If I had a nickle for every time I heard a leader say, “I don’t have time to coach my employees”, I would be a rich woman. Well I don’t and I’m not!
I hear this common, let’s call it what it is, excuse from leaders every day. Some might say to these leaders, “we make time for the things that are truly important” or “you can’t afford not to make time.” While I agree with these folks and have probably said it myself more times than I would like to admit, I think we need to address the underlying issues.
I believe there are three key causes that prompt the excuse, “I don’t have time to coach my employees.”
1. It’s not a priority.
On our list of things to do, we tend to avoid or push to tomorrow things that are not important to us. Let’s take exercise as an example. I am not a fan of exercise at all. I know the benefits, I know how to do it and I want to do it. I am your classic example of working out hard for one day and then hanging it up for a month before dusting off my gym shoes and trying it again. For a long time exercise was not a priority for me. I always found something else to focus my effort and energy on instead of lacing up my shoes and getting busy. It was easy to avoid exercise and I often told myself, “I don’t have time.” It wasn’t until I sat down, set goals, selected a set time to work out and committed to doing it that I made exercise a priority. I shared my goals with others and they helped hold me accountable. I got up every day, laced up my shoes and worked towards my goal. All of sudden guess what, I had time to exercise. I just had to make it my priority.
As a leader you have to ask yourself what’s my priority? Where do I spend my time? How do I spend my time? How does that help my team? How does it help my employees? What small change can I make today to make coaching employees a priority? Once you choose to make something a priority your behaviors will follow.
2. The leader is uncomfortable.
When I started my daily exercise regime it was uncomfortable. I was uncoordinated as I did my step aerobics, I had no idea if I had the right form for my lunges or squats, I felt like a fish out of water. I had to push through my discomfort every day. And guess what, I started to get it and what was once uncomfortable is now comfortable.
Human nature is to be as comfortable as possible. Sure we like to challenge ourselves but when it becomes uncomfortable we often retreat to what we know. The truth of the matter is that discomfort is a function of growth. If you are comfortable, you are not growing. As a leader, you have to admit to yourself and be okay with the fact that you are a work in progress. You don’t have to be perfect at everything just because you’re the boss. In fact, the more your employees can see that you are challenging your own comfort zone and that you aren’t perfect, they will begin to do the same.
The key here is to get moving. The only way to combat discomfort is to face it head on. What will you do today to challenge your comfort zone? Once you challenge yourself and act on that challenge ask yourself, what worked for me? Also ask, what didn’t work for me? And finally ask, what will I do next time? Yes, there is a next time. Leadership is not an event it’s a journey.
3. The leader doesn’t know what to do or how to coach employees.
The fact of the matter is a lot of leaders do know what to do and do know how to do it, it just isn’t a priority. If that’s the case no amount of training or mentoring is going to help. Begin by making coaching and the development of others a priority.
Some leaders though have been promoted through the ranks and all of sudden they are in charge. Yet they have had very little training and/or mentoring on how to coach and lead employees. That’s okay. Realize you aren’t always going to know everything or know how to do everything. Your job is not to be perfect, it’s to make progress in your development and help others make progress everyday towards the organizations goals. If it’s knowledge you need, then go get it. Don’t wait for someone else to provide it. Take charge of your career!
Realize that coaching doesn’t have to be a long drawn out process. One where you sit down with the employee behind closed doors and coach. While sometimes coaching is a sit down meeting, that’s not the only form of effective coaching. In fact, on-the-fly coaching is often more effective and can be done more frequently. And get this, it doesn’t take much time once it’s a priority and you challenge your comfort zone.
If you don’t know what to do, start by focusing on positive reinforcement. Get out of your office and observe your employees. As you are observing pay attention for the things that are on-target in their performance. Then tell them about it. Be sure to focus on the behaviors you observed and the impact of those behaviors. Employees learn from the things they do well and when you take the time to point out the positive they will repeat these behaviors.
Another on-the-fly coaching technique is to ask your employees questions. Find out what their greatest challenge is. Ask what excites them. Ask them what their goals are for today. Ask questions related to your mission, vision and core values. Ask questions and then listen. By asking questions, you are engaging in a conversation about performance in a non-threatening manner.
These are just few ideas to help combat the excuse of, “I don’t have time to coach my employee’s.” Excuses don’t change results. If you want to enhance the performance of your team and employees realize it starts with you. Make it a priority. Challenge your comfort zone. Recognize that often times you do know what to do and how to do it and if you don’t, take a class, read a leadership book, find a mentor. It’s up to you.
What advice would you a give a leader who says, “I don’t have time to coach.”?
What other factors do you think contribute to this all too common excuse?
What on-the-fly coaching techniques do you use to coach your employees?
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{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Preach it sista’! I agree that I could take an all expense-paid-trip around the world if I have a nickle every time I hear the “time” excuse. I also absolutely love what you said, “Leadership is not an event, it’s a journey”. I think I’m going to make that my new motto. I think I actually said “Amen” out loud when I read that. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Having worked with many managers, I do realize that we place a ton of work on their plate. I mean, lets face it, not only do they have reports to file, decisions to make, offices to run, and problems to solve, they also have to deal with (gulp) people too. Thankfully, managers do actually come into contact with people throughout the day, unless they close their door and lock themselves in an office.
I think that another factor that I would contribute is to take advantage of your everyday interactions with your staff. I have suggested this to those managers who just cannot make the time to coach. Instead of making the time, take the time. When ever an employee comes into the office with a problem or a decision than needs the manager’s attention, take the opportunity to coach them. Once the manager starts doing this, they begin to work through their discomfort, and before long, they are seeing the positive results of coaching and start making the time.
Great post! Keep ‘em coming!
Jake
I smiled when I read this post, Kelly, because “I don’t have time to coach” is such a familiar refrain it should be set to music.
You make such great points. One thing that I would add is that at some point, when a leader looks at coaching as a way of *being* rather than another thing that needs *doing*, it could become somehow easier.
An insightful post. Thank you
Kelly
I think much has to do with leadership thinking.
What is the focus? To spend time on continuously improving service or product to meet customer needs or on fighting fires? Much research shows that organisations spend more time dealing with failures to deliver what the customer wants than on value-added work. This waste eats into the hours available to spend on developing their employees, who are also engaged in fighting fires themselves.
Also, if your thinking is that employees are driven by carrots or sticks (extrinsic motivators) I fear that coaching will not be seen as a priority.
Until we can flip this mindset, I’m not confident that we will see any improvement in the use of effective coaching.
Glyn
At least some of the time, the manager simply can’t coach because he or she received their position not through being an expert at the functions they now oversee, but due to having earned a degree or having performed well in some other area. There’s one of the more well-known Dilbert cartoons where a new boss is introduced. When pressed, he reveals his MBA concentration was in Finance, so he received his new position not because he was educated in team building or knowledgeable about management techniques, but because he was good at math.
In addition to the problems you and others have noted, the inability to coach may have a lot to do with the way in which managers are hired and promoted. That’s OK, however, because people can still learn. They can learn to be more knowledgeable about the function, and the people, they now oversee. They, too, can be “coached” by the people they now supervise in the technical aspects of the job. In turn, the manager can coach the team on the things he or she has expertise with.
To make an analogy, a championship soccer coach probably can’t coach a baseball team on how to play baseball, however, the coach could certainly transfer knowledge about motivation, teambuilding, and the benefits of preparation while learning the fundamentals of the new game.
Can you imagine what would happen if the words “I don’t have time to coach” came out of the mouths of some one like Sean Payton (Head Coach, New Orleans Saints) or Mike Krzyzewski (Head Coach, Duke Basketball) or even from me back in my days of coaching high school swimming. It would never be tolerated. We’d all be out of a job. But a coach of a sports team has been conditioned to spend their time developing individual athletes while driving towards a team goal.
Managers in business today are not “brought up” the same way. The question, of course, is “why not?” Aren’t your managers the strategic and tactical leaders of teams? The manager’s number one job should be to develop the individuals in pursuit of the team goal! Perhaps it’s time to quit calling them managers and call them coaches. Change the paradigm, change the behavior.
Business needs to quit taking the best accountant and making them the head of accounting, or the best software developer and making them the head of IT. Business needs to find the best coaches and make them the department coach. Rarely in sports are the best coaches the former superstars. It’s a completely different set of skills.
That’s my $0.02. I’m off to do some coaching for the Project Management team. We have a National Title to win!
Wow thank you all for the wonderful comments and additional thoughts!
@Jake You bring up a good point. Most managers today are working managers and do have a full plate. Perhaps it’s because they don’t know how or won’t delegate some stuff. Or maybe because the organization hasn’t taken the time to evaluate processes and set managers up for success. At the same time we are asking employees to do more with less. Because of that managers have got to make coaching a priority!
@Gwyn You are so right, we should set this excuse to music! After all it is a commonly played tune among managers in every type of organization. I completely agree with you, that once managers can shift their focus to being versus doing coaching becomes less of a task and is just who were are. The key though is to start and it’s easiest to start by doing. After time the doing will transition to being.
@Glyn A shift in thinking is exactly what’s needed in organizations today. Many managers spend precious hours putting out fires rather than proactively finding ways to prevent those fires. The carrot and stick way of leadership is simply not sustainable. It leads to high turnover, poor service and negatively impacts the bottom line. Leadership and coaching is a way of thinking and a way of behaving. It’s time to realize we are dealing with adults and we must start treating them like adults. An effective coach sets the expectation, provides training, resources and tools and let’s you know when you are meeting or exceeding expectations and also let’s you know when you are not. I do know some leaders that have been to be very effective coaches, although they are few and far between!
@David So many managers are promoted based on the good old “Peter Principle.” It is alive and well in many organizations. Just because someone is “next” in line doesn’t make their skill set a match for a management position. Organizations have got to consider the attributes, past leadership performance and the “soft” skills necessary for a leader to be successful. I can teach pretty much anyone “hard” skills such as a new system, the ins and out of payroll, how to read reports but it’s a pain staking process to teach someone leadership and the success rate of teaching these as well as changing these behaviors is slim unless the manager is willing to learn and has made leadership a high priority. Organizations today are doing such a poor job at grooming future leaders. They must widen their focus and prepare folks for what lies ahead.
@Brett No, I cannot imagine any head coach or any professional coach for that matter, saying they don’t have time to coach. The key here is that they view their position as a coach and leader. They realize their goal is to recognize potential, push people to perform, leverage strengths and develop weaknesses. They are clear on the goals and they build a team that can accomplish those goals. Organizations would be better served to model leadership after professional sports. I also like your point about managers not being “brought up” in the same way in today’s environment. Management in the industrial age required a different skill set than we need now. Managers can’t just be good at the tasks required in the job these days. That won’t cut it. Employees are hungry for someone to lead them, teach them and coach them. Perhaps shifting our language from manager to coach would help with the distinction for what is needed at the mid-levels of an organization.
Thank you all for the thought provoking responses!
Kelly
Great post! Thanks for you insightful writing – I love your ideas.
I’ve seen many leaders avoid coaching because of FEAR – and I believe that this usually what’s going on when the leader feels “uncomfortable” as you discussed in your article.
Many leaders feel insecure about their own leadership skills and fear being “exposed”, they fear confrontation, or they feel guilty that they have not given sufficient coaching in the past.
How do we help leaders get over their fear? I’ve had success with getting them to acknowledge the fear along with the absurdity (usually) of the fear – and then just jumping in and doing the coaching in spite of the fear (face it head-on as you pointed out Kelly.)
Perhaps leaders could try more Feedback Nibbles? Cue the shameless plug to my blog post here: http://www.timporthouse.com/2010/01/performance-feedback-nibble-dont-bite.html
Great discussion Kelly,
Tim
Hi Tim,
I love your post on Feedback Nibbles! It’s an easy process to follow and will build trust as well as push leaders through their fear.
Fear runs rampant in many of us, especially the fear of failure. It also paralyzes us from growing, learning and sharing. The only fear we are actually born with is the fear of falling. All other fears are learned over time. Anything we can learn we can unlearn if we choose to do so. So my advice is to leaders is to just get out there and do it. Start by focusing on the positive and providing positive feedback than begin to shift to your model for Feedback Nibbles and then when you have to confront a performance issue it won’t be as uncomfortable and the employee will actually know that it is coming.
Our goal as a leader is not be liked but to be respected. People aren’t always going to like you when you push them to perform at higher levels or when you do have to provide corrective feedback. But when we balance this with guiding, teaching, coaching and consistent feedback, they sure will respect you.
I am a firm believer that employees want to know where they stand in terms of their performance. They want to do the right things and do them right. They also want to be held accountable, whether positive or negative, and they want the leader to do this consistently with each team member.
Thanks for sharing your insights and your Nibbles!
Kelly
I have visited hundreds of websites but no one can give information as much as yours,great posting!thank you! Can you tell me of other source of this information? Thank you very much and have a great day!
Thank you so much for your kind words Focus Factor! You can find similar posts on management from any one of the folks that have commented on our blogs. You can also check our Twitter feeds found under our bio information on the The Experts page. If you are looking for something specific, feel to free to send me an email. I am happy to help! kelly@theexperiencefactor.com
Best to you!
Kelly
Kelly,
I think this excuse is given, when the real excuse is that person doesn’t have the patience to coach. I often find myself thinking that someone just doesn’t get me. The truth is that I just haven’t communicated in a way that they can understand what I’m saying. Then, instead of jumping in and doing it myself, I slow down and try to become more understood. I’m someone that listens. I just don’t communicate my thoughts well at times. Then, I become the person you describe.
Taking time to coach is really a great investment. It does have an “up front” cost though. In the moment, we don’t always remember that, in the long run, that investment pays big dividends.
Marty
Hi Marty,
Coaching does require patience! And as they say patience is a virtue. You raise a good point. It’s important for leaders to assess their communication skills. As well as do some self reflection. The key is that we can’t expect employees to change or maintain their behaviors if we as a leader don’t adjust ours. Allowing our fears, comfort and need for perfection to stop us isn’t helping to develop ourselves or our employees.
Thanks for the comment!
Kelly
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