It is difficult to decide on a single definition of the word management and this is not helped by the modern trend in organizations to label almost everything and everybody as management in some way. Arguably, everybody in an organization is a manager to the extent that management is about deploying resources to get the job done, however, most would agree that a manager in an organization has some degree of responsibility for people and some say in how those people go about their work.



With this in mind it follows that managers are coaches and always have been; it's just that not all managers realize this and many would prefer it were not the case. However, if you are a manager with responsibility for people than you need to understand what good coaching is all about and should be congratulated for investing time in researching it!

The most prevalent management style - even now - is a command and control type approach. Management structures for most of the last century were modeled on the military and despite the advent of 'flat structures', 'matrix management' and the like; this is still the most common approach and feeds the appetite for command and control. Command and control - or telling people what to do and how to do it - work well in dangerous situations, emergencies or where there is no time for anything else. However, it does little for learning and enjoyment at work and thus becomes hard to sustain and causes resentment and poor performance in the end. Why does it persist? Because so many of our role models behave like this, reward structures are geared towards short term results and because, until recently, there was a lack of a viable alternative.

Coaching has changed all this and gives us great cause for optimism. Coaching is still about mobilizing people to get things done, but in a way that recognizes that people are complex, living, feeling human beings and that these factors cannot be ignored.

Managers are coaches and coaches are managers. It is perfectly possible to combine both roles though not always wise to do so. There is an imbalance of power with managers having more power and resources than the people in their teams. This is not an impossible barrier to coaching but the problem cannot be ignored.

Coaching v Instructing

Within the manager's role lies the task of enabling the people whom they manage to do the job and further developing those talents so that they do the job well. This is most commonly achieved by a teaching, instructing type approach. By this I mean the manager will sit with their member of staff explaining what they need to do and how they need to do it. Perhaps this is so common because we are programmed from school to believe that telling and instructing are the most appropriate way of passing on skills. There is a time and a place for instructing of course, but in the modern world of work this orthodox approach has three flaws.

Firstly it requires that you, as a manager know how you get results yourself. You probably do for the technical aspects of your role, but what about subtle behavioural aspects of performance? If you're naturally assertive, intuitive, likeable, confident, bold or whatever it can be virtually impossible to identify how it is exactly that you're good at those things and frustrating to try and help others become adept at things you find easy. Some of the best football players become the worst managers.

The second problem to overcome is then finding quite the right words to pass that knowledge on. If, for example, you really can pinpoint how exactly you behave in an assertive way or go about using your intuition, how do you communicate that in words? Imagine trying to explain snow to an Arab or sand to an Eskimo. The problem is that other people seldom share quite this frame of reference; sometimes known as our 'model of the world'. We have to explain things in a way that fits with other people's experience, but do so by drawing on our own unique experience. The chances of getting this right are slim, and the likelihood is that something will get lost in translation.

The third challenge is recall. There is a host of research that shows it's very difficult for people to remember what they have only ever been told or shown. One study suggests that people have forgotten almost all of anything only ever explained to them after about 3 months. This improves if we tell and show, but in order to demonstrate to our staff what we need them to do; we have to be able to do it ourselves. With the pace of change these days that's virtually impossible and is not the wisest use of our management time anyway.

Even if you are able to overcome these obstacles an instructing type approach to people development results at best in people who do it like you do. Who says that's the best way? Who says they couldn't find a better way, or at least a way more suited to their own particular skills and talents?

With the advent of coaching in the business world in the early 1990s things have got a lot better and many managers acknowledge the need for a coaching approach. However there is still more telling and instructing than we need and I felt it was appropriate to record the shortcomings of this approach here.