So much is expected of line managers, particularly so in these pandemic times, as business and the economy are changing fast.  There can often be feelings of overwhelm in many employees that can feel all-consuming.  Challenges facing line managers are often intense, with employees working remotely, resulting in limited opportunities to strengthen working relationships.  Managers need to be creative about how to encourage effective collaboration to enable employees to coalesce around a clear a sense of purpose.  Coaching can be extremely effective in promoting this adaptability and resilience.

The line manager as a coach is not a new idea, and yet how many line managers are expected to simply absorb the role of coach into their jobs with limited training or guidance?  What does it even mean to coach as a line manager?  This blog explores these questions and summarises some ideas on how to sharpen the coaching skill set of managers.

Getting results through others is often at the heart of effective management.   However, many line managers believe that they are coaching when they are simply telling employees what to do.  Sir John Whitmore defined coaching as ‘unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance.  It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them’.  Often managers who think they are coaching are either consulting or directing to provide either advice or a solution e.g. ‘Why don’t you do this?’ 

Line managers who are expected to coach must look at where they spend their time and consider the ‘protected space’ they give to coaching conversations.  Working remotely from teams may mean activities, like coaching, slide but this is often when they are most important to maximise employee wellbeing and engagement.

When you examine the literature on coaching and the practices of effective coaches the following core skills come through:

• Listening to gain insights, build rapport and then showing empathy.  To listen in active ways, requires a great of focus and a sensitive awareness of how the coach’s non-verbal communication can impact the coachee (and vice-versa).   It is important for coaches to demonstrate their understanding of the coachee’s message by e.g. clarifying, paraphrasing, and reflecting, to build an emotional connection with a fellow human being.  Sometimes it is important to simply create a ‘space’ for the coachee to think and reflect, particularly when there are feelings of overload. 

• Questioning in ways that encourage the coachee to arrive at their own solution and to promote a problem-solving approach to issues.  The most effective style often involves a  style of asking open questions to expand perspective, before the coachee arrives at a resolution. 

• Giving Feedback and often pointing out strengths.  Everyone needs to know how and why they are useful.  Additionally, coaching someone through a mistake can provide long-lasting and powerful insights and enables people to learn from their errors and sees this as part of the learning and development process to creating a learning mindset.

• Providing a structure to the conversation and thus facilitate goal setting.  This often involves generating movement towards the common goals that the business requires.  A line manager needs to demonstrate that they respect and have confidence in the coachee to do their job and make the connections to show how they contribute to the wider business goals.

Tough situations and difficult conversations become easier to negotiate when coaching skills are learned and practiced regularly.

Before a coach starts to coach they need to understand themself to avoid, as Tim Gallwey author of The Inner Game describes,  ‘getting in your own way’.  Most coaching courses start with a self-awareness module/input for this very reason.  Coaches react to stressful situations and this shows up in the coach’s behaviour.  It is important to recognise this as a line manager who coaches.  For example, there may be a strong drive to quickly find solutions to problems or to help others who are struggling.   However, this can be counter-productive to helping an employee to develop in their role.  There are times, as a coach, when high levels of emotional intelligence are required to notice an auto-pilot response in oneself to an issue and to self-regulate, to interrupt the ‘programmed/typical’ response.   

As a line manager in a fast-changing world, it is important to become more comfortable with not having the answers and to empower employees to facilitate a problem-solving approach.  Knowing there are often societal and organisational expectations or pressures on ‘having answers’ or ‘being right’, illustrates the importance of working through these dynamics to increase self-awareness.  Line managers need to develop skills to reflect our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, as illustrated by the unprecedented nature of change experienced in recent times.

It is beneficial as a line manager who coaches to be at the receiving end of effective coaching, perhaps by going through 1:1 coaching.  By understanding one’s own style and how it impacts on others is helpful insight.  Also, by experiencing coaching directly and knowing what works well, and not so well, enables the transfer of learning into the line manager’s coaching skillset.     

Relationship building is a core component of effective coaching and starts with respect and trust of the coachee, as well as the careful building of core coaching skills, like effective listening.  It takes a quality of attention to build this trust and includes a genuine curiosity to develop a careful ‘reading’ of the coachee and responding accordingly.  A self-aware coach knows how to flex their style to get the most from the employee.   Jonathan Passmore reminds us that ‘coaching is about changes taking place within the person being coached’ and that ‘nothing can be imposed without the explicit or implied permission of the coachee’.  Neuroscience informs us that most of our behaviour comes from our unconscious thinking, often shaped by our past.  Understanding this ‘beneath the surface’ processing of information and helping to surface it into conscious awareness makes employees more insightful and adaptable.  

A great deal can happen in a dynamic coaching relationship, and so it is important that a line manager takes the opportunity to reflect on their own coaching performance.  Important questions to consider include:

• What is working well?  

• What could be better? 

• How can I develop myself as a coach?

Coaching is a core skill in the 21st century and needs to be learned and honed over time.  Line managers who coach should consider how they measure up against this skill set, how best to fill any gaps in both knowledge and skills and, finally, how to practice the skills and gain valuable feedback (perhaps through feedback from the coachee, peer coaching and supervision).    

In conclusion, the benefits of coaching go beyond the 1:1 interaction of a coaching relationship and can result in the creation of organisational benefits like a wider progressive coaching culture.  This, in turn, provides the right environment to create a sense of belonging, improved performance, team cohesion, improved conflict resolution and increased motivation.  With greater employee engagement, there is often more creativity, and this can improve ‘hard’ measures, like profitability.   

In these turbulent times, every employee wants to know that their work is valued.  Effective coaches give their employees the skills to develop themselves.  With higher levels of stress reported by many employees, humanity is needed in the workplace.  A line manager who can balance the needs of the coachee with the business goals is likely to build a much more connected, productive, and cohesive team.  

I am a highly experienced and qualified coach, counsellor and supervisor and can assist with coach development in a variety of different ways.  I am also a trainer and can design and deliver a bespoke training programme to further develop the skillsets of line managers.  

Please get in touch with me to start a conversation on how I might assist with your coaching needs.

 

Gallwey, Tim (2015)  – The Inner Game of Tennis – The ultimate guide to the mental side of peak performance.

Passmore, Jonathan (2015) – Leadership Coaching – working with leaders to develop elite performance.

Whitmore, Sir John (2017) – Coaching for Performance – The principles and practice of coaching and leadership