You can’t be a good manager if you are not a good coach

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Leadership literature has endless articles about the importance of coaching. Already back in 2003, Daniel Goleman argued in his Harvard Business Review article “Leadership that gets results”, that one of the six essential leadership styles is coaching.

Throughout decades of management research, coaching has been shown to improve productivity, employee engagement, increase performance, and improve retention. It increases the coachee’s motivation as well as job satisfaction; and for coaches, the benefits include the opportunity to help others develop.

According to the International Coach Federation’s latest report, organizations with a strong coaching culture even tend to show higher revenue figures compared with their industry peer group.

Yet, coaching still doesn’t seem to be a common practice in many organizations. How is that possible? I believe it’s because most managers and product leaders are not aware of what coaching really is. So I would like to spark some curiosity on this topic and hopefully help you become more coach-like and help your people grow.

Coaching vs Mentoring vs Training

First, let’s clarify something important: Coaching is different than mentoring, and is also not the same as training.

• Training is all about skill-specific learning. That’s when someone decides to deepen their knowledge with, for example, a course or a masterclass.
• Mentoring is a high-level support and advice-based relationship, usually based on the wisdom from previous experience or theoretical knowledge.
• Coaching, on the other hand, is about helping people unlock their full potential on an ongoing basis. It’s about helping people learn rather than teaching them.

There are many definitions of coaching but the one above is the one I resonate the most with — inspired by Sir John Whitmore’s work, the pioneer of the executive coaching industry.

So, what makes a good coach?

A good coach has the ability to make other people grow by helping them reflect and helping them identify and eliminate barriers in their careers. Bill Campbell, the so-called “Trillion…