Managers: You (and Your People) Need Coaching

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Recently, I spent time with a young professional who is navigating their relationship with a manager who provides little direction, inconsistent guidance and feedback, and almost no opportunities for growth. Not surprisingly, the employee is feeling demotivated, frustrated, and wondering what they are doing wrong. And before you think, “Wait, is she talking about me?”, let me note this is not a one-time conversation. I have lost track of the number of meetings I have had along these lines, with professionals at all levels. People are struggling at work. And you can almost always draw a direct line from that struggle to that person’s manager.

In my 25 years providing guidance and training in coaching, mentoring, leadership, and management development, I probably can count on two hands the number of people I legitimately would say just did not want to work. Sure, we might all entertain dreams of winning the lottery, but most people want to work, want to do meaningful work, and want to make an impact. And that includes people in manager roles. Unfortunately, organizations frequently hire or promote people into roles and then provide them with zero coaching, direction, feedback, or development, which trickles down from manager to manager to front-line employee. Work simply cannot work like that anymore.

Now more than ever, the role of the manager is to be a coach. And, the role of the manager is to be coachable. The future of work requires adaptability, flexibility, and a willingness to learn and to grow, at all levels of the organization. And that starts with you, the manager.

The Future of Work Belongs to Relational Learners

There is little doubt that the pace of automation, change, and advancements in technology are increasing, spurred on perhaps unexpectedly by the pandemic. The most recent Future of Jobs Report by the World Economic Forum found that, “Forty-three percent of businesses surveyed indicate that they are set to reduce their workforce due to technology integration, 41% plan to expand their use of contractors for task-specialized work, and 34% plan to expand their workforce due to technology integration. By 2025, the time spent on current tasks at work by humans and machines will be equal.” While this sounds dire, it means an increased focus will be required on what we might call “human skills.” Those surveyed identified critical thinking and analysis, problem-solving, and “skills in self-management such as active learning, resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility” as the top skills that key performers will need over the next few years (and, one can assume, beyond). In other words, these are the skills that will differentiate high-performing humans from the robots.

As the report notes, there will be a strong emphasis on and need for workers to both re-skill and upskill to remain relevant and successful. And, organizations will need to put an increased emphasis on building community, connection, and belonging among and with remote and hybrid workforces. The future, and the present, of work, requires intentional learning and an investment in relationships, by both individuals and those who manage them.

Managers: Your People Need Your Time and Investment

Beyond it just being the right thing to do, taking the time to invest in your people may prevent them from leaving your organization. In fact, more than half of those quitting say that their manager could have done something to keep them from leaving. What is that something? Talking to them as humans and finding out who they are, what they need, and how they hope to learn and grow.

Ask yourself:

• Do I know what my people’s goals are, personally and professionally?
• Am I clear on my people’s strengths, and how those strengths connect to the work?
• Are there opportunities here to build in stretch assignments and upskilling to prepare them for what comes next?
• Are my people clear on why their work matters to the mission and vision of this organization and this team?
• Do I know what barriers and challenges my people are working through, and am I helping to alleviate those so that they can do their best work?
• Do I give my people regular feedback on what they are doing well, and areas where they can improve?
• Do I ask my people for regular feedback on what I am doing well, and areas where I can improve?
• Do my people have a career development plan that we discuss on a regular basis?

Having these conversations won’t prevent your people from leaving. In fact, in many cases, they need to leave. But do you want them to leave feeling relieved that they managed to escape you, or excited to be your strongest advocate?

In sports, we talk about the idea of a “coaching tree.” These are all the former assistant coaches who have gone on to become head coaches elsewhere, with successful programs of their own, due to the guidance and investment they received from that one original coach. Nick Saban has it. Coach K has it. In sports, we hold this up as a successful model for other coaches. We need to look at our jobs as managers the same way. The work of management, in many ways, is to build up others to go on and have incredible careers of their own. That’s not losing something. That’s creating a legacy.

We Are All Works in Progress

It can be tempting to strive for perfection or to want to present the illusion of perfection. But that’s not what your people need. In fact, pretending you know it all and never make a mistake is the first step towards breaking trust with your people. They know you’re not perfect, after all, because they know you’re a human being. The best lessons come not from those who have never made a misstep in their lives, but from those who have fallen down and figured out how to get back up. That’s the type of manager you need to be. And that means being willing to learn and seek out coaching for yourself, too.

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There are many ways in which you can grow as a manager; you, too, should have a career development plan for yourself. But here are four key areas where you can get started:

• Asking for and listening to feedback. Often the work of management is looking for those opportunities to give feedback to your people, and knowing how to do this well is a skill set you can and should learn. But effective management is about role modeling the behavior we want to see in our people. If you want to lead a learning organization, then you need to be an active learner. Practice regularly asking your people for thoughts on what you are doing well and how you can improve. And just like any feedback conversation, practice listening and not defending yourself. When you start to argue with your people about their feedback, you have broken trust and you will not hear the truth again.
• Setting (and upholding) goals and expectations. Management feels like it’s about tasks and outcomes, but that work always happens through people. When you onboard a new person, have intentional conversations around what is expected of them, what their goals are, and how these align with the mission and vision. At regular intervals, set team and individual goals with your people so that they know what they should be working on and why. Build in clear accountability measures so that people know how and when they will be evaluated. Work should not be a mystery. Nobody does better work in cultures of uncertainty and ambiguity. Your job is to provide clarity, remove obstacles, give people what they need to be successful, and get out of their way.
• Managing your time and workload effectively. One of the hardest parts of the transition from individual contributor to manager is that you don’t let go of all your individual contributor responsibilities. And that means you now have less time to do the work, on top of increased responsibilities that come with investing in other people. And those people will be watching you and paying attention to how you manage your time and workload. Put simply, when you don’t have time for your people, you break trust with them. And, when you work around the clock, you teach them that is what you expect of them, too. You need to develop systems and processes for managing your work, your time, and your engagement with others. There’s no one right way to do this—what works for one won’t work for others—but a disorganized manager results in a disorganized team.
• Managing from a place of empathy and care. Finally, and most importantly, the work of management is supporting and caring about other people, as people. Before they show up every day, your people are people, with challenges and responsibilities and worries that have nothing to do with the tasks that need to get done that day. But each of those things will impact their abilities to get those tasks done. Before you care about the outcomes, you have to care about the people. You need to develop your empathy muscles. Management is about relationships, and relationships are built on trust. And trust is not given out lightly or freely. You have to prove that you are someone your people can trust, not the other way around, by being someone who demonstrates empathy and care, every day.