Manager’s Quiz: Are You a Coach or a Referee?

If you’re a manager-coach, you’re ensuring that your employees are experiencing as much success as possible. If you’re a manager-referee, you’re waiting for your staff to make mistakes so that you can run interference, call a penalty and tell the person what they should have done in the first place.

“The key to ensure that employees are being successful is to track their progress to make sure that as a boss you’ve set clear goals for them, and that you’re aware of when they accomplish those goals and, just as importantly, that you celebrate the accomplishments and successes,” said Jim Concelman, manager of Leadership Development, Development Dimensions International. “If you find yourself as a boss not doing much celebrating, people aren’t being successful.”

This celebration can consist of bonuses and verbal acknowledgement in staff meetings and the company newsletter. “The recognition and celebration can be inexpensive and easy. It can also be a bigger deal as well,” Concelman said. “In some research that we’ve done, we’ve found that the number one reason people leave an organization is that they don’t feel appreciated, and that’s from the U.S. Department of Labor. Another survey shows that 65 percent of people said they did not get any recognition in 2003. So, it doesn’t often take a lot. It’s just a matter of recognizing when someone’s been successful.”

There are two ways to recognize people, Concelman said, for an accomplishment or for effort. “If as a leader you find yourself recognizing people more for accomplishment than effort, you’re being successful. If you find yourself recognizing effort, you might want to take a look at how well you’re coaching people.”

In order to enrich your coaching skills or to become a proactive coach, you should view coaching as a process rather than an event. It’s an opportunity to observe people, watch their accomplishments and then provide good feedback and recognition. In contrast, referee coaches see coaching as an event or, “something wrong happened, now I need to intervene.” Concelman laid out a few steps to become a proactive coach.

“First, set clear goals for people, not necessarily for a particular event but over time,” Concelman said. “You might call it performance management. The second is to observe their behavior, observe what they’re doing so that if you see an opportunity for coaching, you can act quickly. Number three is to help them be successful without taking over. And that sometimes is one of the hardest things for a boss to do, to frankly take a bit of a risk that you’re preparing this person and that they can handle it. Four is provide appropriate feedback afterwards, hopefully positive feedback, but if necessary, provide that coaching for improvement if things didn’t go exactly as planned.”