At Work Newswire

By D. Quinn Mills

Coaching and mentoring both play an important role in developing managers. A manager needs both. Mentoring helps for complete career development. A mentor helps us understand the business and our role in it, and how we can advance our careers. A mentor is usually a senior person in the firm or in our profession who knows the ropes of our organization and industry or field.

Coaching is more focused on job performance. A coach is a person who may not know our business or company at all, but who can help us improve the way we handle ourselves and interact with others. A coach can help us change what we’ve been doing, where changes are needed. Many of us advance into managerial ranks on the basis of our performance as individual contributors or by earning a degree that makes us eligible for a management position. But we have never learned how to relate well to others. Some of us even get into high positions without having learned that top leadership requires a different interpersonal style than we used to have.

Coaching is about is getting rid of bad habits and obtaining good ones in how we deal with others. It’s just like a sport – we may be good at it but as we play over weeks and months and years, we develop bad habits that begin to limit our success. A coach can see those habits, even when we are unaware of them. He or she can point them out and advise us how to change or eliminate them.

What kind of bad habits does a coach help a manager shed? Here are few:

• The habit of having to be the smartest person in the room – always needing to have the last word to show that you really know more about the matter than anyone else. This behavior is a common demonstration of insecurity; we may think, “Unless I’m the most knowledgeable person, I’ll not keep my job.” But management is about getting things done through other people, not by ourselves. Always satisfying our egos that we’re the greatest interferes with successful management; other people don’t like it and find it de-motivating.

• The habit of playing favorites. As managers, we like some people better than others. We appreciate people who perform best. We are often taken in by people who ingratiate themselves with us intentionally. The result is that we end up playing favorites; we prefer some people and it shows. Sometimes the people we prefer have earned it by real effort; often not. Other people see whom we favor and it angers them. They think that our favorites are getting special treatment, and it demotivates them. A coach can often see when favortism is occuring, and can encourage and help us to treat everyone equally.

• The habit of taking credit ourselves for what others have done. “After all,” we managers think, “I am the manager and a success in my department is my success.” Yet, since managers get things done through others, there are likely to be people who work for us who actually did the work and achieved the success. It’s very important that we give them credit and recognition. We will not lose by this–because their success is also ours–for we are the manager who led the effort.

An effective coach will do more than guide us away from bad habits; they will also encourage us to adopt positive management practices.

A coach will encourage us to listen, something many managers do not do. Too often we are thinking about what we are going to say next, rather than focusing on what is being said to us. Consequently conversations can become full of misunderstandings and unheard messages. A good manager listens carefully; he or she hears what people say and responds directly. A coach can help us do this.

Controlling our emotions is vital in management. There is nothing that is said in a moment of anger that cannot be as well or better said when emotions have subsided. A good manager doesn’t explode when things are done wrong; he bites his tongue and returns to the matter when he is calm and can act and speak carefully. Again, a coach can help us by role-playing and rehearsing what we should do when confronted with an emotionally-tense scenario.

Many managers don’t bother to praise enough. The habit of thanking people for their accomplishments, small as well as large, is coachable. A paycheck is not sufficient recognition for the efforts people make, especially when an effort is imaginative and made with good will. Encouraging people is very important to effective interpersonal relations.

While these may seem to be common sense fundamentals for a manager, all too often they are neglected. Just as an athlete or musician needs to practice the fundamentals, so do managers—and coaches can help greatly in making sure that we focus on those areas where we need further development.

D. Quinn Mills is the Alfred J. Weatherhead Jr. Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He consults with major corporations and teaches at Harvard on subjects of leadership, strategy, and financial investments.

---

Copyright © 2007 D. Quinn Mills

 Email This Post