Coaching and mentoring are powerful tools for developing leadership skills and interpersonal skills, yet they serve unique purposes.
A mentoring relationship typically focuses on long-term career development, guiding future leaders through their professional journey. There are critical differences to the coaching approach, which centres on immediate goals and helps individuals improve performance through specific actions taken by the employee. At the same time, mentoring is focused on providing guidance and supporting broader career progression.
In a coaching relationship, the effective coach unlocks potential by targeting short-term objectives, while mentoring encourages holistic growth over time. Together, coaching and mentoring provide distinct differences that complement each other, empowering individuals to become confident, capable leaders. In this blog at Transformational Leadership Consulting, we’ll explore the key differences in more detail.
Managers as Coaches: Key Tips for Developing Effective Coaching Relationships
Managers are increasingly expected to raise their game and develop robust coaching skills to power organisational and employee performance in today’s workplace. A coaching approach has significant advantages over the traditional “tell them what to do” approach. It strengthens employee bonds and improves team dynamics, employee engagement, and professional development. In this blog, I’ll review the essential coaching skills for managers, focusing primarily on L.M.I.’s unique C.O.A.C.H. model, designed to empower and elevate team performance.
Why Do Companies Use Managers as Coaches?
Research studies have been conducted over the last twenty years, meaning employers now recognise the positive impact of creating a coaching culture throughout the organisation. Some proven outcomes include building employee trust, encouraging learning, and enhancing individual performance. When managers become coaches, they help their teams grow professionally while strengthening employee loyalty and collaboration, which can lead to higher job satisfaction, productivity, and retention rates.
Tips for Managers to Become Good Coaches
Managers need specific key skills and strategies to coach their team members effectively. Here are some practical tips for success:
Provide Consistent Feedback:
Regular employee meetings provide managers with valuable insights. They can listen and provide feedback to help employees stay aligned with their goals and encourage personal growth. The caveat here is to ensure your feedback is based on actual observations. When managers apply the constructive feedback approach, two challenges arise. Firstly, human beings have implicit biases, and when we provide subjective feedback, this can sometimes come across as judgemental. This is why research studies have suggested that traditional methods, such as the so-called constructive feedback approach actually reduce employee performance in a third of cases. This is why the LMI COACH process can effectively empower employees.
Offer Flexibility:
Allow team members to find their preferred ways of working within clear parameters. We all learn in different ways. Some people are more reflective and academic in their learning preferences. In contrast, others are more action-oriented and experiential, so the manager must make adjustments to allow the employee to learn in a manner that plays to their learning preferences.
Set Personal and Professional Development Goals:
L.M.I. has been highlighting the benefits of goal-orientated action for over 60 years. As a manager, you must encourage your employees to set and work toward individual goals beyond their traditional job description. This creates and embeds a continual learning culture and shows your team members you genuinely care about their professional development and career success within the company.
Create Reflection Opportunities:
It’s not uncommon for employees and managers to feel overwhelmed by workflows and daily work schedules. Setting time aside for coaching creates valuable opportunities for employees to reflect and encourages them to learn from their experiences, including key successes and core setbacks.
Break Down Learning Outcomes with Structured Sessions
Chunking learning sessions down into bite-size sessions reduces employee information overload. Smaller, focused coaching sessions for specific skill development can be very practical and quicken learning, and long term lead to better performance.
Developing the Right Coaching Skills: Listening, Questioning, and Adaptability
Becoming a coach means developing certain skills:
Listening:
It makes sense to practice active listening by focusing entirely on the employee’s words, expressions, and emotional responses.
Questioning:
Firstly, open-ended questions should be used to prompt the employee to open up and think more deeply about specific situations. It’s essential you don’t fall into the trap of adopting leading questions, steering the conversation in a direction you have already assumed could be the solution to the challenges faced by the employee. This can limit the range of employee responses and, at worst, may not provide an effective learning and development experience that the employee so critically needs.
Adaptability:
I mentioned previously that different employees have different learning styles, so your ability and desire to adapt your coaching delivery to meet the employees’ needs is critical for gaining meaningful results.
The C.O.A.C.H. Model: A Transformative Approach to Coaching Based on Mutual Trust
I partner with L.M.I., a world-leading people and organisational improvement company. We have developed the C.O.A.C.H. model—Connecting, Objective, Action Plan, Commitment, and Help to improve the coaching outcomes compared to other models used for many decades. The world is a very different place from what it was twenty to thirty years ago. Different internal motivators drive different generations of workers, so it makes sense to adapt coaching models and make them fit for purpose in this current age. Here’s a simple overview of the COACH model and how each step works in practice:
Connecting (For Relationship Building)
I’ve encountered numerous coaching models, and I’m always surprised how this obvious and critical setup is often overlooked. Human beings crave connection, and managers, as coaches who focus on genuinely connecting with all the team members, will unlock their ability to empower and highly motivate them. This means more than just getting to know them professionally. While this is important, taking an interest in your employees’ personal and professional potential shows that you see them as well-rounded people and genuinely care about them. This strong connection helps employees feel valued and understood and will form a solid foundation for an effective coaching relationship. Miss this step at your peril.
Objective
This part of the coaching model is shared with many other models. Your role as a coach is to ensure you help the employee clarify their professional goals and objectives. The S.M.A.R.T. goal-setting framework stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals. The goals must align with their individual development and the overall company values.
Action Plan
Creating a strong sense of direction and the big picture goals your coaching will help your team members design a realistic action plan. The plan needs to showcase how the larger goals are broken down into smaller steps. With this detail and clarity, the employee will see how they are making substantial progress towards achieving their main goals. When they celebrate achieving each micro goal, they will maintain high motivation levels.
Commitment
The “commitment” needs to be mutual. As a coach, you’ll need to demonstrate your dedication to supporting your employees’ professional development. In return, you’ll encourage them to take ownership of their progress and invest in their personal growth.
Help
Offer help by being available to support them, removing obstacles, and practising asking appropriate questions that help them learn. Sometimes, you can advise them, but avoid making this your default or go-to style as you are more likely to move into advisor mentor rather than coach. Remember, when you genuinely coach someone, you are helping them learn by reflecting on their challenges and experiences. This builds confidence, and confidence empowers by building on intrinsic or internal motivation. This is so much more effective than the traditional carrot-and-stick approach, which is very prevalent in the 20th-century work environment. Be there to guide, avoid telling and advising as much as possible and empower them to think and act independently.
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Benefits of Coaching Skills for Managers and Leaders
When you develop your coaching skills, you’ll become a more effective and empowering manager focusing on people development and, in so doing, will improve your team’s collective performance. This is achieved by:
Improving Time Efficiency:
Coaching encourages employees’ need for self-sufficiency, freeing up more time for strategic, high-payoff priorities that drive significant growth.
Improving Success Rates:
Teams supported by managers who lead with a coaching mindset often achieve higher performance levels, and staff surveys often cite high levels of employee engagement and role satisfaction.
Lasting Impact:
A coaching-focused manager leaves a lasting positive impression on employees, boosting long-term relationships, morale, and loyalty. Reducing staff turnover reduces costs, stops intellectual brain drain, and powers long-term innovation.
Using a Coaching Approach in Day-to-Day Interactions
Adopting the “manager as a coach” philosophy means using the benefits of employee coaching to apply it consistently in day-to-day situations. Here are a few scenarios to consider:
1:1 Meetings:
Regular one-on-one meetings check progress and discuss employees’ progress toward goals.
Performance Conversations:
A simple chat can mean a valuable coaching opportunity to address specific employee issues with an eye toward improvement.
Managing Change:
“The only constant is change” is often cited in today’s business world. During transitions, you can use coaching conversations to help employees adapt, show you care, and ensure they feel supported by you.
Team Coaching:
Much information is written and reported about 1:1 coaching, but there is a significant opportunity to consider when you focus on collective team coaching. This can encourage team cohesion and collaborative growth. One of the key motivational needs of employees is to feel they have a meaningful role to play with a team, and this is where team coaching fosters this sense of belonging.
Self-Coaching:
Leading by example means modelling self-coaching to inspire your employees to apply it to their own self-development.
Coaching as a Manager
L.M.I.’s Effective Coaching and Empowerment Programme offers a structured, well-researched training course delivered over three months for managers to develop coaching skills and build confidence in applying the C.O.A.C.H. model. Managers can develop and embrace a coaching culture that permeates the whole organisation through hands-on exercises, on-the-job learning, spaced repetition, multi-sensory learning, and 1:1 coaching.
The Power of Coaching over a Telling Approach
Coaching empowers employees to think and act independently, unlike a directive or “telling” approach.
Here are some key benefits of coaching:
Empowers Team Members:
The term empowerment is often used in today’s management circles, but true empowerment can only be derived by employees accessing their intrinsic motivation, which is internal to the employee. Coaching activates and powers an employee’s intrinsic motivation, which is why it effectively drives employee productivity and results. It helps employees develop solutions and take ownership.
Respect Diverse Perspectives:
Values the unique approaches each team member brings. L.M.I. believes every employee has untapped potential, and the manager, as a coach, is focused on harnessing this potential to drive employee development and job performance.
Fosters Engagement:
A coaching approach will energise the team, create a winning, enthusiastic atmosphere, and create a positive work environment where everyone has a unique role in the team’s success.
Enhances Growth:
It provides a culture of continuous and mutual learning and personal development. Every day is a learning day, which supports the principles of well-documented research that espouses the law of incremental gains.
Builds Stronger Relationships:
Successful managers who adopt a coaching mindset strengthen team bonds through mutual respect and enhanced connection and build effective, long-term relationships with each of their direct reports.
Creating a Thinking Environment for Continuous Learning
In today’s workplace, managers must create an environment that is positive, safe, and supportive for all employees. When the coaching manager creates a thinking environment and adopts vital principles—such as active listening, appreciation, and a distraction-free environment—employees feel recognised and listened to.
10 Components of an Effective Thinking Work Culture
Attention:
The ability to actively listen, remain fully present and interact with employees with high respect.
Equality:
Cultivating the mindset of valuing each team member as a capable contributor with unlimited potential.
Ease:
Creating a stress-free space without urgency, investing and training employees on time management principles and tools.
Appreciation:
Developing a culture that celebrates employee success and adopts the mindset that mistakes are normal will occur. These mistakes must be treated as an opportunity to learn and develop, removing criticism and judgement. This approach will increase the self-confidence of team members and foster greater self-belief.
Encouragement:
Moving beyond overt and intense internal competition to a strong collaborative and open culture.
Feelings:
Allow employees the opportunity and space to express their emotions constructively without fear of judgment or reprisal.
Diversity:
Adopting the mindset that highly diversified teams provide a rich opportunity environment for innovation and creativity heightened team performance by allowing all employees to appreciate different perspectives.
Incisive Questions:
Challenging limiting assumptions.
Information:
Providing clear, accurate information.
Place:
Designing an environment that conveys respect.
Frequently Asked Questions
We’ve answered some of the most frequently asked questions about Coaching versus Mentoring:
It is a structured coaching framework for Connecting, Objective, Action Plan, Commitment, and Help.
Coaching helps managers free up their time, improve team performance, and create a lasting positive impact.
Coaching empowers employees to think independently while limiting initiative and growth.
Use regular 1:1s, team meetings, and performance talks as coaching opportunities.
A Thinking Environment is a supportive space that values open dialogue and active listening, developing better coaching interactions.