5 Steps to Transform Your Supervisors into Coaches

It has been said repeatedly over the past decade by a litany of authors, leaders, and thinkers, “People don’t work for companies, they work for people”. People don’t leave organizations, they leave bosses. When your people leave your company to work for someone else, more often than not, they are saying they no longer want to work for you.

Granted, there are times when people leave their jobs for better opportunities, more money, or to pursue a greater passion … and who can blame them for wanting to move forward in their careers. The unfortunate truth though is that often times, these same opportunities existed within the employee’s previous organization. They just didn’t have access to these opportunities.

This mismatch between what employees want from an employer, an opportunity to develop, a leader that cares about their professional well-being, and the ability to earn a comfortable living, also provides modern organizations with a tremendous opportunity. What if organizations taught their managers how to coach their employees, to help their people develop rewarding careers, rather than just teaching them how to manage the tasks their people are tasked with accomplishing in their current role? How much better would organizations perform if people could find a path to their future in their own company, if companies truly committed to retaining and developing their talented people, and job hopping ceased to become a necessity for career growth?

The workforce has changed tremendously over the years. It has become clear that to effectively lead people today, you need more than a title, a stern voice and technical knowledge. The command-and-control leadership style that thrived for years now rings hollow on many of the Gen X and Millennials so prevalent in today’s workforce.  Today, the most effective leaders and managers are those rare individuals who coach their employees to become a better version of themselves.  They are skilled at reaching individuals as people, not just as numbers or employees, rewarding performance in a manner that aligned with the individual’s needs, rather than being tied to tradition or their own agenda. 

Why Coach?

Coaching is not easy. It is time consuming, cumbersome and requires great skill. In its simplest form, coaching involves helping others broaden their skill base and learn to effectively and timely deliver these new skills to increase his or her performance. It requires coaches to have timely, and sometimes uncomfortable, conversations to help shape employee performance and focus. Just as an athlete relies on a coach to put them in position to make the proper play, employees count on their supervisors to put them in the positions with the right skills to make the right contribution to the company.

So why don’t more people coach? Why do we tend to spend more time trying to coerce and cajole our people than we do coaching them? The reasons are plentiful, but in its simplest terms, it is a skill set that is not often taught, is rarely role-modeled in schools or organizations, and can be difficult to master. Coaching involves developing personal relationships with individuals, something that has often been discouraged by many organizations. So how do you get your managers to become coaches rather than just supervisors? Here are five steps to help you develop a coaching culture in your organization.

1. Define what is in it for the coach.  Nobody makes a change unless the pain of remaining the same is greater than the pain of making the change. Showing your people how coaching will benefit their performance, their team’s performance and benefit their overall quality of life is a great way to get the ball rolling. Not only can they create a team capable of accomplishing results not possible for just one person, but the well developed teams with the right skills are far easier to supervise than teams filled with individuals who don’t possess the skills to succeed. Find real life examples in your organization or your community to demonstrate how effective teams are led by effective coaches while effective individual contributions are led only the individual contributor, and then compare the results.
2. Model the behavior. Being in a leadership position comes with the expectation that you set the
   
   standards and norms for the organization. Your people will watch what you do and will model the behaviors you exhibit. If you truly believe in developing a coaching culture in your organization, become a coach to your own direct reports. If you don’t know how to be a coach, consider hiring a consultant to come in and coach your people. By providing your direct reports with a firsthand example of what success looks like, what actions and behaviors are necessary to be an effective coach and to experience the personal growth associated with being coached, you will provide the path necessary for your people to model this same behavior throughout your organization. What you role model will be what your people will emulate, so take the time to ensure your coaching style is aligned with the expectations, aspirations, and values of the organization.
3. Set SMART goals and expectations.  Be specific, establish metrics for how often, when and what you want to accomplish from a coaching relationship. Make sure your goals are attainable and break down the end result into smaller, more manageable chunks. Be realistic in your expectations. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Setting unrealistic goals will cause the coaching relationship to become overly focused on the desired outcome rather than on the journey itself. Set goals that are time specific to ensure you have explicit measurement points and target dates. If coaching does not feel important, it won’t become important. Why you expect your people to become coaches is just as important as how, when, and where they coach.
4. Reward improvements and changes in coaching behaviors.  Remember that nobody, not even the most senior C-Suite executive, will learn to become a coach overnight. This is a new set of tools and skills your people need to perform. Formulate achievable benchmarks and reward the accomplishment of these benchmarks. Reward changes in behaviors that are guiding you toward a coaching culture. Define the low hanging fruit. Remember that the best way to change a behavior is to recognize the changes toward the new behavior. Simply congratulating or recognizing an individual on a successful coaching interaction can be a powerful tool, especially to younger workers in your group. When you were learning to talk, your parents didn’t wait until you said your first full sentence to praise you. They praised you for every small accomplishment towards this goal. Follow suit and reward small changes toward the end result.
5. Solidify a coaching culture into your company culture. No change can last if it is just the latest flavor of the week. Keep following up, modeling the behavior, and raising the expectations on coaching behaviors and results. Show your dedication to this new culture by rewarding your best coaches with new positions, promotions, and increased visibility in the company. People will see them as the model for which they strive to emulate. Share the stories about your most successful coaches and keep the coaching lexicon in your daily communication. Use the individuals who experienced the best coaches as heralds for the good that comes out of effective coaching. You will know when coaching becomes part of your company culture because you see it in your bottom line, feel it in your morale and hear it in your service.

By developing a culture of coaching, your people will have more rewarding careers, they will cease to need to leave your organization to grow, and you will develop a culture that attracts people looking for a career, not just a job.

Scott Brown, MSOL, is the Founder and Chief Engagement Officer at Hardie Consulting, a Fort Lauderdale, FL based management consulting firm.  Scott is a coach, a consultant, an author, and an award winning speaker who has successfully helped countless organizations learn how to meet shifting customer and employee expectations. Follow him on Twitter: @ScottBrownMSOL, connect with him on LinkedIn, visit his website:  www.HardieConsulting.com, and check out his new book, Alignment: How to Transform Potential into Performance, Productivity and Profit, available on Amazon or CreateSpace to learn more about how employee engagement and organizational alignment can become the linchpin to your success.