand rather than the individual. Often, people will need a combination of styles depending on the complexity of the task assigned, their experience with the task, and the competency levels required to complete it with excellence. This critical understanding is crucial when we teach our Managers to be coaches. Initially they tend to believe it will slow down their capability to achieve outcomes. They have to be explained that combination of these two styles will work better overall. They must be asked to review and consider situations ( and not individuals) when they can adopt a coaching style.

Here are some of my thoughts for managers who are keen to consider:

Direct when the employee has low to moderate competence with the skills and abilities needed to complete the task. Be sure to define excellence (what, how and when), and provide specifics (templates, examples, etc.) so the person can achieve the desired outcome. Direct when a person:

·         Is new in a role

·         Is new to the company

·         Is new to the client/customer

·         Has new job responsibilities or tasks

·         Has new ways of working

Delegate when the employee has moderate to high competence. Again, define excellence so both sides have clarity around the goal. Then let the employee determine the approach they will take and keep you informed as to their progress. Ask questions and provide direction and specific support when necessary. Delegate when a person has:

·         Some experience in the role

·         A track record or competence

·         A sensitive task or client

·         Confidence in their abilities

·         Similar ways of working

Develop when the employee has high competence and high commitment to the task. Then define excellence and get out of the way! Give plenty of recognition for successful completion of the task. Then determine the person’s next challenge. Develop when the person:

·         Has extensive experience

·         Has demonstrated evidence of competency

·         Has experienced similar clients or task sensitivities

·         Is growing new competences

·         Is trying new approaches

Sometimes we have to coach and sometimes we have to manage. The more we coach, the less we will manage. We grow people. We grow ourselves.