Reframing Managers as Coaches
How to transition to a new way of thinking about leadership
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My name is Conor. I’m helping shape how teams work together at Hugo - bringing your meetings, notes, and tasks all in one place.
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Managing as a coach is a radical departure from our traditional view of management. This old view has been deeply rooted in command and control, and in many ways resembles the dynamic between parent and child, not between team members.
This parent/child relationship that defines many manager relationships has its roots in the industrial revolution. It’s built on assumptions that, for most workers, no longer apply.
🤓 Looking back at scientific management
Those assumptions can be traced back in large part to the work of one man: Frederick W. Taylor. The son of a hard-working lawyer, Taylor nearly permanently damaged his eyesight from assiduous studying in the dim light of night.
His passion was taken by the inner workings of mechanical shops and manufacturing plans and was the first to suggest that managers should be involved in two aspects of the business: planning and training. They should determine the one best way to accomplish any given task, and then hire the best people possible to perform that task.
Find a person of a suitable skill level, advised Taylor. Train them in a specific way. Pay them a fair wage — no more, no less. This strategy was called “scientific management,” because it emphasizes improving worker productivity through scientific analysis.
Taylor explored factors like the positions of machines on a manufacturing floor, the actions workers needed to perform, and the way they moved their bodies to perform these actions. He optimized everything.
Scientific management has its merits and was successful in transforming industries in the early twentieth century. But now, more than 100 years after Taylor published The Principles of Scientific Management, the legacy of these practices remains in many industries that are far different than a manufacturing line.
🌍 The world has changed
There is no one task anymore. There is no verifiably perfect solution. Modern companies exist in a far more complex environment.
Today, inputs and outputs aren’t fixed and easily measured. Whereas there are precise, documentable steps that need to be taken to build a car, if you’re in marketing, sales, product, engineering — just about any function other than manufacturing — you’re operating in a world of uncertainty, where no one can know with absolute certainty the best way to perform a specific task.
As a leader, even if you can’t know precisely how workers should complete their work, you still have to be able to support them. To do so, begin by shedding the conventions of scientific management. Instead, embrace a style of leadership that plays to the need for adaptable teams that exchange ideas openly in a trusting environment.
Leaders must shift from focusing on planning and training to being mentors and cultural guardians in their organizations.
For example, consider a manager whose direct report is working on an important project. The success of this project will be a reflection of both the manager and employee. The manager might be tempted to use scientific management — dictating all of the steps the employee must take to do the work, and rigorously monitoring her performance.
Instead, we propose a different approach: Try to help the employee learn and grow. It’s one of the most rewarding experiences you can have as a manager. Here are some tips to help you get started.
🤫 Ask, don’t tell
You probably have a lot of expertise you’re dying to share. That’s fine when you’re clarifying action steps for projects or when people come to you asking for advice. But when operating as a coach, try to restrain your impulse to give answers.
Open-ended questions, not answers, are the essential tools of coaching. You must help your team member articulate their challenges and their goals, and then find their own answers. When the solution to a problem is their idea, your team member will be more committed to putting it into action.
🤝 Build accountability to commitments
Commitments cut both ways. As a leader and a coach, you’re going to have to do what you say you’re going to do. But it’s also useful to build accountability on the employee side.
Accountability increases the likelihood of success. It improves the positive impact of a conversation because it solidifies the discussion into concrete ideas. So, if decisions are being made during your conversation, talk about deadlines. Be on the lookout for loose commitments — like if the word should start to rear its ugly head.
One way to do this is with your tools. Turn action items into Asana tasks, Trello cards, and Jira issues. By locking tasks into the systems that you use every day at work, you’re transforming shoulds into units of work that are going to get done.
📚 Reads of the Week
Thinking for Oneself
Excuse the long quote, but I thought this was really good: “Earning insight requires going below the surface. Most of us want to shy away from the details and complexity. It takes a while. It’s boring. It’s mental work. Yet it is only by jumping into the complexity that we can really discover simplicity for ourselves.”
10 Years as a Software Engineer
I liked this thread on career advice from Sarah Dayan. Most of these points are applicable far beyond just engineering.
Remote Happiness, How to Create it
There’s been a lot of content on remote lately, but this essay on how to stay happy in your new environment has some good pieces of advice that stood out to me.
Thanks for reading Future of Teamwork this week! Did anything stand out? I’d love to hear about it. Reply to this email or tweet at me and let’s chat 😁
Until next time,
Conor