When To Manage And When To Coach Your Team
- Sep 19, 2024
- 4 min read
Written by Roxana Radulescu, Leadership & Team Coach
Roxana is the founder of All Personal, a Canadian award-winning leadership and team coaching & training company helping corporate team leaders and start-up co-founders boost leadership skills to become dream ‘bosses’ and build dream teams.
Often, in my coaching sessions with team managers, we work on how they can grow and use their coaching skills more so that they can be better leaders for their team (and get better results). I find that sometimes managers think they're coaching, but they're still managing. Which means they're 'telling,' not 'exploring.'They want to ‘fix’ low levels of motivation in some of their team members to do something about it, and so they provide solutions.
And when that doesn’t work, they feel frustrated, disappointed, discouraged:
'Nothing seems to work!’
‘I don’t understand why someone wouldn’t care about their career and just be happy with doing their job and nothing more?’ ‘
I keep trying to motivate them in our 1-1s and they nod in agreement, but then nothing changes.’
So, I am sharing some dimensions we approach in our coaching sessions that might be helpful to you as a team leader or team manager struggling to motivate and engage your team now.
1. Understand the wider system
Some of the questions that we explore here are:
'How is the respective team situated in the organization?'
'How do they perceive themselves?'
'What are the other teams' experiences of collaborating with this team?'
'How much do they feel they belong and are integrated in the system?'
'What makes them feel unique?'
'What makes them feel like 'the odd ones out'?'
2. Understand team dynamics
Some questions we explore are:
'What's the team purpose?
'What are the team's values?
‘How do individual values relate to the team's values and the organizational values?'
'What are the team's priorities?'
'How are priorities decided in the team?'
‘What are the individual and team expectations?’
3. Build conflict prevention and management skills
Effective conflict prevention and management skills are essential for all team members, not just the team leader!
So we work on helping the managers build their own and their team's capacity to deal with conflict and turn difficult conversations into more productive ones.
Some of the questions we work on are:
'If our stakeholders were in this meeting, what would they say?'
'What do we need from the team that we're getting?’
‘What do we need that we're not getting?’
‘How would that improve our productivity, collaboration or results?’
‘What do we avoid discussing that we need to do now? What if we still don't do that?'
4. Clarify goals and roles
Clear goals, performance indicators, and roles are vital for team success.
I find that going back to setting SMART goals helps managers clarify these elements.
Most of us are familiar with SMART goal setting. I’ve put together some additional questions to explore with this framework, in this free ‘Manager to Coach Quick Guide’.
5. Coach the team
Working on coaching skills for the manager also means we explore ways in which they can coach their team.
As a team coach, I find it so rewarding to see a team manager who can coach their team and create a culture of continuous improvement and self-sufficiency.
So, some of the questions we explore are:
'What if you brought The Stakeholder's voice in every team meeting? What would that change for the team?’
‘What would that voice say?’
What would you say or ask this new ‘team member’?'
6. Coach the individual
Here, we start by making sure that the situation/individual fits the coaching need rather than the managing need.
If someone doesn’t have the skill or knowledge to do something, they need managing, not coaching.
If someone has the skill but is not clear on how to use it at its full potential, feels demotivated, or is confused about goals and priorities, that’s where coaching is helpful.
Remember, coaching is not about 'telling' people what to do and how to do things.
It’s about helping them explore what they can do and how they want to do it.
So that's where the next step comes in: explore asking questions, rather than making statements, in order to understand each team member's unique needs and aspirations.
A helpful model that provides a good structure to ask purposeful questions is the GROW model (a basic coaching model). It allows you to stay focused in your exploration conversation with your team members.
To help you use this model fully, I’ve shared some useful questions you can ask when you coach (not manage!) your team members in the same quick guide. The Manager to Coach Quick Guide is useful if:
You are leading a team and want to develop your coaching skills as a manager.
If you are not leading a team but want to work your way UP in your organization. You can use these models to better understand your manager or senior management team, increase your visibility, and build a strong profile as a trusted advisor.
If you want to dive deeper into the art of modern leadership, here are more free resources for team managers:
Book a complimentary 30-minute call, and ask your questions about growing from manager to leader and coach.
Roxana Radulescu, Leadership & Team Coach
Roxana is the founder of All Personal, a Canadian award-winning leadership and team coaching & training company. Unlike other people leadership programs that focus on top executives, All Personal also works with mid-senior corporate leaders and start-up co-founders – and their teams! Roxana is a TEDx speaker, a certified Professional Coach – ACC with the International Coaching Federation, EIA with the European Mentoring & Coaching Council (EMCC), and Team Coach – ITCA with EMCC, Scaled OKRs coach and a certified GCologist®. She holds a diploma in Learning & Development and Human Resources practice from the Chartered Institute for Personnel & Development in the UK.
