What Distinguishes Kickass Managers From Average Managers
The coaching side of management
Katrine Tjoelsen
May 06, 2023
👋 Hey, y’all,
This is Learn With Kat, where I share short, actionable advice to help you grow professionally, in 3 minutes or less.
The Coaching Side of Management
As an eager high-achiever, you’ve probably picked jobs based on where you’d learn the most.
The flip side is: To attract the best talent to work for you, you need to help them grow.
Most managers say they care about developing their team, but they have no idea how to do it.
Here’s what I wish all managers did:
Understand your colleagues’ deeper goals
What do your colleagues dream about? What’s important to them? Ask them.
We can also ask about their past. What journey have they been on since middle school until now? What drove their decisions along the way? Nothing reveals values as much as past choices.
Only by understanding where someone’s wanting to go, can we help them on their journey.
Help your colleagues discover answers themselves
In coaching, a premise is that the coachee is creative, resourceful, and whole. The coachee has answers within them.
Yet too many conversations at work go like this:
— Employee: “I’m trying to accomplish X, but I’m stuck”
— Colleague: “How about doing Y?”
We jump straight to advice-giving. The advice plague feels even more pervasive among managers.
It’s disempowering and a lost opportunity: Usually, the other person has far more context to come up with the right answer.
Instead, we can be curious and ask questions:
— Employee: “I’m trying to accomplish X, but I’m stuck”
— Colleague: “What options have you explored?”
— Employee: “I considered such and such, but they don’t seem to work.”
— Colleague: “Let’s take a step back. What’s needed for your big goal of accomplishing X?”
We all need advice here and there
Of course. But while advice is sometimes appropriate, asking questions is far more lacking.
Your colleagues will appreciate you for it.
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