5 Ways to Coach Your Team Instead of Managing Them

In this “Mike on the Mic” episode of The Better Leadership Team Show, I dive into one of the biggest traps leaders fall into:  constantly managing their team instead of coaching them. If you ever feel like you’re putting out fires all day and doing work that’s not yours, this episode is for you. I walk you through five specific strategies to coach your team, empower ownership, and finally free yourself up to lead the way you’re meant to. 

Thanks for listening! Connect with us at mike-goldman.com/blog and on Instagram@mikegoldmancoach and on YouTube @Mikegoldmancoach

Episode Transcript

Mike Goldman (00:02):
leaders feel like very often feel like they need
to be the smartest person in theroom.
They need to have all theanswers.
And it does take time andmaturity to understand that,
man, you're much better off ifother people around you have
those answers.
So there's, you know, one, one.

(00:22):
So one trap is feeling like youneed all the answers.
The second trap.
Is people think coaching is tooslow.
What you'll find out as we gothrough this episode is,
coaching is much more aboutasking questions.

(00:45):
You made it to the betterleadership team show, the place
where you learn how to surroundyourself with the right people,
doing the right things.
So you can grow your businesswithout losing your mind.
I'm your host and leadershipteam coach, Mike Goldman.
I'm going to show you how toimprove top and bottom line
growth, fulfillment, and thevalue your company adds to the

(01:05):
world by building a betterleadership team.
All right, let's go.
How often do you find yourselfsolving the same problem for
your team over and over again,feeling like you're constantly

(01:28):
putting out fires that your teamought to be able to handle.
In fact, feeling like you'redoing the job or jobs one level
below you so you can't do thejob you need to do as a leader
of your team or a leader of thecompany.
What I find is there's a skillthat many leaders lack that can

(01:54):
take us to a whole new level inmaking sure our people could
solve their own problems andmaking sure that we could focus
on.
What we need to do from avision, from a strategy, from an
accountability, from a culturestandpoint, and we're not

(02:14):
constantly doing the job onelevel down.
And the skill I find mostleaders really need to improve
is coaching.
Coaching instead of managing.
So I wanna share with you onthis episode, five ways.
To coach your team instead ofmanaging them.
And let me talk about thedifference first, or at least my

(02:36):
definition of the difference.
For me, managing is a focus ondelegating tasks, measuring
outputs.
and I'm not saying you don'tneed to do that.
You absolutely do need todelegate you absolutely do need
to measure outcomes and holdpeople accountable.

(02:58):
But coaching is different thanthat.
not instead of, but in additionto coaching is more about
guiding and asking questions andempowering others.
To take ownership coaching, theway my coach taught me is
coaching is about helping peoplesurface the right action for

(03:21):
them.
And by the way, the right actionfor them might be very different
than the right action for you.
We all have different styles, wehave different personal values.
We have different goals in mind.
So the right action for you in acertain situation and the right

(03:44):
action for someone else, forsomeone on your team may be
different.
So let me give you some reasonswhy I see leaders default to
managing as opposed to coachingand.

(04:04):
One is leaders feel like veryoften feel like they need to be
the smartest person in the room.
They need to have all theanswers.
And it does take time andmaturity to understand that,
man, you're much better off ifother people around you have
those answers.
So there's, you know, one, one.

(04:26):
So one trap is feeling like youneed all the answers.
The second trap.
Is people think coaching is tooslow.
What you'll find out as we gothrough this episode is I
believe coaching is much moreabout asking questions.
Well, managing or directing isabout telling people what to do.

(04:48):
It's a whole lot faster for meto just tell you what to do than
it is to ask you a bunch ofquestions.
That guide you to figuring outwhat the right answer is for
you.
And it is slower, but as I thinkyou'll see, it's only slower

(05:09):
initially.
It's only slower when you thinkabout it in the short term, but
in the long term, if you areallowing your team to work more
independently, that's gonna saveyou a bunch of time and a bunch
of frustration.
And you'll be able to go awayfor three weeks on vacation and
your team will keep movingwithout you.

(05:31):
So the first common trap isfeeling like you've gotta be the
smartest person in the room.
You need all the answers.
The second is feeling likecoaching is too slow, so people
default to managing.
And the third is believing yourway is the only way.
And again, the right.

(05:53):
Action for you may be differentthan the right a action for
someone else.
And by the way, what you believeis the right way may not be the
right way, and it may be thatcoaching brings out a better
way.
So let's talk about five ways toget you out of this problem of
teams becoming dependent on you,failing to develop and waiting

(06:17):
for you to solve the problem.
So five strategies.
First one I'll call, ask, don'ttell.
And the idea of this strategy isto transition from, from giving
direction, giving advice,telling people what to do to

(06:40):
coaching by asking openstrategic questions.
Questions like, you know, whatoptions have you considered so
far?
Someone comes to you with aproblem, we can give them advice
right away.
And by the way, if we give themadvice right away, we may
actually be solving the wrongproblem.

(07:02):
But what options have youconsidered?
What do you recommend we do?
I love this question and I'mstealing this from Michael
Bungay Stanier.
And if you wanna get better atasking great coaching questions,
read the Coaching Habit byMichael Bungay Stanier.
And my favorite question that heasks is, what's the real

(07:25):
challenge here for you?
Now let me get give you anexample of how powerful a
question that is.
If someone comes to you andsays, Hey, you know, I really
need some help.
I'm having so much troublemanaging this project.
Automatically we wanna giveadvice.

(07:46):
So we might give people a wholelecture.
On project management, ongaining buy-in, on using project
management tools andunderstanding, you know,
predecessors and dependenciesand you name it.
But when we ask a question like,what's the real challenge here

(08:08):
for you?
And we dig deep and he likes toMichael Bungay Stanier likes to
ask that question, get the firstanswer and say, and what else?
And what else?
But if you ask the question,what's the real challenge here
for you?
Before giving advice, you mayfind out the real challenge is
this person doesn't believethere's gonna be value in the

(08:30):
end result of the project.
You may find out this person ishaving a.
Difficult time in theirrelationship with their co-lead
on the project.
So by asking that question, youget to the heart of the problem
versus potentially solving thewrong problem.
So, so we wanna ask, don't tellthat strategy number one.

(08:54):
Strategy number two is let themown the solution.
Instead of directing teammembers to implement your ideas,
help guide them to, to implementtheir ideas, and here's an
example of that.
So let's imagine one of yourteam members comes to you.

(09:23):
And says, you know, I'm tryingto recruit for this new position
on my team and I'm having allsorts of trouble.
Can't find the right people.
I don't know what to do.
If you give them advice and givethem the answer, so you tell
them, okay, what I want you todo is, you know, post a job on
LinkedIn, call this recruiter,you know, talk to people on your

(09:45):
team and, you know, find out whothey know.
Um, if that person does thosethings and hits a brick wall,
what are they gonna do?
They're gonna look at you andsay, okay, genius.
What's next?
if you follow the first strategyand ask questions and then guide

(10:08):
them to implement their ideas,what happens when they own that
idea and they hit a brick wallinstead of looking back at you,
they've got ownership.
They're gonna climb over it, goaround it, go underneath, break
the brick wall down.
Stop trying to own everythingand be the smartest person in

(10:31):
the room.
Let them own the solution.
A great book, another great bookfor asking questions.
It's Coaching Habit by MichaelBungay Stanier for allowing a
team member to take moreownership of a solution.
Read Multipliers by Liz Wiseman.
That's one of the best booksI've ever read on.

(10:53):
leading and coaching and guidingother people.
So number two is let them ownthe solution.
Number three is spot and nurturestrengths of your people.
The more you could amplify yourpeople's strengths rather than
focusing on their weaknesses,the more you can amplify your

(11:16):
team's strengths.
The more you are gonna have todive in and do things for them.
Solve every problem.
Jump in and put out every fire.
Figure out.
When you look at your team,understand, identify the
strengths of each member of yourteam, and you're probably gonna

(11:36):
find each member of your team.
And some very differentstrengths and maybe some very
different weaknesses.
But if you look at thosetogether, you're gonna find that
there are people on your teamthat are really strong in areas
where other people on the teamare pretty weak and vice versa.

(11:57):
So by, by amplifying strengthstogether, you can actually make
weaknesses unimportant byindividual.
Because in total for the team,you are shifting roles and
responsibilities to betteramplify people's strengths.
Now, I have a whole episode onthat, pretty recently called

(12:18):
Turn Your Strengths Into aSuperpower.
So check out that episode.
But a great book to read onspotting and nurturing strengths
is Strengths Finder 2.0.
So read that book, spot andnurture strengths is a great way
to start doing more coachingthan managing next.

(12:40):
and the fourth of five is focuson growth, not perfection.
Encourage your team at times totake calculated risks as long as
you, and they are learning.
From those mistakes build aprocess and a culture of

(13:06):
feedback that emphasizes kind ofiterating through a plan.
Versus just beating people upand having them shift that plan.
Um, a great example from a bookcalled Measure, measure What
Matters, talking about,Google's, OKR structure,
objectives and key results.

(13:28):
And when Google creates an OKR,which is another word for a
priority or a goal, they don'twant leaders.
To achieve a hundred percent oftheir goals.
As weird as that sounds, that'snot their target.
Their target is 70%.
Now, why would they targetanything less than a hundred

(13:50):
percent?
Well, they feel if people areachieving a hundred percent of
their goals, they're probablysandbagging at some level, or
they're not doing things thatare a little scary.
They're only tackling thingsthey know that can complete well
to focus on growth and notperfection.

(14:11):
For an individual, for your teamand for the company, you wanna
encourage people to try thingsthey've never done before.
Take a shot at something theydon't even know is possible now
without a culture of feedback.
We don't learn from those thingswithout the right planning and

(14:34):
communication rhythm of annualplanning and quarterly planning
and education, and monthlycheck-in and weekly
accountability and one-on-onemeetings with your direct
reports.
if you don't have that in place,you're not gonna learn from
those mistakes.
So we need a planning andcommunication rhythm, to, to
really, help us accomplish thisfourth strategy of focus on

(14:57):
growth.
Not perfection.
Let's go to the fifth strategy,and it's setting aside the time,
to have real coachingconversations.
Now I recommend and I have aprevious podcast episode.

(15:18):
Man, I'm forgetting what it'scalled, but it's about a
one-on-one meeting frameworkthat I recommend for all of my
leaders.
and without taking you throughall of the details, the idea,
the one-on-one, a specificframework for the one-on-one,
and doing that, I believe itshould be weekly at worst,

(15:40):
biweekly.
Is you have two different typesof one-on-one meetings, one,
one-on-one, and this is thetypical one-on-one I call the
feedback and accountabilitymeeting.
That's where you're doingexactly what it says.
You're giving people feedback onhow they're doing behaviors,
productivity, and you areholding them accountable to

(16:02):
those things they said they weregonna do.
And that kind of sounds like thetypical one-on-one meeting, but
then every other meeting is thecoaching meeting.
And the idea of the coachingmeeting is as a leader, that's
not your agenda, that's yourteam member's agenda.
They're coming to you with aproblem a challenge, an

(16:26):
opportunity, a question theyhave.
And your job is not to give themadvice.
Your job is to ask questions, aswe've said, ask questions and
coach them through.
And by the way, not only is thatgood for them, but it's great
practice for you to become abetter coach.

(16:49):
So let me wrap up and, you know,talk about some, some takeaways
and summarize the fivestrategies we've talked about.
But really, you know, what we'retalking about is shifting from
managing to coaching by askingbetter questions, inviting
ownership, spotting, andleveraging strengths.

(17:12):
Fostering growth, notperfection, and build building
coaching into your rhythm, intoyour weekly rhythms, and even
into your daily rhythms.
When someone knocks on your doorand says, I've got a problem,
coach them.
Don't give them advice.
So here's my challenge for youin your next one-on-one meeting.

(17:40):
Or even in your next teammeeting, try coaching your team
or an individual through achallenge rather than telling
them what to do and see whatchanges.
Not just what changes in thatmoment, but afterward may take
some time.
What changes is your, is theteam member building new habits

(18:01):
where they're.
they're using your questions asa model to think through
challenges, issues, problemsthemselves.
And remember, the best leadersare not the ones with the most
answers.
The best leaders are the oneswho multiply the brain power,

(18:23):
the talents, the capabilities oftheir team.
And always remember, if you wanta great company, you need a
great leadership team.
I hope the idea of doing morecoaching and maybe a little less
managing will help you getthere.
Talk to you soon.