Manager as Controller VS. Leader as Coach

Posted by on Jul 12, 2011 in Blog Posts | 11 comments

Traditionally, managers have been seen as controllers.  In the new workplace, creative leaders are accepting the challenge of learning to behave as coaches with their associates. By learning new skills and successfully replacing many of the traditional controlling habits with new coaching competencies, leaders can develop associates with greater initiative, confidence, creativity, accountability and productive capacity. 

        Controlling Managers Emphasize:         Coaching Leaders Emphasize:
  • Directing others. Focusing most time and attention on those who create problems
  • Teaching, challenging, collaborating
  • Making sure nothing goes wrong
  • Helping people learn from mistakes
  • Evaluating performance, commenting on mistakes, being critical, etc. Taking good performance for granted.
  • Being a confidante, good listener, mentor. Liberally acknowledging good performance.
  • Maintaining responsibility and authority for decisions
  • Delegating responsibility and authority
  • Focused on present and past performance
  • Developing people for future opportunities
  • Inspecting work
  • Expecting people to find and correct their own errors
  • Owning each problem personally
  • Promoting ownership on the part of everyone on the team

The challenge for organizations today is to identify future leaders who possess a bias for coaching and developing work colleagues, then further training them to enhance the techniques of listening, providing effective feedback and coaching methodologies. In today’s free market work environment, where loyalty to one employer is not a high priority, the organizations that train, develop and encourage coaching competencies will be the employer’s of choice for more and more high potential people.

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