Management Summary
Modern leadership also requires many managers to act as coaches for their employees. This leads to a conflict of roles. This is due to the fact that employees and managers are part of the same system. A manager can therefore never be a coach for their own employees.
Nevertheless, every manager can integrate key coaching tools into their leadership and thus support employees in their further development. These tools are
- Giving non-judgemental feedback
- Ask targeted questions
- Active listening
- Summarise and create commitment
- Conduct regular development meetings
This type of leadership offers both the manager and the employees various opportunities, e.g:
- The common basis of trust is strengthened.
- Employees' self-confidence, problem-solving skills and personal responsibility grow.
- The manager is relieved by more effective employees.
What conditions must be met for coaching to be effective?
For coaching to be effective, there are three key requirements:
- The coachee wants to develop further.
- There is a basis of trust between coach and coachee.
- The coach has expertise.
The attitude of the coachee
We've all tried to develop ourselves in areas that we didn't find interesting:
- Certain school subjects that we didn't like
- Hobbies that were more our parents' interests
- Subjects that did not interest us
We know from these experiences that further development is hardly possible, or only possible with great effort, if we lack the will.
Therefore, the basic prerequisite for the success of coaching is an open attitude on the part of the coachee.
Trust between coach and coachee
Further development takes place outside the comfort zone. If the coachee has no trust in the coach, they will not leave their comfort zone. This makes further development impossible. If the coach has no trust in the coachee, he will never be able to act from a position of integrity, so the coachee will not really trust the coach.
The expertise of the coach
A coach's expertise includes many different things. I will focus on five at this point:
- Establish trust
- Value-neutral listening
- Ask targeted questions
- Structuring and focussing the topic from different perspectives
- Leave responsibility with the coachee
Manager as coach
Why can't a manager be a coach for their own employees?
As managers and employees are part of the same system, managers cannot be coaches for their own employees. If they were, there would be a conflict of roles at the relationship level.
Let me illustrate this with an example.
Example of the role conflict between manager and coach
Employee Z would like to develop further in order to take on a leadership role in the team in the next step. She seeks a coaching dialogue with her manager. The manager unconsciously compares the employee with herself in many situations, sees her own role at risk and therefore ignores many areas for development in the conversation.
This conflict of roles cannot be resolved.
What tools can managers use to develop their employees?
Even if managers cannot act as coaches for their own employees, they can integrate effective tools into their day-to-day management to support the development of their employees:
- Giving non-judgemental feedback
- Ask targeted questions
- Active listening
- Summarise and create commitment
- Conduct regular development meetings
Non-judgemental and constructive feedback
In my article "Feedback as a management tool", I present three discussion structures that will help you to formulate your feedback in a non-judgemental and to-the-point way.
Ask targeted questions
I have described in detail in another article how you can ask targeted questions and how you can train targeted questions.
Managing director knowledge: Leading purposefully with effective questions
In the table below, I have compiled a list of effective questions that initiate or support development processes.
Effective questions for managers
Clarify goal
- What is your why?
- How would you like to make an effective contribution?
- How would your colleagues and I recognise that you're bringing it in? (...) What else?
Ask for motivation
- Why is it important for you to take on this new role?
- What would you need to fully support this development step?
- What would it take to fulfil your tasks with head and heart?
Emphasise benefits
- Let's say you achieved this goal as a team, what would be the benefit for you?
- Let's say you had the unique opportunity to actively shape this topic. What could be a possible benefit for you and your team?
- Hypothetically speaking..., what could be a benefit for someone who takes on this task, which at first glance seems quite thankless, for four weeks? (...) What else?
Uncover resources
- What of what makes you work together as a team should definitely be reflected in the upcoming project?
- What exactly enabled you to achieve what you set out to do? (...) What else?
- Which strengths, which result from the cooperation of your different personalities, have we not yet considered?
Record the starting point
- On a scale of 0-10, if 0 means "not yet started" and 10 means "completed", where are you currently in relation to this task?
- On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your ability to make decisions? 1 means: "I am very insecure when I have to make decisions alone". 10 stands for: "I decide on my own, even if I am not 100% sure."
- If I were to ask your team colleagues: "How appreciative is colleague Joe Bloggs of you? On a scale of 1-10, what value would they give me? 1 means "hardly appreciative". 10 means "very appreciative". (...) What do you think is the basis for this assessment?
Initiate development
- Where on the scale would you like to be in our next conversation in terms of your decision-making competence? (...) Why there? (...) What made it possible for you to reach this value?
- Which of the identified fields of development should we pay attention to first? (...) Why this one in particular? (...) With what goal?
- Assuming you achieve what you set out to do, what has changed for you/your environment as a result?
Identify potential hurdles and develop a plan B
- Let's consider the unlikely event that something comes up. What could that be? (...) What else? (...) How could we make sure that exactly this case does not happen?
- What risks could arise in the course of the project?
- Let's assume that our goal is that absolutely nothing goes wrong. What precautions would we already have to take to achieve this goal?
Recognising progress
- Let's say you would look back very favourably on the last four weeks. What would you be absolutely proud of?
- In our last interview, you rated your professional competence with a 4. How would you rate it today? (...) Why so? (...) What has enabled you to make this (small) progress? (...) What else?
- What positive changes have your colleagues noticed in the last three months? (...) What else?
When reading the questions, you will have noticed that hypothetical questions also play a role in coaching alongside open questions. This type of question helps to reduce mental barriers and the resulting resistance.
A subtype of the open question is the scaling question. It aims to make things that seem less tangible equally concrete for all dialogue partners. It also makes it possible to visualise and thus recognise even minor progress.
The thing that all these questions have in common is their solution focus. This keeps the thinking and the atmosphere of discussion constructive and looking towards the future or the solution.
Active listening
Another tool that managers should use (not only in coaching sessions) is active listening. This is illustrated by paraphrasing. Paraphrasing involves repeating what has been said in your own words. You can use these phrases to introduce paraphrases:
- You say...
- You care about...
- If I have understood you correctly, you are concerned with ...
- The central aspect for you is ...
- Your main idea is ...
- You mention the aspect .....
Summarise and create commitment
At this point, I would like to mention a third tool for conducting conversations that also plays an important role in coaching conversations and is also useful for managers: the summarising tool. Summarising at the end of the conversation not only focuses on the essentials but also creates commitment. Below are some useful phrases for this:
- How would you summarise our agreement?
- What is the essence of our conversation?
- What exactly do we agree now?
- What concrete steps do we keep until our next conversation?
Conduct regular development meetings
More and more companies are starting to hold development meetings several times a year. I support this development. If you need ideas for preparing and organising development meetings, you can find them in the article on employee appraisals.
Employee appraisals - preparation, implementation and pitfalls
What are the opportunities for continuous employee development?
Various opportunities arise from continuous employee development.
Opportunities for the employee
- Self-confidence and self-assurance increase
- Solution expertise is strengthened by "asking instead of telling"
- Increasing scope for responsibility and organisation
- Growing independence
- Expertise increases
Opportunities for the manager
- Employees' self-efficacy increases
- Delegation is made easier
- Relief from operational tasks is increasing
- Team effectiveness grows
- Achieving goals becomes easier
Opportunities for the company
- Expertise is continuously built up
- The organisation's solution expertise is growing
- A culture of trust can grow
- Employees' sense of belonging to the company is strengthened
- Costs for errors, staff turnover and illness can be reduced
If you want to further develop your leadership role, our executive coaching offers you the opportunity to do so.
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