06. Managers as Coaches: Managerial Roles – III + Conclusion
Continuing our exploration of different managerial roles, here role…Read More
3. Managers as Coaches
Manager: “Geeta, I think you have been handling your role as a Sales Manager very well. Is there anything else you think we can do to position us as one of the top companies in our industry?”
Coaching is a role that is significantly different from instruction and delegation.
How? Well, when coaching the manager doesn’t directly instruct an employee what to do or how to do it. Instead, the manager consistently dialogues with the team member to develop their knowledge and skills to carry out tasks effectively and independently.
The main objective of a manager’s role as a coach is to guide employees on how to work through problems and develop solutions on their own.
Therefore, when done right, coaching is a practice that can help employees:
a) Identify and develop numerous skills that can aid in significantly improve their performance
b) Develop the capability to execute tasks independently, with minimum guidance or support from their managers and peers
For example, after completion of a project, a manager can ask the team member if something could’ve been handled better or differently, and then they can jointly identify solutions to make things easier the next time around. This gives employees an opportunity to think through tasks and situations that could have been handled better and come up with solutions that can be used in the future.
This approach of working with employees and encouraging them to come up with their own solutions, workarounds or strategies for better task-execution is known as coaching, which you must agree is quite different from the other two managerial roles, viz,
a) Instructing, that involves telling employees what to do.
b) Delegating, that involves transferring responsibilities to an employee.
Coaching is instead more focused on creating a space for open two-way communication between managers and employees to help the employees move forward with ease along their professional journey.
In Conclusion:
Often, companies can be hesitant to incorporate coaching because of the perceived costs, time and effort involved. In this lesson we debunked a few of them, viz.
1. Not Having Enough Time for Coaching
2. Coaching is Only for Fixing Performance Issues
3. Coaching is for Fixing Problematic People
4. A Coach Needs to be Perfect
As a manager, you will be required to take on and switch between various roles during your professional journey.
The three main managerial roles that one would need to imbibe are:
1. Instruction, which involves telling employees what to do.
2. Delegation, which involves transferring responsibilities to an employee.
3. Coaching, which involves an open, two-way communication between managers and employees to help the employees move forward, with ease, along their professional journey.
Done with the lesson? Please take the accompanying quiz.
Happy Quizzing!