Even bosses need coaching — here are 4 tricks that make managers better at their jobs

Even man­agers need man­ag­ing now and then.


3 min read

Opin­ions expressed by Entre­pre­neur con­trib­u­tors are their own.

I am amazed at how many man­agers and super­vi­sors in lead­er­ship pro­grams I facil­i­tate say they “don’t know how to coach.” We know coach­ing works. In a sur­vey from the Inter­na­tion­al Coach Fed­er­a­tion and Human Cap­i­tal Insti­tute, 51 per­cent of respon­dents from orga­ni­za­tions with what they believed were strong coach­ing cul­tures report­ed rev­enue above that of their indus­try peer group, and 62 per­cent of employ­ees in those orga­ni­za­tions rat­ed them­selves as high­ly engaged.

Years ago, as a young sales­per­son, I report­ed to a man­ag­er who nev­er coached me and nev­er worked with me, ever. How can some­one be a sales man­ag­er if they don’t coach or their team? As for­mer Depot CEO Bob Nardel­li once said, “I absolute­ly believe that peo­ple, unless coached, nev­er reach their max­i­mum poten­tial.”

If you are a key exec­u­tive or own­er of a com­pa­ny, you need to ask your­self a crit­i­cal ques­tion: Are your lead­ers coach­ing their direct reports? If you want results and max­i­mum impact, then one of your most impor­tant respon­si­bil­i­ties has to be coach­ing the coach­es, and here are some sug­ges­tions for doing just that.

Relat­ed: An Account­abil­i­ty Part­ner Makes You Vast­ly More Like­ly to Suc­ceed

Hold Them Accountable

Let your man­agers know that you expect them to coach every direct report on a reg­u­lar and con­sis­tent basis. To me, the biggest asset you have is the unde­vel­oped poten­tial of your team mem­bers. The leader coach needs to devel­op that poten­tial to the fullest extent. Hold them account­able by ask­ing for a month­ly coach­ing report, and make that activ­i­ty of their annu­al

Train Them

I find that, unfor­tu­nate­ly, most lead­ers are not organ­i­cal­ly good at coach­ing, because about tough top­ics can lead to con­flict with the per­son they’re coach­ing. Even qual­i­fied lead­ers often don’t know how to han­dle it, because they haven’t received coach­ing in their own career and seen it mod­eled. Train­ing is essen­tial for devel­op­ing the com­pe­tence and to be an effec­tive coach. 

Change Their Mindset

When I was a vice pres­i­dent in cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca and asked peo­ple to meet with me, they always thought they were in trou­ble. Why? Because the only con­ver­sa­tion they had with lead­ers in the past was dis­ci­pli­nary. I believe there are two dif­fer­ent kinds of coach­ing: cor­rec­tive and devel­op­men­tal. An exam­ple of cor­rec­tive coach­ing is a dis­cus­sion to mod­i­fy an unpro­duc­tive behav­ior, like being late to work too often. Devel­op­men­tal coach­ing is talk­ing about some­one’s career goals and how to devel­op the skills, knowl­edge or exper­tise to help them get there. The real­i­ty is the lead­ers need to be hav­ing more devel­op­men­tal coach­ing con­ver­sa­tions. That change of mind­set can sales, increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and boost morale.

Relat­ed: The Best-Kept to Grow­ing as an Entre­pre­neur

Reward and Incentivize

The real­i­ty is humans do what they are reward­ed for doing. Put togeth­er a lead­er’s com­pen­sa­tion pack­age or a bonus for their role as a coach. Far too often, we reward man­agers for meet­ing objec­tives, but don’t set or reward coach­ing objec­tives. Cre­ate a “coach of the year” award for one man­ag­er each year, and gen­er­al­ly com­pli­ment lead­ers for coach­ing and devel­op­ing team mem­bers. 

The bot­tom line is, if you want suc­cess and growth, you have to coach the coach­es.  

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