Note: This article is the third in a four-part series on the tools managers can use to become highly effective leaders.
- The first article is on one on ones.
- The second article is on feedback.
- The fourth article is on delegation.
In the fast-paced business world, the role of a manager is crucial to the success of the team. A recent study compilation performed by WifiTalent found that companies with effective managers have 27% higher profitability. But what exactly makes a manager effective? For new managers, how do they reach the level of greatness they aspire to? For veteran managers, how can they improve their game to continue to foster high performing teams?
By looking at great leaders like Bill Gates, Jack Welsh, Charles F. Kettering, Lane Sloan, Tom Watson, and Henry Ford certain themes of great management begin to appear.
These themes are:
1. Great managers know their people exceptionally well.
2. Great managers communicate constantly about performance.
3. Great managers repeatedly ask for improved performance.
4. Great managers grow organizational capability.
Just knowing that these themes are important is not enough. Consider that the same WifiTalent compilation indicates that 69% of managers feel uncomfortable communicating with individual contributors and 33% of teammates dread meeting with their manager. This indicates that managers also need ways to put these themes into action to create positive results. For each theme, there is a corresponding actionable equivalent:
- If managers want to know their people exceptionally well, they need to have one-on-ones.
- If managers want to communicate constantly about performance, they need to be good at giving feedback.
- If managers want to ask for improved performance from their direct reports, they need to be able to coach.
- If managers want to grow organizational capability, they need to be able to delegate.
This article will do a deep dive into coaching, what coaching is, why managers should coach their teammates, and what is the best approach when leveraging coaching. The goal is to help inform new managers of this great tool while giving veteran managers bolstered confidence by providing context into why it is effective.
What is Coaching?
The most standard definition of managerial coaching is, “a process aimed at helping individuals or teams achieve their goals, improve performance, or develop skills.” This is often confused with feedback. Managers feel that they are coaching their team when they provide feedback to their teammates, but this is only partially true. Both coaching and feedback seek to improve the performance of a teammate, but they operate on different time horizons. Feedback is short term and is typically quick to accomplish, minor changes, see the second article in this series. For example, showing up on time for meetings. Coaching is longer term and is typically substantial changes that may need months to accomplish. For example, becoming effective at running staff meetings.
Managers who only focus on feedback, and never provide coaching, end up missing longer term growth opportunities for their teams.
Why Should Managers Coach Their Teams?
According to a report published by Zippia in March 2023, 76% of employees are looking for opportunities to expand their careers. At the same time, an article by WebMD published a few months later in August cited that 50% of managers experienced or were experiencing burnout in the past year. One of the leading factors contributing to this burnout was managers that have too much to do. Coaching can close the gap between managers who are feeling overwhelmed and teammates who are looking for career growth.
Coaching allows managers to prepare their teammates to do the work the managers are currently doing. In return, by taking on a portion of the manager’s work, the teammates broaden their skillset and move further down the path to promotion. This deepens a business’s talent pool by having multiple people capable of performing the same work. This leads to stronger business continuity and resilience.
Coaching can also be used to broaden the skillset of teammates independent of the manager’s own skillset. This means the business gains more breadth in their talent pool. This wider, deeper talent pool allows the business to operate more effectively because the same headcount can now do more work. Companies that have solid coaching processes at all levels of management show a greater overall productivity than companies that don’t.
Managers should coach their teammates because:
1. Coaching provides career growth and improves retention and engagement.
2. Coaching helps managers improve workloads.
3. Coaching helps managers create opportunities for delegation.
4. Coaching helps the company widen and deepen their talent pool.
With this list of benefits, it is easy to see why great managers use coaching to repeatedly ask for improved performance from their teammates.
The Coaching Model
Coaching is most effective when it is collaborative. This is because the manager cannot force the teammate to learn anything, the teammate must have their own motivation. The results of the coaching process must be mutually beneficial. By collaborating, the manager can help ensure that the results develop a skill that the company needs, and provides opportunity for the teammate to learn something that they want to learn.
With collaboration being the key focus, here are the steps of the recommended coaching model for managers to use:
1. Collaborate to set a goal.
2. Collaborate to brainstorm resources.
3. Collaborate to create a plan.
4. Report on the plan.
Collaborate to Set a Goal
When setting a goal, it is important to make the goal achievable and measurable within a set amount of time. A common model used for goal setting is DBQ: Deadline, Behavior, Quality Standard.
Deadlines
Having a deadline is important because it drives behavior. Since coaching is designed to take on substantial changes, it is recommended that the deadline should not be less than six months. The reason this is recommended is because coaching is usually associated with stretch goals that go beyond the teammates normal set of responsibilities. The normal responsibilities still need to be done however, and still take time. When setting a goal, it is important to remember that the teammate is being asked to do everything they normally do, but now with only 95% of their time. With a six-month deadline, at 5% dedicated time, the teammate will have about 48 hours of business time to complete the goal.
Behaviors
The advantage of focusing on behaviors is that it allows managers to tackle a variety of skills. The behavior for the goal should be easily evaluated as, “yes it was achieved” or “no it was not”. It should also demonstrate the skill being coached. For example, the goal, “learn about project management” would not be a good goal because it is too ambiguous. The teammate could read one book on project management, or they could read six. Another weakness is that just reading books doesn’t put the skill into practice.
Quality Standards
Setting a quality standard for the behavior helps ensure that the teammate is executing in the right way. If the goal was to have the teammate start running the weekly staff meeting, they could run a terrible meeting. The book, “Measure What Matters” by John Doerr recommends that anyone setting goals should ask if they were to measure the goal and someone else was to measure the goal, would they come up with the same quality standard? If not, the goal may be too ambiguous and need refining.
The other key point regarding quality standards is that they only need to be measured once. The assumption is that if the teammate can accomplish the goal once, then they have developed the skill that will allow them to do it again. The manager will just need to provide opportunities for repetition which can be accomplished through delegation.
Putting It All Together
Here are examples of good coaching goals using the DBQ model:
1. By December 1st, you will obtain CNE status.
2. By October 30th, you will run the staff meeting with an agenda that is followed.
3. By January 3rd, you will create and submit the capital plan without errors.
Collaborate to Brainstorm Resources
The importance of brainstorming resources is that it frees the manager from having to be good at the thing they are coaching the teammate on. The manager’s job is only to identify where the company needs growth, align it with the teammate’s interest, and help provide the tools the teammate needs. These resources can be anything including books, videos, classes, online learning courses, conferences, or even people who are experts.
At ACV, we work with Plural Sight and Cornell to help provide resources to our teammates to help them achieve their goals. In addition, software developers are encouraged to attend conferences like Connect Tech, Collision, and Code Mash.
This brainstorming should happen during the teammate’s normal one-on-one. The teammate and manager should take two to three minutes to come up with a list of potential resources. The reason two to three minutes is recommended is because it requires the participants to go fast and doesn’t leave time for ideas to be judged. Avoiding judging prevents a situation where the manager starts to judge ideas that the teammate offers, and the teammate starts to self-filter in response. The goal of the exercise is to go for volume, not accuracy. The more options the manager and teammate can come up with, the more likely they will come across a resource that will work for the teammate.
Collaborate to Create a Plan
The recommendation is to only plan the first week of steps that should be followed to achieve the goal. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that the work on the goal could be preempted by more important day-to-day tasks. Remember that coaching is for stretch goals and the teammate’s normal work may have more pressing demand for their focus. The second reason for planning only a week at a time is that the resource that is picked may be bad and will need to be reevaluated. If the teammate is reading a book, and that book doesn’t really help them, there is no point in dedicating more time to it. By planning only one week in advance, there are natural breakpoints to pivot if necessary.
Each step in the weekly plan should have a deadline, just like the goal. Here are examples of what these steps could look like:
1. By Tuesday 3pm, send an email summarizing the first three chapters of the book.
2. By July 2nd, send an email about your observations regarding the staff meeting.
3. By June 20th, send the manager a receipt showing that you ordered the book.
This planning can take place during the teammate’s one-on-one during the ten minutes dedicated for the future.
Report Back
The last step for the coaching model is only for the teammate. As they are progressing on the plan, they should be sending asynchronous updates to the manager. The most common method for this is email. By doing this asynchronously, the manager can keep the time commitment lower and allows the teammate to give more frequent updates than their one-on-one meeting may allow. The manager can also provide feedback, both positive and negative, regarding the progress being made. With regular updates in hand, both the teammate and manager can decide to stay the course or pivot. If the weekly deliverable for the plan was achieved, a new deliverable can be established until the goal is met.
Wrapping Up
Despite the benefits coaching offers, managers are often hesitant to coach their teammates for a variety of reasons including that coaching takes too long, the manager has too much to do, the manager doesn’t have experience in the skill being coached, or the manager already gives feedback. The coaching model proposed here addresses these concerns.
First this model is designed to take ten minutes a week and should be part of the normal one-on-ones managers have with each of their teammates. This means that it would require no additional meetings to be scheduled and would amount to a total of nine hours per teammate per year. Nine hours seems like a small investment into a process that has large positive impacts.
Second the model is a collaboration with the teammate to help them obtain resources that allow them to grow. This means that the manager doesn’t need to be an expert in the skill the teammate is interested in, they just need to know how to obtain resources that can help. This also helps diversify the skills that are available to the business.
Finally, the model is designed to operate on a longer time horizon than feedback. The model builds a plan that can last months with key deliverables and milestones. This allows a greater tracking of improvement over time and can deep dive in to stretch goals for the teammate.
With so much to gain for so little investment, it is clear why great managers are constantly coaching their teams to improve performance.
For folks looking for more information regarding coaching I highly recommend the Manager Tool’s podcast on the topic.
Note: This article is the third in a four-part series on the tools managers can use to become highly effective leaders.
- The first article is on one on ones.
- The second article is on feedback.
- The fourth article is on delegation.
