The Leader as Coach

In the face of rapid, disruptive change, companies are realizing that managers can’t be expected to have all the answers and that command-and-control leadership is no longer viable. As a result, many firms are moving toward a coaching model in which managers facilitate problem-solving and encourage employees’ development by asking questions and offering support and guidance rather than giving orders and making judgments.

The authors explain the merits of different types of coaching—directive, nondirective, and situational—and note that sometimes no coaching at all is appropriate. They describe how managers can use the four-step GROW model to become more skilled at listening, questioning, and drawing insights out of the people they supervise. The article concludes with recommendations for making coaching an organizational capacity—effecting a cultural transformation by articulating why coaching is valuable for the firm as well as individuals, ensuring that leaders embrace and model it, building coaching capabilities throughout the ranks, and removing barriers to change.

Idea in Brief

The Situation

To cope with disruptive change, companies are reinventing themselves as learning organizations. This requires a new approach to management in which leaders serve as coaches to those they supervise.

The Challenge

In this new approach, managers ask questions instead of providing answers, support employees instead of judging them, and facilitate their development instead of dictating what has to be done. But most managers don’t feel they have time for that—and they’re not very good at it anyway.

The Solution

Companies need to offer their managers the appropriate tools and support to become better coaches. And if they want to be sustainably healthy learning organizations, they must also develop coaching as an organizational capacity.

Once upon a time, most people began successful careers by developing expertise in a technical, functional, or professional domain. Doing your job well meant having the right answers. If you could prove yourself that way, you’d rise up the ladder and eventually move into people management—at which point you had to ensure that your subordinates had those same answers.

Herminia Ibarra is the Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School and the author of Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, revised edition (Harvard Business Review Press, 2023), and Working Identity, revised edition (Harvard Business Review Press, 2023).

Anne Scoular is a cofounder of Meyler Campbell, which trains senior leaders to coach. She is also an associate scholar at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School and the author of The Financial Times Guide to Business Coaching.

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