This is a conversation/reaction topic between Toby Sinclair and Terry Brown recently on LinkedIn. You can find it here. The net of the discussion was—can a manager coach the people that report to them? And, to be clear, the coaching in this sense was professional coaching.
Here’s Toby’s post—
Managers can’t be coaches
But they can coach. Let me explain.
Line managers face barriers to being a coach. These include:
Power dynamic between manager and direct report
Knowledge is held by the manager but not the team member. e.g. Upcoming reorganization
Confidentiality conflict between manager and other team members.
Unwritten constraints in what can/can’t be discussed in the corporate culture.
Commonly to the direct report, the manager will always be a manager. Not a coach.
However, the manager can coach.
Using coaching skills to help the team grow.
These include:
Asking open questions
Active Listening
Demonstrating empathy
Using coaching models and frameworks
Great managers master coaching skills. They lead "like a coach." Rather than as a coach.
Reactions
My first reaction is, generally, I agree with Toby.
It’s really hard to impossible for a manager of any sort to provide professional coaching to their direct reports. That’s largely because of the constraints put on the manager by the very definition of what professional coaching is and what it isn’t.
However,
If the manager were to say, put on the hat of agile coaching, then the breadth of coaching they could provide would be much broader and, I’d argue, much more helpful and relevant. And here, I’m referencing the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel as the model for what agile coaching entails.
And it’s through this lens I say that managers not only can coach, but they should be coaching as a primary aspect of their role.
Period!
Wrapping Up
When I first saw the title of this exchange, my immediate response was, of course, managers can be coaches. They must be coaches, as they have a responsibility to serve and grow their direct reports.
To suggest otherwise is to give them an “easy out” of any team and organizational growth and development responsibility.
Today’s leaders (managers) are no longer simply tactically focused. They need to be strategic in every sense of the word. And that implies strategically growing organizational capability to make themselves redundant.
Stay agile my friends, and IF you are a manager, please read my Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching book, go forth, and be a coach.
Bob.