17 Ways to Teach Managers how to Coach

 

Welcome to the April 2014 edition of the Leadership Development Carnival!

For this month’s Carnival, I asked our community of leadership development experts the following question:

“Wouldn't it be great if we could teach managers how to coach? What one book, website, or other resource would you recommend to a busy yet motivated manager who wants to learn how to be a better coach?”

The following is a collection of their responses. Bookmark it, print it, and share it with others. Pick one resource that you didn’t know about and review it yourself. We can all learn something new when it comes to the art and science of coaching.

Thank-you to all that contributed to this list! Please take a moment to visit their blogs, as they are all outstanding writers and should be a part of your regular leadership development reading.

The list is not ranked – they are in order of submission, first to last:

1. “The book I recommend for leaders on the art and science of coaching is The Coaching Manager by Hunt and Weintraub”, writes Beth Armknecht Miller, CEO of Executive Velocity,  “This book provides a great process for leaders who want to become effective coaches in their organizations with real world examples and should be a “go to” guide for all leaders.”

2. S. Chris Edmonds, from Driving Results Through Culture  recommends his March ’12 blog post titled, “Coaching - Not Conversion,” because “holding others accountable requires a series of coaching conversations to set the context for the desired behavior and gain commitment from that player to change their behavior. One discussion typically won’t convert people to desired ways - it takes coaching.”

3. Jim Taggart of ChangingWinds offers up a dynamite book on mentoring: “Of all the books I’ve read on coaching and mentoring over the years, the one that stands out for me is Chip Bell’s Managers asMentors: Building Partnerships for Learning. Dating back to 1996 when it was first published (with subsequent updates) Bell’s book, while practical, also has a philosophical underpinning. Bell uses his SAGE concept to explain the importance of learning how to effectively mentor. In essence, the mentor is a sage, one who helps guide and teach another individual. As Bell states in the opening section: “This book is about power-free facilitation of learning.”

 4. Tanmay Vora from QAspire recommends this interview with Marshall Goldsmith and Chip R. Bell on the art of effective mentoring. "I interviewed Marshall Goldsmith and Chip R. Bell on Topic: The Art of Effective Mentoring. Their interview is a fantastic resource for leaders to clarify the foundation of coaching and mentoring. Mentoring means starting where the protégé is, not where the mentor wants him or her to be."

5. Joan Kofodimos from Anyone Can Lead recommendations Biggest Coaching Mistakes Managers Make. “I find that managers have many misconceptions about what it means to coach. In addition to teaching managers "how to," we can also help by clarifying "how not to" coach.”

6. Michael VanDervort, from The Human Race Horses Blog recommends the Spiritual Workout website.  "It's an interesting website with some creative workplace ideas, and well worth checking out."

7. Jon Mertz, from Thin Difference, recommends the book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why it Matters by Richard Rumelt. "Strategy development and execution are key elements in leadership and will inevitably arise in conversations with managers and other leaders. This book highlights what makes a good strategy work and what dooms a strategy."

8. Mary Jo Asmus recommends her own program: “Aspire Collaborative Services has taught hundreds of individual and groups/teams of managers to coach others with a hands-on, real-world program taught by seasoned executive coaches called Coaching for Breakthrough Performance.

9. Tim Milburn, from Lifelong Leaders, recommends the book Coaching for Leadership, edited by Marshall Goldsmith, Laurence Lyons, & Sarah McArthur (3rd Edition). "It is a fantastic collection of articles by some of the best executive coaches out there. It helped me understand different coaching styles and best practices within this ever-expanding field of coaching."

10. Randy Conley, from Leading with Trust, recommends the website CoachWooden.com. “John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach at UCLA, was more than just a basketball coach. His coaching, teaching, and leadership principles can be applied to any leader, manager, or individual contributor seeking to achieve their maximum potential.”

11. Jim Concelman, from Development Dimensions International’s Talent Management intelligence just wrote an article on this topic titled,  The Problem You May Not Know You Have: Your Experienced Leaders Could Be Ineffective Coaches. In it he shares, “Experience can teach many things, but experience alone cannot teach leaders how to be good coaches. Learn what separates the "great" from the "mediocre."

12. Robyn McLeod, from The Thoughtful Leaders Blog, recommends the book, Power Questions, by Andrew Sobel and Jerold Panas. “This book offers insight to how asking the right questions can strengthen relationships, shift perspectives, and open the door to developing others. Questions are an essential part of any coach’s toolkit and a manager who can developing great asking skills is well-positioned to coach others.”

13. John Hunter from Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog suggests The Leader's Handbook by Peter Scholtes , “not due to specific advice on coaching but in order to gain insight into how to view the results of complex human systems without leaping to false conclusions.  Often I think coaching mistakes are made because we do things like select those to coach based on what we call "performance" but is really just random variation viewed through our desire to find patterns (and assign specific causes where they don't exist).  The book is what I would use to guide the coaching - using it as the textbook to improve their management and leadership knowledge and practice.”

14. Jill Malleck from Epiphany at Work recommends the book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg. “This book gives managers the tools to communicate more authentically and with both gentleness and directness. I especially like the pieces on observing without evaluation, identifying and expressing feelings (with a list of feeling words) and making direct requests.”

15. Anna Farmery from The Engaging Brand recommends the book Brief by Joe McCormack. "I read many books for The Engaging Brand podcast and therefore to choose only one is extremely difficult. I have chosen Brief because of the essence of the message - brevity can be so much more powerful for leaders".

16. Wally Bock from Three Star Leadership recommends the post Coaching and the 21st Century Leader. “Helping team members grow and develop will become a more and more important part of your job. Whether you call that mentoring or coaching, there are skills to learn and practice.”

17. Dan McCarthy, from Great Leadership, recommends the book Effective Coaching by Myles Downey. "While I've read a lot of books on coaching, this one is the one that I've used the most. It's straightforward, practical, and loaded with tips and tools".

Do you have a favorite coaching resource that's not on the list? Please add it as a comment.