Stop Managing, Start Coaching: The Shift That Changes Everything for a Leader

Let me paint you a picture. A manager, let's call her Dana, has a high-performing employee who's been slipping lately. Deadlines missed and energy is noticeably lower. And so Dana calls him into the office, runs through the issues, tells him what needs to change, and sends him on his way. Problem solved, right? Except for 3 weeks later, nothing has changed. The behavior's the same, and now Dana is even more frustrated, and the employee feels micromanaged and undervalued. Sound familiar? It should, because that scene plays out in offices everywhere, every single day. And the reason it doesn't work, it isn't because Dana doesn't care. It's because she managed when she should be coaching. I'm your host, and in this episode, we are going to discuss how to turn you into a powerhouse coach. We had an episode recently called Hiring a Leadership Coach. Ask them these 15 questions. And the number one question I got from that episode was actually, how can I become a powerhouse coach for my people? It doesn't dismiss having a coach. That's for that episode. This one I really want to get into and help you really become a powerhouse coach for your people. And it's not the kind of coaching that sounds good in a performance review. This is real coaching, the kind that develops people, builds accountability, and creates teams that don't need to be handheld through every decision. Here's what you're gonna walk away with from today's episode. You'll understand exactly why coaching is different from managing and mentoring and why that distinction matters. Also, you'll get a great mindset shift that separates average leaders from truly great leaders. And you'll get a practical step-by-step coaching framework that you can use in your very next one-on-one. And if you're in HR, you'll get concrete strategies for bringing a coaching culture into your entire organization. Stay with us.

Welcome to Shedding the Corporate Bitch, the podcast that transforms today's managers into tomorrow's powerhouse leaders. Your Host Bernadette Boas, executive coach and author, brings you into a world where the corporate grind meets personal growth and success in each and every episode. Let's do this.

Before we talk about how to coach, let's talk about and get clear on what coaching actually is, because it gets confused oftentimes with managing and mentoring. Managing is about directing. It's very task-focused. When you manage someone, You primarily concerned with outputs. Did the work get done? Did it meet standards? Are we on track? Managing is necessary because it keeps operations going, but it doesn't really grow people. Now mentoring is about sharing. A mentor draws from their own experiences and expertise and says, here's what worked for me and here's what I wish I had known, and maybe that'll benefit you. Now there's real value in that, but it's Very one-directional. The mentor's wisdom flowing to the mentoree. Now coaching is different from both. Coaching is about unlocking. It's the belief that the person in front of you already has the capacity and the capability to figure things out, and your job is to help them access that. A coach asks more than they tell. They listen more than they speak. And coaches help someone develop insight rather than just handing them the answers. So you can look at it as managing gets work done, mentoring passes wisdom down, and coaching builds people up. All right. Now, here's why this matters beyond the philosophy. Gallup research consistently shows that employees who feel their manager takes a genuine interest in their development are significantly more engaged. And engaged employees are more productive, less likely to leave, and more likely to go over and beyond what they're asked to do. But beyond engagement, coaching builds something even more valuable: self-sufficiency. When you coach someone through a problem, rather than solving it for them, they internalize that thought process of the questions that were asked and how they got to the answer or to the solution. The next time a challenge comes up for them, they're going to recall the process that they went through before and were successful with. And that has a compounding effect as a result of the good coaching you provided them. So it multiplies their capacity because you're not the bottleneck anymore. You're not just telling them what to do or how to solve a problem. You're actually tapping into their current capability and capacity, asking them for their thoughts and for what ideas they have, if it's to solve a problem or to create a new idea, and then allowing them to reach the conclusion on their own. And as a result, accountability— coaching drives it organically. When an employee identifies their own solution and commits to the actions that they've defined, they're far more likely to follow through and be Responsible, therefore accountable for what is going to be done and what the outcome is. So ownership changes their behavior. So if you consider one thing when it comes to really become an accountability coach is that help them take ownership and you will see their behavior and their performance and ultimately their results change. Before we get into the how-to of coaching, let's talk about the mindset shift you or someone else needs to make in order to really take on a very powerhouse coaching mindset, because there is a definitive shift that needs to be made. First off, we talked about it. You have to accept and want to. Make the shift from being the problem solver, the problem fixer, to the person who's really empowering or helping someone else grow in their own capacity by allowing them to come up with their own answers, solve their own problems, make their own decisions, create their own ideas. And so that first is a big shift many managers have when when it comes to really transforming into a coach leader is you are no longer there to fix the problem or tell them or do the work for them. You're there to guide them and coach them through empowering themselves to take on that work or take on that decision or take on that task and see it through for themselves. And that distinction is important. Because problem solvers are just simply going into any conversation or any collaboration that's happening, and they're looking for, you know, the problems to solve or the ideas to create or the answers to the questions before, oftentimes before they're even raised up. And yet a coach approaches any conversation and all conversations with curiosity. They're already just wanting to sit back and understand what's going on in the other person's head. Allow them to express that, ask a lot of questions to fill in any gaps for their own understanding, but making that shift from wanting to problem solve to wanting and being curious to understand the other person is a big shift that takes time. It takes patience, but it, it takes priority and a desire to really want to help that other person grow. So think about a manager. Let's call him Marcus, and his team member Priya comes to him struggling with a difficult stakeholder relationship. And this is a common situation in the workplace are just team members engaging, uh, a team member with a boss, peer-to-peer relationships as a whole. Now, old Marcus, all right, so old Marcus, who was that problem fixer, who's now working toward being that coach, old Marcus would spend most of his conversation telling Priya exactly how to handle the situation, how to handle that stakeholder, what to do, what not to do. The new Marcus really wants to coach Priya by asking a lot of questions so he can really understand the situation, but at the same time, lead her to solving that problem or coming up with ideas that she could be practicing. So he asks Priya in that conversation what she's already tried, what she thinks is driving the tension, what's going on. What— give me an example of the scenario the two of you are having and might even suggest what a successful relationship looks like, getting her feedback on if she agrees or disagrees, or at least what is her idea of a mutually effective relationship between stakeholders. As a result of this conversation, this collaboration, this strategizing, but overall from Marcus's perspective, this coaching, Priya is able to walk away more confidently And with a plan that she developed herself. Yes, with the support of Marcus. But if Marcus did his job and he asked all the right questions, he's led her to being able to say, oh, okay, so this is what's driving the tension between us. This could be what I need to uncover and have a deeper conversation with the stakeholder. And these are my ideas for how I'm going to handle that the next time we engage. And so she walks away with a plan, with confidence. She goes and executes it. And the next time she hits a similar wall, maybe with a whole different person, she now has the understanding, but she also has a process for both thinking and executing. And she has a framework for addressing that situation. And so as a coach, Marcus also walks away feeling pretty good that her that one of his people now have the tools and the resources and the confidence to handle those situations themselves. And how much a relief is that for a boss? Is that for a manager? That your people can handle their own situations, their own conflicts, their own tensions, their own debates, and they don't need to take up your time when you're supposed to be strategizing and visioning and, and really looking at the business as a whole. You are now coaching and guiding your team members to handle those situations on their own because you're giving them that structure to do so. You're giving them that space to come up with their own plan and their own next steps to a situation that they might be dealing with. As a coach who sees it every day, those aha moments are just so rewarding. So expanding on that situation with Marcus, the new Marcus, as a result of putting on his coaching hat, he is recognizing that coaching, effective coaching, results-oriented coaching is all about curiosity, listening, and trust. So curiosity is all about approaching any situation and any individual or group of individuals with a genuine interest in what it is that they are working on, as opposed to any preconceived conclusions or judgments or decisions or ideas, whatever the case might be. Curiosity. Allows an individual to really get interested, lean in, and just ask questions to really understand, truly, genuinely understand what a situation is that they can help coach and guide someone else through. Whereas the old Marcus would have approached any conversation with, all right, what is the problem that I can solve? What is the idea that I can create? How can I start talking as opposed to just sitting and listening? Because I have a lot to say. Good coaches sit back, they listen, they seek to understand with their curiosity, and then they ask a lot of questions and guide someone through to the point of letting, empowering them to either create, solve, or strategize more. Now listening, and you hear a lot about active listening, but coaches have to genuinely listen to the other party, not just watch their mouths move, but they need to listen for any gaps, any misalignments. They need to listen for specific words that could be contrary to what it is that they're expressing, or it could be a surface-level word or, or conversation that really has a lot of valuable information underneath it that needs to be drilled into to really get the full context of a situation. And so most managers, old Marcus, would've just gone in being very rushed, being very stressed, being very frustrated, already formulating, you know, their responses to something as opposed to actually listening. They just interject, cut off, get abrupt, and just start telling again. And so along with curiosity, Powerhouse Coaches are going to really ensure that they have their listening mindset on so they can really dig in and understand how they can guide their employee or client to a good endpoint, regardless of what the situation is. And then trust. I have this conversation all the time with managers. Coaching is built on trust. You don't have trust between yourself and the individual that you're coaching, there is no coaching. If someone doesn't trust you to be fair, unbiased, nonjudgmental, open, considerate, attentive, intentional, then there isn't a relationship, let alone there isn't a trusted relationship. That then can be coached. So it's critical for any coach or leader coach to ensure that they are building a very strong foundation of trust, psychological safety, in order to ground that coaching. And as I mentioned, psychological safety is the absolute prerequisite to coaching. Without it, you don't have it. So keep that in mind. All right, let's get practical. So we're gonna walk through a 6-step coaching framework that you could be using in any meaningful conversations, whether that be one-on-ones, whether that's developmental, whether that's performance check-ins, or just a real conversation that you're having with one or a group of people. Step 1, prepare. Now that sounds really simple, but you'd be amazed at how few leaders actually prepare prior to going into a conversation. Now, I mentioned one-on-ones, performance reviews, uh, team meetings. Maybe it is corrective action, uh, type of discussions. Uh, maybe it is stakeholder relationship type of conversations. May— maybe it is a business case type of conversation. And yet they go in and just go ad hoc. They improvise. They have no real plan or outline. And that will be the biggest reason why potentially a message doesn't land, a plan doesn't transpire, a conversation doesn't end the way you were hoping and it goes off the rails. It could be why a business case isn't approved. Is because the lack of planning. So we start with preparing for the conversation. Now, before you sit down with someone, whether they initiated it or you initiated it, you really wanna take 5 minutes to put a plan in place. What is it that this person could be struggling with, or what is it that they're working on that you want more information around? Now remember, curiosity. Listening, trust. Around your curiosity, what is it that you would want to learn and take away from any amount of time that you spend with an individual? Consider what have you observed from this individual that you can then provide them feedback on, whether it's behavior, their output, their energy, the attitude, their overall performance. And lastly, most importantly, is you want to ensure that as you're walking into that meeting or getting onto that Zoom or picking up the phone, you're in a mindset that is going to be productive, going to be effective, and is a coaching mindset, not a problem-solving fixer mindset. Because any situation of a people leader with their individual team member should be a coaching mindset. Now, there is times to lead or to direct, and yet the majority of the conversations and collaborations between manager and employee should be more coaching-focused than problem-solving, telling, directing, or doing. Step 1, take 5 minutes to really understand the context of the conversation that you could be having. Understand what is your endpoint and the fact that you need to be curious and you need to listen intently and you need to really create a trusting environment. Uh, with how you approach the conversation so they open up and have a conversation with you, not a one-directional dialogue. And to make it as effective as possible, you need to ensure that you're preparing prior to initiating. Step 2, you need to ask powerful questions and more so just write, ask questions, don't make statements. And that's a, that's literally a quote of mine that I share with my clients on a regular basis. So you need to really take some time again, like 5 minutes and intentionally sit down and consider the questions you want to ask based on your curiosity of what it is you want to either gather or share and have a dialogue with when it comes to coaching a team member, because asking questions, that this is the engine of coaching, is asking the questions. Remember, we're not telling anymore. We're not problem solving. We're not fixing. We're asking questions and leading them to answer their own questions, solve their own problems, make their own decisions, put together their own plan that you might have to guide them toward. Um, but your job as a coach, remember, is growing them, developing them, supporting them, and that is coaching them. Let's talk about what type of questions would be considered powerful. And again, very simply, asking questions is all about asking open-ended questions, not closed. You don't want yes or no questions. And I I see it far too often where a manager's just trying to get through the conversation. You know, you have 10 performance reviews to do before, you know, within 30 days. And all you do is sit down, tell, tell, tell, tell, tell, tell, not ask one question, tell, tell, tell, tell, tell. And you know, you feel satisfied and they walk away totally confused, totally dejected, totally demoralized. And unsure of what to do next. Asking powerful questions is asking very creative, open-ended questions and then listening for those gaps, listening for those underlying vibrations, so to speak, of what the real truth or the real problem or the real story is. But let's first talk about the type of questions you could be asking. First, to open the conversation, you wanna make sure that everyone's guards are down. That everyone's open to conversation, you and they. And so you might say something like, hey, what's on your mind? What did you want to talk about? What would be most valuable for us to focus on in this conversation? And immediately that those questions right then and there tell them that you want to have a conversation. You just don't want to be directing and telling. And you're interested in what it is that they want to accomplish, not just what you want to accomplish. Always frame how you're going to open a conversation, regardless if it's a performance review or a behavior correction type of conversation, or it's a status update on work progress, whatever the case might be. Be intentional about how you open the conversation to make sure that both of you get what you need from that time you're spending together. Then you wanna ask questions to really understand what the situation is, whatever that might be. Walk me through what's happening from your end. You know, what have you tried so far? Uh, what is causing the tension between you and blue, blue, blue, blue, blah? How can I support you? Asking these open-ended questions allows them to lean in and engage. As opposed to just sit back and get fired at. And then you want to be able to explore deeper what it is that they might be raising up, but they're raising it up at the surface and you need to get into the nitty-gritty of the situation. And so going back to even the example that we have regarding stakeholder tension, you might ask a question like, what do you think is really driving this? What might be causing you to be, be behave or perform in this way? What's getting in the way of you doing X, Y, and Z? Explore and be sure that you're digging in. And then what you're looking for is potentially to shift the perspective of that individual, or maybe even yourself, because now you're gaining more information about something. You're genuinely listening and you're exploring deeper. So both of you could have your perspectives shifted, but to get them out of their head about any type of situation, you might ask them, so if you were coaching or advising someone else, what would you suggest? Well, how would you go about it? What questions would you ask them? What guidance would you give them? Sometimes we have to get out of our own junk to really then come up with our own solutions, our own answers, our own decisions. Our own ideas. And so really work intentionally, think through a question that you could be asking that will allow them to shift their perspective from where it is. And so you're helping them shift their perspective. And again, if you had a certain preconceived idea going in and yet you're having these very powerful open-ended question dialogue, your own perspective could be shifted. The next one would be around problem solving. And this is one of the simplest but most powerful set of questions you could be asking as opposed to solving problems or fixing things for people. Keep in mind, your people want to feel valued, that they're contributing, and they, um, ha— are utilizing the talents and the capability and the capacity that they embody. And so the number one question you could be doing when it comes to someone brings you a problem is, what ideas do you have? What options do you see? How would you go about solving this problem? And again, you could pull in the, if you couldn't fail, how would you solve this problem? They then take ownership. Remember we talked about that. They take ownership and they feel proud when they're able to solve their own problem. And to close out a conversation, critical, to close out a conversation, you need to ensure that both of you are on the same page, that both of you align to what was discussed. So you might say, in order to really ground your understanding and to check understanding between the two of you, I wanna be sure I'm hearing you right. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Is this what you mean? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Get clarity even throughout the conversation. Get clarity around what an individual is saying to you. So then whenever additional questions or whatever guidance you provide them, you're both working off the same understanding and that there isn't confusion even before getting into the end gate. So find questions to open the conversation, understand the situation, explore even deeper, move towards solutions, and to really check understanding between you. Nothing's worse than two people walking away from a conversation that might have taken 10 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, and one or both of them are confused and feel as if nothing got accomplished. Step 3 is active listening, and we've talked about this. However, just to reiterate. Active listening is being curious, is wanting to understand, not just allow people to talk, yet you already have your own predetermined response that you're going to interject. And you're not at all looking to understand. You're not at all looking to allow others to create ideas, problem solve, answer questions, make decisions on their own. And so it means that you need to sit back. You need to let your team do what you're paying them to do. You ask questions to guide them to fill in any gaps, to gain understanding for not only yourself, but for everyone in the room, to course correct if things are going off track. And to get to the end result that is laid out for that particular conversation, meeting, whatever the case might be. Step 4, which we've also talked about, is help employees find their own answers, find their own solutions. And by doing that, you will be firming up that foundation of trust and empowering them to be self-sufficient, as we discussed at the very beginning, that is coaching's key result is helping your team members be self-sufficient. And how much white space can you open up on your calendar if your people were self-sufficient, were able to get to the endpoint on their own while keeping you informed, keeping you updated. Arming you with the information that's needed and therefore minimizing any risks, filling any gaps for you proactively. How much time would that open up? How much stress would that relieve? How much opportunity that will give you to do your real job? Step number 5, ensure that you're, from a coaching framework perspective, you're creating an action plan. Plan as a result of every conversation or session that you're having. Ensure that even your status meetings, which often will end with no assignments, no due dates, just a lot of conversations about what should be done, yet no one takes the lead in ensuring that someone's assigned to it. There's a due date set to it. There's a, uh, follow-up cadence or reporting cadence of that activity. Ensure that you're leaving those sessions with clear action plans. What are clear action plans? They're what is going to be done next, what actions need to be taken, who's going to do it, by when, what, you know, what are the key outcomes that are expected, and then the how-to can be determined by the person who's assigned to it after that. And you want those action plans defined by the employees, not by you. Again, you should be sitting back and allowing your team to get to that action plan. Again, we're looking for self-sufficiency. We're looking for ownership. We're looking for accountability. We're looking for commitment. And to do that, you need to make sure your employees feel empowered to do the job that they were hired to do. And the last step is accountability. And you get that through follow-up. Coaching is not a one session or one conversation or one interaction done and you move on. You need to ensure as the coach to have a pull-through, to have a follow-up, to go back and assess how that situation played out. Was it successful? Are there things that need to be tweaked? What did someone learn from it? How are they using that guidance today and going forward? Uh, what worked, what didn't work? So you want to ensure that you are always following up after any type of coaching or feedback. Or action planning that you're doing with your team members, you want to follow up. You want to hold that individual accountable. Lastly, I wanted to provide some practical tips and strategies for HR leaders because they too are the foundation of modeling coaching within the organization, uh, both from themselves, but also the expectation that is set with leaders in the company. So several things I want you to consider if you're an HR leader is first would be build coaching skills into your manager development programs. Include training, include development around how to coach, how to give feedback, how to ask powerful questions, how to even create powerful questions. Allow them the opportunity to role play and to practice and to assess themselves when it comes to their own coaching skills. It will level up their capacity as a leader tremendously by intentionally putting a focus on coaching skills within their own development programs. Secondly, for as HR, create an observation and feedback loop for managers. Anytime you're interacting with them, anytime you're observing them with others, Initiate immediate feedback to them around how they're approaching those dialogues, those conversations, dealing with those conflicts, handling those confrontations, coming up with those, you know, solutions, helping to develop and grow their people. Give them immediate feedback and make it a natural part of your interaction, your partnership with the leaders within your organization. You would help tremendously with providing them third-party, unbiased, constructive feedback, helping them to develop and transform themselves into those coach leaders that you're looking for. Third one would be to revisit how you're evaluating managers. Yes, there are those performance metrics based on the hard numbers, the business numbers. The revenue, the EBITDA, the turnover. However, the critical ones when it comes to leadership is around people development, the manager effectiveness, the employee engagement. Ensure that those have weight in their performance reviews, has weight in their wallet around their bonuses or raises. If you want to really grow and develop leaders, You need to ensure you're just not measuring them as managers. Number 4 would be to really normalize the language around coaching at all levels of the organization. And one way of doing that would be that from top to bottom, even the senior leaders are modeling asking questions. It could be in all-hands meetings. It could be in team leadership meetings. It could be in recognizing and acknowledging certain employees and the work that they're doing, talking about their own development. There's a lot of different ways where leaders of an organization can both model and normalize coaching, both in language and behavior. So then everyone within the organization is recognizing that culture, that approach, and therefore taking it on themselves. Because we tend to look up and model the type of managers and leaders we are working with. And therefore, if they model that behavior, that language, then others are going to follow suit. And then lastly, but really importantly, is, and I have to tell HR leaders this as well as hiring managers of someone like myself. And that is everyone needs to have patience when it comes to someone being coached, someone being asked to develop or to transform or to shift or to, or to just change in any way. They have to have patience and give them time to do that. If anyone's been on this earth 30, 40, 50, 60 years, they've had that much time to learn certain behaviors, certain attitudes, certain approaches, certain words. And it will take time and patience to undo those things that aren't working for them, as well as to expand on what is working for them. Make it safe to develop slowly. Don't add the additional pressure, even when you're high potentials, let alone anyone corrective behavior perspective. Don't put additional pressure on them to transform and, and change their perspectives quickly. It's really unfair and it's just going to create even more issue than if you were to give them patience and give them time and recognize the investment of both time and money as a long-term than an immediate to short-term. Now that doesn't dismiss wanting to see change and wanting to see adjustment. At the same time, we just need to be patient and give our people the time to make the adjustments, make the changes, uplevel their skills, uplevel their capability and their capacity. So everyone's successful and there's a good outcome for everyone. So we've covered a lot in this conversation. We've covered what coaching is, what the difference between managing, mentoring, and coaching, talked about the mindset shift that you're gonna need to make if you wanna be a leader coach. Uh, and then we walked through a 6-step coaching framework that you could be using now to re— really ensure that you're having effective, uh, conversations and you're really working on developing and growing your people. And we discussed some HR-specific strategies for really embedding coaching into the fabric of the culture and the business. So here's my challenge for you this week is the next time someone brings you an issue or there's a problem-solving conversation going on, or maybe even an innovation or idea creation. Going on. Sit back and simply be curious. Listen for understanding. Allow them to work through dialogue, debate, collaborate on whatever the situation might be. Ask questions to help guide them, fill in the gaps, course correct them as needed without saying you're off course, but ask powerful questions and see what happens. See what the outcome— watch for how they change, how they behave, how they respond to that. Especially if they're not used to it and they start looking at you as if, okay, are you ever going to say anything? And even if someone makes a comment like, Bernadette, aren't you going to say something? You simply say, no, continue. Continue talking and I'll interject when appropriate or when needed. Just, I challenge you to sit back, be curious, ask questions, and build that trust within your team that regardless of how cold or hot the conversation might be, or what the conversation might be, You're there to lend a coaching hand and allow them to get to the endpoint on their own. And I trust that you'll be very pleasantly surprised on the outcome or the response. Now, if this episode gave you something useful, then feel free to share it with your team or a colleague and help them grow and help them become a leader coach as well. And if you have a story of a leader that coached you in a way that changed your career, I would genuinely love to hear it. And you can email me directly at BernadetteBoas@ballofireinc.com. Lastly, be sure to subscribe to the show so you don't miss a single episode or one of our fabulous guests. And you can do that at ballofirecoaching.com/podcast. I look forward to seeing you next time for another episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch.

Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Every journey taken together is another step towards unleashing the powerhouse leader within you. Don't miss any of our weekly episodes. Subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. And for those who thrive on visual content, catch us on our Shedding the Bitch YouTube channel. Wanna dive deeper with Bernadette on becoming a powerhouse leader? Visit balloffirecoaching.com to learn learn more about how she helps professionals, HR executives, and team leaders elevate overall team performance. You've been listening to Shedding the Corporate Bitch with Bernadette Boas. Until next time, keep shedding, keep growing, and keep leading.