Coaching for performance: the manager as coach.

Many managers were promoted for being good at the job, and being good at the job often means having the answers. Coaching asks a manager to hold some of those answers back, so that the people doing the work find and own them. Done well, it raises performance without adding to the manager’s load, because people stop bringing every problem upstairs.

The aim, as we have put it to managers in our coaching programmes for many years, is to help people be themselves, with more skill. It is not to turn them into smaller versions of you. This guide sets out what that looks like day to day: where coaching sits, how much of it each person needs, the habits underneath it, a structure for the conversation, and a ten-minute tool.

Coaching is a line, not a switch

At one end of the line is telling: instructions, information, your view of what to do. At the other is pure exploration, where you only ask and the other person works it out. A manager who coaches still tells. They just tell less often, so that when they do, people are more likely to listen. The skill is moving along the line to the right point for the person and the moment: telling when there is a safety rule or a deadline that leaves no choice, asking when the person has what they need to solve it themselves. Six ways to intervene when coaching describes the points along the line in more detail.

The pull towards telling is strong. In our workshops we sometimes ask managers to help a colleague get better at juggling. Many of them cannot juggle, and many still spend the five minutes giving instructions. If the habit is that strong when we know nothing, it is stronger when we are the expert.

Decide how much freedom each person needs

Not everyone in a team needs the same approach. We use a quick check, adapted from situational leadership principles. For each person, think about the work they are doing now and rate two things from 0 to 2: their energy for it (motivation, drive, commitment, effort, openness to learn) and their capability (current ability, skills and knowledge, experience, insight, confidence), where 0 is absent, 1 is what you would expect and 2 is a real strength. Add the two together.

The higher the total, the bigger the “box” of freedom you can give: agree the outcome and the boundaries, then ask rather than tell. The lower the total, the smaller the box: clearer direction and more frequent check-ins, with coaching on one thing at a time. A total of zero is not a coaching question at all: check your own view first, then have a direct conversation about performance. The coach or direct? tool runs the check for up to six people. Repeat it monthly, because the scores move as people grow and as their work changes.

The four habits underneath

• Listen until you understand. Switch off distractions, or say you can’t give it your attention now and fix another time. Reflect back what you heard (“What I heard you say is…”), acknowledge feelings, and summarise before you offer any view. Listen for vague words such as “we need to communicate more” and ask what they mean in practice. Try this: in your next two conversations, summarise what you heard before you say anything else, then notice how accurate you were and how it changed the conversation. Active listening for managers has more.
• Ask open questions. Questions that start with what, how or tell me get to the heart of an issue much faster than a string of yes-or-no checks. In our workshops, pairs try to guess what their partner is thinking using only closed questions for a minute; with open questions, “What are you thinking about?” usually gets there in seconds.
• Agree the goal. Know both the bigger goal and what this conversation needs to achieve. A coaching conversation without a goal is a pleasant chat.
• Give feedback and build insight. Say what you noticed, including praise with no “but” attached, and help the person see something about themselves or the situation that they had not seen before. The trouble with the feedback sandwich covers the feedback part.

A structure for the conversation: GROW

One of the most widely used structures for a coaching conversation is GROW: Goal (what do you want?), Reality (where are things now?), Options (what could you do?) and Will (what will you do, and when?). Three practical notes. Conversations often start in Reality, because that is where the problem is; that is fine, but a conversation that stays there becomes a list of complaints, so move to the Goal once the picture is clear. Options is where managers are most tempted to tell; ask “What else?” at least twice before offering an idea of your own, and ask whether they want one. Will is where performance actually changes: a specific action, a date, and how committed they are on a scale of 1 to 10. It will feel unnatural at first. Take the questions into meetings with you; nobody will mind. Forty GROW coaching questions and the GROW conversation planner will help.

A ten-minute tool: the scaling question

This works for a person, a project or a team, and it keeps the conversation on progress rather than problems.

1. Define the 10. Agree what success would look like, and describe it in detail.
2. Rate today. Where are things now, from 0 to 10?
3. List what is working. At least seven things already going well, even if they are not perfect or not done every time.
4. Check the rating. Does the list match the number? Adjust it if not, quickly; the point is the next step, not the score.
5. Find ideas to move one point. At least five ideas for getting one step up the scale, not all the way to 10.
6. Commit to one. Choose the idea that will make the biggest difference, and set a date.
7. Repeat. On that date, rate again and go for the next point.

It works for account reviews, project reviews and planning as well as for individual development.

Are you coaching already? A two-week check

Look back over the last two weeks. Which of these have you done with anyone in your team?

• Praised someone without adding a “but”
• Given someone clear feedback about how to develop
• Asked your team or your peers for feedback on you
• Asked open questions to explore a problem instead of offering a solution
• Listened to someone until you understood what they needed
• Stayed with a problem long enough to explore it before fixing it
• Asked how someone was really feeling, beyond “How are you?”
• Talked with someone about what motivates them or matters to them
• Done something deliberate to build someone’s capability
• Questioned your own habits in how you deal with people

Then ask yourself: what does this say about how much I coach now? What do I already do well? Where could I do more of it, and what would that be worth to my team and to me? You may find you coach more than you thought, but only with some people and only some of the time.

Three ways it goes wrong

If you want to know how your team experiences the way you manage, a forward-looking 360 such as FeedForward asks them, and turns what they say into development goals.