At its core, coaching is about partnering with people to help them achieve their goals.

It is future-focused and grounded in the belief that people are capable of exceeding even their own expectations. There is an emphasis on accountability, self-awareness, and taking action to close the gap between where someone is now and where they want to be. Coaches provide the structure for this exploration but do not position themselves as the expert or the decision-maker because they know that the coachee is the expert in their own life.

Utilizing coaching elements in your communication as a leader is a good way to empower your team members. It helps you tap into intrinsic motivation by encouraging team members to approach challenges through the lens of their top Motivators, rather than expecting that what works for you will work for them too. And knowing that you believe in their infinite potential helps to build confidence in themselves while strengthening the trust between you.

However, it is difficult for managers to be full-time coaches. Sometimes a manager needs to break the “rules” of coaching by providing mentorship, delivering training, setting targets, and delegating specific tasks to their team members. Failure to do so can leave employees feeling abandoned and under-resourced. Worse still, without the skills needed to do their jobs well and a lack of clarity about what success looks like, miscommunication can quickly snowball into poor performance, lack of trust, and even turnover.

Significantly, the International Coaching Federation does not allow time with direct reports to be counted toward the coaching hours requirements for their credentials, signaling an expectation that managers cannot be fully in the role of “coach.”

Coaching vs Managing

For the sake of this discussion, let’s distinguish between coaching and managing by saying that you are in a coaching mindset when you:

Ask open, curious questions intended to facilitate understanding and self-knowledge.
Encourage your team member to reflect, explore different perspectives, and overcome limiting beliefs without passing judgment.
Focus on unlocking the potential within your team member, rather than demonstrating your expertise.

You are in a managing mindset when you:

Ask questions to collect information so you can give advice, use your own problem-solving to save the day, or hint at the “correct” course of action.
Control tasks and make unilateral decisions, such as giving direction not only about what actions your team member should take but also how they should go about doing it.
Utilize more downward communication with employees, with a focus on mobilizing your team members to deliver results for the organization.

There is a place for both styles, and neither would be effective in all situations. The best leaders will blend elements of coaching and managing to tailor their approach, meeting the needs of their employees and the situation to maximize performance.

So when should you coach and when should you manage?

Here are three questions you can ask yourself to determine the best tool for the job:

Question 1:

“Does your team member have the knowledge, skills, and ability to navigate this situation successfully?”

If yes, you can step into a coaching role and provide space for them to assess the situation, consider their options, and make a decision about what actions to take.

Use questions that will deepen their thinking and challenge any assumptions they might be making, such as:

What is the real problem here?
What action have you taken so far?
What other options do you have?
What is holding you back?
What obstacles are you anticipating?
What is the end result you’re aiming for?
How will it feel to achieve it?
What is your next step?
When will you do it?
How can I help?

If not, it is appropriate for you to act as the expert and switch your coaching hat for one of trainer or manager. You can use some of the questions above to encourage your team members to begin thinking critically about the situation, but be careful not to make them feel put on the spot or set up to fail by asking things they can’t answer.

Instead, it may be more encouraging if you give them guidance about how to handle the challenge at hand and use clarifying questions at the end to ensure alignment.

Whereas you might trust a more experienced employee to follow through on their action plan independently, someone who is building foundational skills may need more hands-on support and a shorter time frame for following up. Break actions into bite-sized pieces and agree in advance about how you’ll check in with each other along the way. Doing this will also position your later inquiries as support rather than micromanagement.

Question 2:

“Are you trying to encourage independence, creativity, and collaboration or are efficiency, consistency, and execution the priorities?”

Coaching will be a better fit for encouraging innovation because it makes room for employees to come up with ideas that go beyond the knowledge and experience of their manager.

You can ask questions like these to help team members leverage their strengths and act courageously:

If you could wave a magic wand and wake up tomorrow to find that this problem has been solved, what would it look like? How is it different from where we are right now?
What is the dream outcome?
What would you do if there were no limits / unlimited budget?
It feels like we’re in the weeds. Imagine zooming out to the 2,000-foot view—how does the situation look from up there?
How have you successfully handled problems like this in the past?
What aspects of this are you most / least confident about?
Who else could you work with to move this forward?
What are you learning about yourself (through this experience)?

Managing is effective when a task-oriented approach is necessary. Establishing clear expectations, ensuring the team knows what needs to be done and how, and supervising the execution of the plan can be very productive—particularly with simple tasks that employees are skilled at handling.

This approach is difficult to maintain long-term but can be useful in short bursts or in times of crisis. Sometimes a leader needs to step into their expertise and guide the team through ambiguous or overwhelming situations. In these cases, the clarity and structure provided by the manager can serve to reassure their employees and position them to succeed.

Question 3:

“Can you enter this conversation without an attachment to the specifics of your employee’s plan of action?”

If yes, it will be easier to utilize a coaching approach. This doesn’t mean that you employ a complete laissez-faire communication style and abdicate all involvement or responsibility for your team member’s success. What it does mean is you are coming into the conversation with curiosity and trust. This might include offering your perspective or making suggestions, but the difference is in how quickly you present that advice and how attached you are to it being utilized.

Two quick ways to check in with yourself and ensure that you are not accidentally sliding into problem-solving mode are:

Holding your suggestions for as long as possible—you might not even need them!
Making sure you are not asking questions with a “correct” answer in mind.

If your team member asks directly for your input but you feel like it’s too early in the conversation, you can say something like “I have some thoughts but you’re closer to the situation than I am, so I’m interested in hearing your ideas first.”

Key to coaching is the emphasis on asking permission and then “handing it back” to the coachee. “Would you like some feedback on that?” or “I have experienced something similar in the past, could I make a suggestion?” are two examples of asking for permission. Your team member will almost always say yes but it should not signal that you have taken over the conversation (or the problem), so be sure to follow your advice by asking “what do you think?” Follow this with another open question that will encourage them to continue clarifying their next steps.

Here are some ideas for how to hand it back to your employee:

What are you taking away from the conversation so far?
What changes do you plan to make?
We’ve discussed a variety of options, how do you want to move forward?
On a scale of 1-10, what’s your commitment level to that action? What would it take to increase that by +1?
What is your accountability plan? How can I support you (in that plan)?

If you feel resistance to this question about attachment, take a moment to interrogate why. Perhaps it is for one of the reasons mentioned above that the skill level of your team member or situation at hand makes a directive, managing approach most suitable. However, you might be limiting yourself (and them) if it is because you believe staying in control, knowing more than your employees, or being able to solve their problems is central to your role as a leader.

It can be tough to let this feeling go. I would guess that your desire to help people is one of the reasons you were interested in becoming a leader in the first place and your ability to handle tough situations effectively contributed to your selection for this role.

Yet the risk of holding on too tight is that you become a bottleneck, increasing your workload and slowing progress by creating an environment where all actions are set by you. Employees may fall into patterns of learned helplessness, feel less ownership for their work, doubt their capabilities, or wonder whether you trust them to make good decisions.

Next Steps

If you would like some practical ideas for incorporating more coaching tools into your leadership style, check out the books by Michael Bungay Stanier called The Coaching Habit and The Advice Trap. They both provide simple, straightforward tools and—unlike many books about coaching—are written specifically for managers.

Overall, there is a place for both coaching and managing in your toolkit. The key is choosing a suitable approach for the situation. Attuned believes in the importance of knowing yourself and your team members to make work more meaningful. Tailoring your leadership style to maximize connection builds trust and drives results. You have to get it right every time, the goal is to be intentional and make space for the unlimited potential contained within the members of your team.

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