Team Leader as a Coach

Gijs Van Wezel

When presented with a scenario, nine out of 10 executives want to help their direct report do better. But when they’re asked to role-play a coaching conversation with him, they demonstrate much room for improvement. They know what they’re supposed to do: “ask and listen,” not “tell and sell.” But that doesn’t come naturally, because deep down they’ve already made up their minds about the right way forward, usually before they even begin talking to the employee. So their efforts to coach typically consist of just trying to get agreement on what they’ve already decided. That’s not real coaching—and not surprisingly, it doesn’t play out well.

Here’s roughly how these conversations unfold. Executives often start with open-ended questions, such as “How do you think things are going?” This invariably elicits an answer very different from what they expected. So they reformulate the question, but this, too, fails to evoke the desired response. They may become frustrated and resort to asking leading questions. “Don’t you think your personal style would be a better fit in a different role?” This makes the direct report defensive, and he becomes even less likely to give the hoped-for answer. Eventually, feeling that the conversation is going nowhere, the executives switch into “tell” mode to get their conclusion across. At the end of the exercise, no one has learned anything about the situation or themselves."

Are you ready to "ask and listen?"