From Manager to Coach

What does a manager do?

There are as many answers to that question as there are managers. Since I can't give all those answers, I'll endeavor to answer it according to mine. My description of what a manager does comes from decades of observing them, a couple of decades of being one and what I hear other people say about managers.

My observations and years of coaching managers, together with my own experience as a manager have provided me with this description of what a manager does. They manage:

• Large projects that support the entire organization

• Large projects that support existing clients

• Large projects that support new business acquisition

• Facilities moves

• Cubicle/desk construction

• Purchasing of computers and hardware

• Event management

• Process improvement

• Customer escalations

• Organizational politics

• Managing up

• Managing down

• Be the bearer of bad news

• Other duties as assigned

• Oh yeah, and time permitting, engage and develop your team members.

I'm going to suggest, that unless your company is a start up, still in the hunt to turn your first profit, and your managers are doing anything more than that very last bullet, you and they are doing it all wrong.

Crazy? Yeah, that's because we've been getting it wrong for so long that all those bullets in the list above sound like every managers job description. That's because we got used to having managers be the ones to jump in when something was needed, and there wasn't time to consider the unintended consequences. Then, since they handled the situation so well, those emergencies became part of the job.

"Yeah, right," you say. "That's my job and it's never going to change. They're not going to hire project managers to do all that 'other duties as assigned' stuff," you say. Nope, probably not right away, but tune into my next article and I'll show you how you can make it happen all by yourself.

A few years ago, in the Harvard Business Review group on LinkedIn, I performed a very non-scientific study. I simply posed a question, "If you're a manager, what proportion of your time is spent managing projects and initiatives versus the proportion spent coaching your team members?" I got a lot of responses and with very few exceptions the responses were 80% for projects and initiatives and 20% for coaching. I don't recall anyone monologuing or complaining or commenting much at all about the ratio. I would have expected someone would have said, "I really wish I could have more time to coach". No one did. I presume the reason for that is because, the manager's job has been defined as I outlined in the bullets above for so long, that it has become the norm.

It's the wrong model.

At least, that 80/20 ratio needs to be turned on its head with 80% of a managers time being spent in coaching. At best, managers should be relieved of all those other responsibilities.

If you still think that's crazy, and that if the managers don't do all that stuff, then who's going to do it? Answer: people more suited to do that stuff, like project managers.

If you're a manager and you are thinking, "Yeah, but I like managing the projects a lot more than I like coaching people", it's because you're not a people manager. You are, indeed, a project manager, and you probably struggle when it comes to managing people.

This is the first in a series of articles I'll be sharing on this concept of moving leaders "From Manager to Coach". The articles will take you through what it means to be a coach, then how you can use the Analyze--Observe--Feedback process to start effectively coaching your team.

The articles are a lead-in to a 5 week Zoom course I'll be leading for managers where I'll teach you what it means to make the shift from manager to coach. Then, for those who want to do the hard work, I'll teach you how to flip that 80/20 ratio on its head, without having to quit your company.

Ryan Houmand coaches managers and individuals who are looking up-level their game. He's author of "A Passion for Monday" and has appeared on FOX, CBS and NBC talking about the "3 Mistakes that Make People Hate Monday"