Creating Coach-Like Leaders

Put me in, coach! Coach-like leadership is the way of the future.          

A culture of declining career confidence

The modern workplace is plagued with a crisis of sliding career confidence. In fact, Glassdoor found that workplace confidence has fallen to a record low at 44% with mid-level managers seeing the largest decline. This makes sense: with the rapid adoption of AI, the shifting global and national economy and the continued adoption of remote work, everything feels fast and confusing.

The antidote to this confidence challenge lies with upper-level management and executives – create managers who coach, not command. Just like top athletes have coaches to support them to reach peak potential, so too, managers must have coaches who can teach them the skills necessary to unlock the potential in their teams. We can’t underestimate how important this is; in fact, three-quarters of global Chief Human Resource Officers agreed in a recent Linkedin Survey that their managers will spend less time managing tasks and more time coaching teams in the future. 

Coach-like managers embrace certain tools and mindsets that allow their teams to be more impactful and more engaged.

Feedback

Coach-like leaders are feedback champions. They give constructive and praise feedback on a regular basis, so that their people are not accidentally practicing imperfectly. Even more importantly, they also request feedback from their team. This both ensures that the manager is consistently growing and models the importance and normalcy of a culture of feedback.

Professional development

Great leaders ensure that work is being completed effectively, yes. But they are also extremely clear about the skill of each team member and what the team needs as a whole. As such, coach-like managers provide professional development, whether that’s collaborative co-work, skill modelling, or team workshops designed to upskill.

Goal-focused

Leaders who are coaches work on business goals with their people, but they also have individual development goals for every team member that are set collaboratively with their people. As such, both the leader and employee know what those goals are and are invested in meeting them.

Communication 

Coaches communicate! What are they seeing, what do they need to see, why are they making the shifts they’re making? Knowing that rock-solid communication is crucial to any successful relationship, the coach-like leader communicates clearly and consistently, which allows their teams to flourish.

Future-minded

Professional coaches know they can’t change the team, or the game, overnight. Rather, change takes time, so long-term strategy and growth is fundamental to success. And coaches know that they are thinking about a season, not just one game - sometimes a player needs to rest and take a loss to maintain an overall season record. Coach-like leaders focus on micro-steps today that will pay off in big changes tomorrow.

Make it happen: embracing coach-like leadership

Clearly, coach-like leadership is the way of the future, but it won’t happen overnight, and it won’t happen without a conscious push in this direction. To create the conditions for coach-like leaders to shine, upper-level staff must first make clear that the expectation of a great manager is that they are developing their people – truly building their skill and paving the way for opportunity – and NOT just overseeing work.

The next step is to model what is expected. A coach-like culture is truly a trickle-down effect, and so senior level employees should consciously coach their mid-level managers to ensure they can then take those skills to their teams. That looks like embracing and articulating all of the tools outlined above.

Lastly, consider bringing in professional coaches to support your middle-management. Leadership coaches help employees build skill in previously defined areas and are experts at coaching managers through today’s leadership challenges, like succession planning, navigating difficult workplace relationships, and leading through uncertainty. After Linkedin brought in professional coaches to support workers at every level, of example, 97% of them stated that they feel more confident in their ability to navigate challenges in their careers.

Put me in, coach!

Coach-like leadership is what’s next for every successful organization. Making an investment in it now will be critical to ensuring employees can confidently show up to work each day.

Interested in a workshop to build this skill? Ready to take the step with hiring a coach to work with your staff?