#330: 3 tips to transform managers to coaches
With new hybrid offices being the norm, our managers need to be better coaches
One of the things that the pandemic made clear is that managing virtual teams requires different skills than managing employees you monitor in person every day. Today’s managers need to be coaches instead of supervisors. For many companies, this represents a major shift in how they perceive the role and responsibilities of a manager. To make the shift successfully, leaders will need to help managers understand the changed scope of their role and train them so they can manage their distributed teams. In particular, these new-style managers need to know how to:
Inspire trust
“Psychological safety” is a term that describes an environment where people are not afraid to share their thoughts – and own up to their errors. Research shows that the highest-performing teams have a correspondingly high level of psychological safety. Managers can instill this sense of safety by modeling openness and vulnerability, being open to input and suggestions that are both positive and negative, and being transparent and empathetic.
As John Maxwell says, leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. Law #6 of his 21 Irrefutable Laws is the Law of Solid Ground. Trust is like change in a leader’s pocket. Each time you make good decisions, you earn more change. When you make poor decisions, you pay out some of your change to people.
We build trust by consistently exemplifying competence, connection, and character.
Character makes trust possible, and faith makes leadership possible.
Create clarity
It’s easy to feel you’re out of the loop when you work remotely. Managers can keep everyone connected by engaging in and encouraging frequent and comprehensive communications. They can also be very clear about their employee’s expectations and provide lots of feedback.
One has to be careful with this suggestion. Keeping track of progress can also look a lot like micromanagement. We often stress the need to empower our employees. They must be aware of this in advance if you are constantly checking up on them to maintain clarity. If we build trust in our team and them in us, space can grow between these check-ins.
Unlock potential
Even when teams are virtual, it’s still the manager’s responsibility to help employees develop and grow. They must keep team members’ professional and career development on their radar. And lastly, recognize that not all of your current managers are cut out to be the kind of coach-manager your organization needs now.
In re-designing your career tracks, consider the examples of Google and Apple, who have created an expert track that runs parallel to the management track. It offers a way for your key experts to be promoted and compensated without requiring them to manage employees.
Summary
The pandemic forced upon us near-immediate change that would have happened organically over the next decade. As we all can agree, the move from office to home had been a pie-in-the-sky goal for many years. Finding that there was an actual increase in production during the first year of Covid was an unintended benefit.
Hybrid and independent work is forever built into our futures. Learn to embrace it, and start thinking outside the box if your team is in the knowledge business. A “knowledge worker” is loosely defined as someone who shares, interprets, or applies information in jobs ranging from customer service reps to astrophysical programmers.
Build your system on trust, clarity, and accountability. It is hard work today, but it will lead you to a better tomorrow. If you have ideas and want to kick some things around, schedule a 30-minute free consultation with us at the Kole Performance Group.
Quite a bit of this was taken from the book: How the Future Works, Leading Flexible Teams To Do The Best Work of Their Lives, By Brian Elliott, Sheela Subramanian & Helen Kupp.