I regularly coach first-time managers through challenges with direct reports on their teams. What usually stands out is my clients’ sincere desire to do right by their directs. What I especially notice with the latest generation of new managers is a profound desire to empower and give their team space to grow. At first glance, this aligns well with the increasing focus on “coaching” as the optimal managerial approach. But while this sounds like a good thing in theory, it more often than not falls flat in execution. New managers are not just prioritizing giving their team space to grow – they are exchanging it for the essential skills of clarifying expectations and enforcing accountability.
Let’s take the following scenario as an example: you are a new manager and you are concerned that your direct is struggling with a particular project. They work hard, they are very passionate, and well-liked. But what they lack is not a specific hard skill, but rather an intuitive sense of how to navigate the complexities of the project. You know exactly what you would have done in this situation. You also know that you developed much of your own intuition over time, through experience. You want to give your direct the space to learn and grow, but you are not actually convinced they will ever improve.
So what do you do?
I like to distinguish between three modes of support that you can use to guide your team members in any given situation:
- manager
- coach, and
- mentor.
Choosing the appropriate type of support does not depend, as one might expect, on the person who needs your support. Rather, it depends entirely on the perspective and needs of the one providing support, i.e. you, the manager.
This is because the approach best suited for the situation depends entirely on how invested you are in a particular outcome. For example, going back to the scenario above:
- Do you have specific expectations on how your direct should navigate this project? Then take a manager approach: be transparent about the gaps you are observing and the outcomes you want to see, and find a way to hold them accountable.
- Are you ambivalent about the project itself, but want to ensure that they learn and grow from this experience? Then take a coach approach: help them define what success looks like from their perspective, champion them, and trust that whatever opportunity for growth unfolds is exactly what they need.
- Do you hope to protect them from making the same mistakes you made when you were in their role? Then take a mentor approach: get vulnerable and tell them about your past experience, and know that they will take away some valuable lessons.
As the manager of a team, it is hard work to separate yourself from the situations your directs are going through, and to look at them with a completely objective lens. Your own expectations, past experience, and external pressure, all play a part in the way you observe and respond to the situation. Acknowledging what you want in the situation is the only way to create the best outcome for your team.
The most common paradox that I observe in my coaching is one where a manager responds to a scenario like the one above with what they call “coaching” their direct toward a specific outcome, through subtle hints and nudging, without ever explicitly stating their expectations or concerns. This generally results in either an unsuccessful outcome, or more often than not, the manager ends up swooping in to save the project themselves at the last minute. And of course in the aftermath are growing frustration and resentment on the part of the manager, and little to no learning and growth on the part of their direct. There is no such thing as coaching someone toward your desired outcome. You can only coach someone toward what they define as success; if you have your own, different definition of success, it will get in the way of an effective, open-ended coach approach.
So why do new managers so often default to this ineffective approach?
The most common reason I hear is that they don’t want to “micromanage” their teams. Clarifying expectations and enforcing accountability are not micromanagement. They are characteristics of supportive, empowering, transparent management that lead to the growth and development of the entire team. When an individual is aligned objectively with their manager on (1) the outcomes of a project, (2) the process in which those outcomes are achieved and (3) an accountability mechanism, it creates just enough scaffolding for them to make progress independently toward well-defined milestones; and if things don’t go as planned, it prepares them to not just accept, but look forward to constructive feedback to help them succeed.
Somewhere along the way, “management” has become a dirty word, associated with the
command-and-control norm of previous decades. But the fact is, when done right, management is a beautiful and necessary mode of support that yields mutually beneficial growth and empowerment. This is not to say that managing as an approach is superior to coaching or mentoring – of course as a coach and mentor myself I believe in the incredible value of both. However, it is crucial to recognize when your own needs are getting in the way of employing them as effective tools, and to acknowledge that sometimes you simply need to be transparent with your team about what you want. After all, it’s not just about them. It’s about you, too.
