manager as coach ~ time to rethink

It’s a nice idea – managers who consistently coach their teams day in and day out; ever ready with a lovely open question and endlessly patient, managing never to leap in and tell their team member what to do.

We know that individuals tend to leave companies because of their manager rather than because of the company itself – so it makes sense to have these super managers coaching away and helping to retain your organizational talent.

And yet, strangely enough, we often hear from companies who have spent a lot of time and money training their managers as coaches only to find out that there is no measurable effect despite a large financial investment.

Many of these companies are getting the feedback that their staff does not actually feel they are being coached. Their experience of being within that manager’s team has not noticeably improved.

In fact, some of these organizations have told us that their managers’ 360 results have actually diminished as a result of their coach training – they are perceived as being weaker; finding it more difficult to make decisions and lacking leadership …

So, should we all stop running and delivering “Manager as Coach” type programmes then? Yes. I would say so.

Why “Manager as Coach” programmes can cause problems:

Having done a fair bit of trouble shooting with companies on this topic, here are the top reasons why Manager as Coach Programmes seem not to deliver value:

1. Lack of measurement:
2. Lack of proper funding:
3. Lack of real strategic purpose:
4. Lack of workplace application and support:
5. Lack of “walking the talk”:

1. Lack of measurement:
Most programmes are launched as a “nice to have” or success is measured by how many people go through the training. This lack of strategic success criteria means that even if the programme is going well, there is little if any “proof” of this and the funding for the programme will therefore cease as soon as a financial squeeze is felt.

2. Lack of proper funding:
The majority of companies (largely probably because of the lack of numbers 1 and 3) try to do this work on a minimal budget. The main fall out of this is that the managers do not have sufficient skills for the challenging moments – they then end up reverting to telling because they do not have sufficient skill as a coach.

3. Lack of real strategic purpose:
In those companies where the programme is not appearing to deliver, the thinking behind tends not to have included any kind of strategic purpose – or at least none that the participants and/or business sponsor can easily see.

4. Lack of workplace application and support:
Courses tend to be very short and lack sufficient workplace application and also they tend to lack the ongoing support required to put this new skill to work. However intensive a programme is, when the manager goes back to work on Monday morning they will be faced with having to put the new skills to the test in a pressured environment. They will almost certainly revert to their usual patterns of behaviour very quickly.

The funding rarely, if ever, extends to ongoing support and development as a coach so that managers start to feel they are out of touch with the skills and give up.

The lack of workplace application may mean that managers attempt to coach at inappropriate moments – for example when a team is in an emergency situation and requires strong decisions and leadership. A manager who always asks open questions will soon be assumed by their team not to know any answers!

5. Lack of “walking the talk”:
Most short coaching skills training programmes focus on the skills of coaching - “doing coaching”. The effect is that managers come back with new “soft skills” that appear not to work – the manager is perceived as not walking the talk of their new approach – of not living the ethos that goes along with coaching.

How we can utilise coaching skills training to support managers in being better managers:

It is a complex question that requires tailoring to the organizational setting, but some of our key pointers are:

1. Start with the end in mind:
2. Know how to recognise success:
3. Speak to your managers:
4. Assure workplace application is included in the training:
5. Build in personal development to the training programmes:

1. Start with the end in mind:
What are the business drivers – problems and aspirations – that your organisation hold dear? How would having managers that can coach well support those drivers? If you cannot answer that question then a) give us a call and we can support you in trying to do so or b) save your money and try something else.

Seriously, I am a huge believer in coaching (clearly!) but I would prefer that an organisation that cannot answer that question saves its time, money and manpower and investigates other avenues for achieving their business goals.

Coaching is not just about “delivering soft skills” and whilst companies insist on these programmes being delivered as “a nice to have” then coaching will continue to waste an awful lot of money and to have its reputation tarnished.

When we get really business orientated about it, we will get to make a bigger difference to the way in which people experience work and therefore their lives in general. Once we accept this need to tie in to business drivers, then we can start to see a real breakthrough in the time, money and working hours that companies are prepared to pour into coaching.

2. Know how to recognise success:
Once we are clear on what the business drivers are that we wish to impact, then we can start to ask what the specific success indicators will be. For instance, if we know that the business driver is (as with a huge number of companies) reducing the attrition rate, then we can see how a goal of getting 50% of our managers to attend coach training just isn’t enough. We need to be able to demonstrate that we are having an impact on the attrition rate.

Once the success indicators are clear, then we can manage the measurement of the programme and the design of the programme to make sure it is addressing the need we have.

It may sound a lot like teaching granny to suck eggs as the expression goes, but again and again we find this process is missing from the programme as a whole.

3. Speak to your managers:
Again, hardly rocket science but in our experience, the design and sponsoring of these programmes tends to be from on high. Your managers will be able to tell you a lot about what would enable them to coach in the workplace; what they perceive might stand in their way; what would need to be in place after the programme for them to be able to coach and so on.

What we see is that the problems that occur after training could easily have been attended to and overcome in advance if only those expected to coach were included in the initial discussions.

4. Assure workplace application is included in the training:
To enable coaching programmes to be cost effective (for that read “cheap”) they are generally very short and lack the support and amount of practical application thinking time that is required for managers to take this complex new skillset and apply it in the workplace.

Coaching as a management competency is a very different skill to being an internal coach. Managers need to understand when not to coach and to have the space and support to think through how to apply their skillset in specific situations. Otherwise, in that pressured, busy workplace environment, they will quickly revert to their previous default setting which will appear easier and quicker than does coaching.

5. Build in personal development to the training programmes:
In the rush to cram managers full of coaching skills, it can be very easy to miss that there is an ethos to coaching which requires personal development as well as doing things differently. We find that time spent on this in a coaching skills programme pays huge dividends – particularly actually in creating momentum in your change process; managers will ask to attend the programme because they have seen the change in others. Team members will see an actual difference in their manager and will be more open to being coached by them also.

The benefits of coach training for your managers are potentially huge and the potential for wasting money on coaching skills training is just as big – do it well and you will reap the rewards.

Do it poorly and coaching will soon be just “an HR initiative that didn’t work”.

Call Lisa Wynn, our Director of Coaching on (01473) 327433 to discuss this further or email her on lisa@corporatepotential.com.

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