Coaching competencies for managers

Many managers I know admit they would have benefited from having a coach in their journey towards their current management position or even in maintaining and mastering it. Many of them regret not having had such resource earlier. 

However, asked about how do they pay attention or take care to offer coaching to the people in their team or even to other managers juniors to them, they display a range of behaviours from being uncertain about of whether they have the right competence of acting as a coach, to questioning the efficacy of their management if acting as a coach, up to believing they would lose their authority if acting as a coach to other colleagues or team members.

Managers usually have a broad understanding about which are these coaching competencies, but it is still difficult for them to be specific on how they would have to demonstrate them so that to be recognised as having a coaching management style.

Furthermore, a majority of them fear they would loose control in case of showing up with a coaching style instead of a more directive management style. And I see this fear being one of the most frequent coaching topics with my highly achieving clients. Hence the question:

How can managers use a coaching style without losing control over the team performance?

This is why I decided to write a post about how managers can demonstrate a coaching management style and thriving in their job.

1. Managers trust the ability and knowledge of their people. 

This belief allows them to see the true potential of their people, including the will of doing their best, the ability and will to learn and evolve, and the fact that their people already hold valuable solutions. With this approach, managers will see their team members or colleagues as being capable people, who can be treated as an equal partner, able - with little guidance - to act autonomously, not needing micromanagement but rather being connected to the bifìgger picture.

2. Managers communicate the bigger picture and offer their team members observations. 

Communicating the bigger picture whether in terms of organisational intentions or performance allow each team member to clarify, harmonise and connect their own perspective to the organisational intention and goals. Moreover, when managers communicate observations on how their team members or peers act they actually refrain from making suppositions or judgements which might be totally wrong, reflecting the limited prior experience of the respective managers or their inner beliefs and not the reality of their team members. However, giving back observations, allows team members to assess themselves and clarify the efficacy of their own approach with respect to their intention and their goals. Furthermore, being able to offer only observations lead to increased trust between the manager and their people, as well as to improved relationships, increased employee morale and loyalty.

3. Managers ask questions. 

It is true that managers always ask questions to find out the status of operations or the progress of projects or perceived risks or anything that might impede reaching the targets. However, these are not the kind of questions a coach asks.

In the organisational set-up, the main purpose of the coaching questions is to make you see what you might be missing, what you might be ignoring or what you might not be conscious about yet. Managers with a coaching hat will put such open questions to elicit new insights or understandings from their coached team members, allowing the latter to make new sense of the organisational situation in which they operate and supporting them to connect with a different intent and motivation to their organisational objectives.

How would you approach this situation? Who else might we want to include? Is there another way to look at this? Is this the only way to approach it? What made you already made a choice? What did you see out there? Is there something we need to be concerned about? What did you like most about the assignment? What would you do differently next time?

4. Managers listen fully and with attention. 

This means managers will listen beyond facts: will look at what else is present in any situation. Listening means also seeing: seeing how their coachee experiences a challenging situation, what beliefs are present without being noticed, what type of assumptions are present at the bases of their coachee’s actions, the mindset their coachee is operating from. 

They will also resist the temptation to give instant advice or answers, even if they know it. They give the individual time to express their opinions and will take time to make their coachee see themselves in the situation. They will treat their coachee as if they are the most important person, and will prioritise later phone calls, various alerts, and signing of important or urgent papers. When coaching is underway, the most important gift a Manager gives is their undivided attention and their time.

In doing so, the coached individual will feel validated, listened to, and will learn that developing other people is a value for the organisation and that it is legitimate to invest time in it. And will pay forward with ease, later, towards a more junior colleague.

5. Managers will leave egos out of the equation. 

Being right and winning always has no place in the repertoire of the coaching manager. They know their objective is not to impress staff with their knowledge, nor in making sure that everybody knows their decisive contribution. They draw satisfaction from seeing individuals grow their skills, from inspiring them to take successful action and succeed. When coaching is done well, learners believe they personally have discovered ideas and answers, hence, they may never acknowledge the manager's contribution. And that should be just fine with the coaching manager, too. 

6. Managers maintain a positive outlook over the situations and will use situations as learning experiences

Managers will make sure that focus and energy are maintained on the right action and put in the right direction. And will support their coachee see when they make choices contributing only to wasting their energy instead of moving towards the desired result. 

Coaching managers will model for their coachee empathy and openness, without loosing the sight of the organisational objectives. Will support their coachees in recognising and using their strengths and in accepting weaknesses without feeling threatened by them.

Coaching managers will use different situations as significant learning moments for their coachee for the latter to understand how their thinking process impedes their clear and focused action towards results or to see how certain life habits can threaten their success in the long term.

They will also teach coachees take calculated risks and will praise courage and innovation. They aren’t afraid to laugh at themselves or look foolish to help get an important point across. While helping others grow, they are always challenging themselves to do the same. They do not hesitate to say “I’m sorry” when they make mistakes. And take actions to correct their mistake.

They will also provide honest feedback about their coachee performance in a non-threatening manner, allowing their coachee to develop both confidence and know themselves and their limits.

7. Coaching managers will keep themselves and their coachees accountable

While making sure their coachee sees and understands the barriers ahead and the resources they need to deploy themselves and their team, the coaching managers will model accountability for their coachees. And will keep the latter accountable for the progress, for the quality of their performance, for the timeliness of their execution, for the accuracy of their estimate. It is in this way the coachee learns to see whatever might take their plan astray and be prepared for it in case that happens. The coachee learns that being accountable does not mean only saying “it is my responsibility for the error”, but also deploying all actions for correcting any error or variance.

The biggest obstacles for managers to let go their directive style and replace it with a coaching style are:

1. Pressure of time and fear of not being able to deliver
2. Fear of being seen vulnerable or weak
3. Fear of being seen making errors
4. Fear of losing authority
5. Fear of losing face
6. Fear of losing credibility

While both directive and coaching management styles are legitimate and useful, it is well demonstrated that the coaching one creates a ripple multiplying beneficial effect in any organisation. A manager who has been coached will tend to invest time, patience and energy in developing other managers or specialists around them. At their turn, the latter will continue the practice. A virtuous cycle of a coaching culture will start and perpetuate as long as the coaching style is kept as an organisational asset. 

A coaching management style and organisational culture leads to higher commitment, higher motivation, inspiration and sense of purpose among the receivers and their collaborators, and the existence of autonomous and confident leaders and professionals and of a higher level of trust.

• Reading about it, how do you assess your current management style: directive or coaching?
• How do you feel about this realisation?
• What prevents you from acting more as a coach to your team?
• What would you do differently from now on to act more as a coach to your team?

If you want to know more on how you can use a coaching style and remain in control of the performance of your team, choose your discovery session and let’s strategically build your success as a coaching manager.