Developing line managers as coaches - Shaun Lincoln

At a recent public sector conference I was asked about coaching, in particular why develop line managers to coach their staff, and what would convince them to do it? A useful question, but all the time I kept hearing another question - what on earth would be convincing them not to coach?

Especially given that for the last 10 years, coaching has consistently come in CIPD surveys as a key way to motivating and helping individuals and teams to solve issues, improve performance and develop skills and confidence in the workplace, why not add it to your toolkit as manager?

Perhaps it might be that finding time to coach others seems a luxury they can not afford right now. But given that probably the biggest challenge line managers are facing right now especially in the public sector is maintaining and increasing staff drive and performance in a time when zero pay rises and lack of traditional public sector promotion opportunities coupled with inflation at 3.7% and rising. This means you are literally asking staff at all levels of performance to do more for less.

Read any recent books on motivation such as Drive (Pink, 2009) and Nudge (Thaler & Sunstein, 2009) and the message is consistently the same: managers using coaching skills to nudge staff to increase their mastery and autonomy not only increases their motivation and performance whilst decreasing their reliance on their line manager, but also taps into better, innovative ways of doing things that consultants rarely deliver. That’s if you can still afford to use consultants.

So what more will convince managers to coach given that it actually frees up their time and takes away the need for them to have all the answers?

If we accept coaching staff is about helping them get quicker from A to B than they can on their own, then working for a line manager who does not coach is a bit like having to walk to B yourself. You can do it, but your motivation and performance will probably drop on the way. That might convince some.

What might also convince are the numerous staff surveys where staff openly welcome line managers coaching them as long as there is genuine interest in the answers they give, that it is a two way conversation rather than task-driven ‘versations’ all too often experienced, and that it helps get to B.

In the end I asked the manager at the conference what would convince him. His answer was simple -  bottom-line tangible improvements that could be linked back to coaching and better understanding and motivation between him and his team. When has this happened in the past? When he had used a coaching approach with his team. Strange how he had the answer all along, just like I suspect most of his staff have to the various challenges his organisation  faces if only asked…