REMOVING BARRIERS FOR MANAGERS
When it comes to coaching, two main beneficiaries are usually pointed to. The first is the person being coached. With any luck, they’re going to get more attention, more support to perform, more encouragement to develop. Their levels of engagement and performance will increase. They’ll be delighted. The other beneficiary is the organization.
When decided that performance management and coaching are important enough to invest in, and leaders are expecting to see an increase in engagement, productivity and impact.
But the manager who has to do the work? There’s seemingly no advantage for him or her. It’s just the latest task to be tacked on to their already overwhelming list of obligations, meetings, responsibilities and KPIs.
To make coaching work in your organization, you need to tackle the five main objections managers have to “coaching”:
• “Coaching takes too much time.”
• “I don’t have time.”
• “I don’t want to be a coach.”
• “What is coaching”
• “But WIIFM?”
“Coaching takes too much time?”
Recent research shows that the number one barrier to managers coaching is the belief that it “takes too much time,” a consistent finding for more than a decade. And it’s number one with a bullet: this belief is almost twice as prevalent (29%) as the barrier “I don’t have all the answers” (17%).2
Managers’ perception of coaching is contaminated by the belief that manager coaching and executive coaching are the same. Executive coaches meet every week for an hour-long chat with leaders and high potentials. That’s not a luxury any manager can afford with their team members.
The good news is that, as with most things, the law of diminishing returns applies. For example, research on coaching for the Scholastic Aptitude Test shows that an arithmetical increase in performance requires geometrical increases in time.3 In plain English, that means you get the most benefit from a little bit of coaching, whereas spending further time on coaching adds some value but not much.
In fact, focused, useful coaching conversations can take place easily within a much shorter time frame; in fact, any manager can coach in 1, 5, 10, or 20 or 30 minutes. Better yet, coaching can occur even when the manager isn't present. But even if you convince managers that coaching can be a quick, everyday activity, they’ll have another objection...
“Even if I can coach in 1, 10 or 20 minutes, the manager says, “when exactly do I add this to my current responsibilities? The only unspoken-for time in my agenda is between a 2 a.m. and 5 a.m.”
“I don’t have time.”
Again, a fair point. Reframe coaching not as an additional task (or burden) that the manager needs to add to their current workload, but as a way of transforming what they currently do, so that they do it differently and more effectively. This isn’t about trying to pour more water into an already full glass. It’s about changing the water into … well, pick your alternative liquid.
In other words, rather than separating out the ongoing and everyday activity of managing people, and then tacking on a separate coaching session every now and then, managers see that the whole process of managing someone can be done through the lens of being more coach-like: staying curious a little longer, rushing to action and advice-giving a little more slowly.
But even if you show them how coaching can be about transforming what they’re currently doing, rather than adding to it, they may have another point of resistance still…
“I don’t want to be a coach.”
"I’ve met coaches, and I’m not like them. Coaches are all touchy-feely. I’m normal. I’m just trying to do my job, hit my numbers, support my team, go home and see my family.”
If you’re reading this post, it’s a fair bet that you’re already on board with the idea of coaching. You may have already done some coach training of your own. So this insight can make you a little twitchy. But we can’t project our love of coaching onto others.
Instead, we’ve found power in reframing the conversation so it’s not about being a coach but about being a manager who’s more coach-like. Simplify the idea of coaching to make it an everyday behavior. This is a breakthrough for a lot of people because they don’t want to be turned into something they don’t want to be. When managers understand that coaching is simpler and “less weird” than they had thought, another point of resistance is removed.
“What IS coaching?”
But even if managers are mollified by being told that they don’t have to be a coach, that they can just be a manager who is more coach-like, they’ll likely have another concern.
They ask, “What is coaching? I don’t know even what that means.”
Coaching has this kind of weird, arcane, dark, mysterious quality of going into a dark cave, being blessed and coming out as a coach. There’s a degree of anxiety finding what coaching means. It’s a term that gets used a lot but there’s no one definition that everyone uses.
For us the definition is quite simple. Can you stay curious a little longer, can you rush to advice giving and action a little more slowly?
In some organizational cultures it can be difficult to build the coaching habit because the managers are rewarded for having all the answers.
There’s a whole industrial complex around having the answer is the best thing to be. We learn that in school. We learn it in high school. We learn it in university. Be the person with the answer that’s what gives you the “A.” Then when you start your career you’re typically starting a technical role and like know the answer because that’s your job. Lots of organizations are based on the concept that knowledge is precious and having the answer is how you add value.
However, increasingly that’s not the case. First of all, knowledge is freer and less precious than it used to be because you can look up anything you want on Google. Secondly, the world is more complex than it been so there’s a better chance that your answer isn’t as good as you think it is. And thirdly, you find as you become a more senior leader it stops scaling. You can’t have the answer to everybody on your team. And of course having the answer for everybody on your team means you’re building a more disempowered team that working below its potential.
There are still a lot of organizations that say to their managers that their job is to have all the answers and tell people what to do. And honestly, that feels pretty good to lots of people. Because you when have the answers and you’re giving advise that feels great because you’re the smart person in the room and you feel in control of the conversation. It makes your brain feel good.
On the other hand, when you ask a question, which is the essence of coaching, your brain feels less good. For the manager, it feels a little more ambiguous about what’s going on. The manager thinks, “I’m not sure if that was a good question. I not sure what they’re going to answer. I’ve given up control of this conversation and handed it to the other person.” It’s a messier, trickier, harder piece of leadership to do. But in some ways this is servant leadership. You’re willing to make yourself feel as little less comfortable and empower the other person which means giving up power for yourself for the sake of the bigger game that you’re looking to play.
“Let’s say it’s true that I can coach quickly and coach in a way that isn’t an additional burden to my workload, and I don’t even have to call it coaching, just a smarter way to lead. Even if that’s all true, what do I get out of it?”
“But WIIFM?” (What’s in it for me)
For people to change their behavior, there has to be a benefit in doing so. And coaching’s benefit is obvious enough to the coachee and the organization, but rarely to the person doing the coaching. Framing it as a benefit rather than as a burden is essential.
We talk about this change being the secret to working less hard and having more impact. That’s certainly enough to get people’s attention. And when they understand that one of the principles of effective coaching for managers is to tell and do less, they’ll lean in to learn more. It’s provocative and it feels counter-intuitive, but at the heart it’s understanding the difference between being “helpful” and actually helping.
Check out two related posts:
A Coaching Habit Helps You Work Less Hard with Greater Impact
The Single Biggest Mistake a Leader Can Make
To your greater success and fulfillment,
Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT
To your greater success and fulfillment,
Take the Next Step...
Interested in learning how Smart Development can help your managers become more coach-like? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact:
Email: petercmclees@gmail.com or Mobile:323-854-1713
Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other organizations create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth.
Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.
No comments:
Post a Comment