Let’s cut right to the chase. If you are a manager in today’s business world, you may be managing in an
environment of great strategic change that has up to five generations of employees, a global matrix where you have 10 direct reports half of which you will never meet face-to-face, and unrealistic business goals that you are supposed to achieve with 30% less resources then you had a year ago.
Most current leadership development initiatives suggest that the role of the modern leader is not “managing” employees, but rather “coaching” them through goal setting and performance dialogues that continue to enhance strong behaviors and overcome the weak ones. By all definitions, a good coach is someone who can help others reach higher levels of effectiveness and business performance by engaging in dialogues that lead to awareness, actions, and results.
Great coaching involves asking questions, listening, reflecting, and taking action. Over the past few years, I have come to know, use, and respect the GROW coaching model as a terrific model that is easy to understand and even easier to implement well.
However, this blog is not about exploring good coaching; it’s about asking if it is still possible to coach up someone if they have a lack of skills that simply can’t be enhanced with world-class coaching.
Coaching, Training, or Exiting the Job?
As with most of the topics I explore, this one also was provided by a participant of a recent new manager leadership development program I led. Several of the participants were extremely frustrated and saddened by their own perceptions of “failure” because they felt that they were lacking the coaching skills needed to drive success of poorly performing employees. I shared with them an important perspective that goes to the core of coaching and that is if you think a direct report needs coaching, it is imperative that you understand the issues and drivers involved in this assessment.
To explore in the simplest of circumstances, let’s say you’ve asked the direct report to analyze some data and prepare a presentation using Excel and PowerPoint. After 10 hours of work (your thought maybe it would take the person just 3), the direct report wants to “share an update of the work in process to get feedback.” You review it and you can hardly contain your surprise because it looks like the work of a 5th grader who’s never done this before.
You take the time to coach and provide feedback on what the person did well (not much), what the person didn’t do well (a lot), and how to improve in the future. Several months later you assign a similar project and the results are almost exactly the same; it’s poorly done, and the output has no value.
You soon realize that trying to coach someone around a skill they lack is an exercise in frustration for all parties involved.
After realizing the “coaching” didn’t work, you opt for a training solution. You suggest the person take some online courses in Excel, PowerPoint, and data analytics so that in the future the presentations can be more effective, and the person can be more productive.
Several months later, there was an opportunity to give the person yet another presentation project and for the third time in six months, you realize the person failed miserably on the project.
Now that you’ve tried coaching and then as a next step training and neither has worked, you go back to basics and explore the old “Situational Leadership” framework of Skill vs. Will. You’ve already established that the skill level is low, and you think that the will level is good, but not great. The person doesn’t work extra hours, doesn’t ask for stretch assignments, and basically is a “9-5er.”
You are now at the point where you have a very hard decision to make and have to answer the question of if it is possible to coach past a lack of skills when the will is medium at best.
Guess what? The answer is no. No, you can’t coach up skills to a high level of performance when they are not there. No, you can’t coach someone who tries but doesn’t try hard enough.
With all the pressure on top, middle, and first-time leaders to perform it is a huge mistake to think that a little coaching will solve the problem. It won’t. The only solution is to have a reasonable yet hard conversation to exit the person and / or suggest moving on.
