5 Coaching Mistakes Managers Make and What to Do Instead

If you've ever sat in a one-on-one, asked your employee a bunch of questions and then walked out thinking, well, that was a great coaching conversation, there's a decent chance your employee walked out thinking something differently. Something like, why didn't she just tell me what she wanted? So today we're going to talk about five mistakes managers make when they try to coach their people and what to do instead. My name is Ramona Shaw, and this is The Manager Track Podcast.

So here's what I see very often. Managers get told that good leaders coach. They go to the training, they read the book, they hear ask, don't tell, and they take that seriously, which is awesome. On its own, that is great. Coaching has tremendous ROI, huge benefits that come from using coaching with your employees, from motivation, engagement, performance increase, accountability, behavioral change, and you name it.

But the challenge is that a lot of managers think that they're coaching when they're really just wrapping their advice into questions. It can sound like, hey, have you tried looping in the client earlier? Or wouldn't it be better to send the summary first? There's a question mark at the end, right? But you're still telling them what to do, and the person on the other side knows it. So now they're not thinking through the problem at all, which is what we try to do with coaching.

They're actually trying to guess which answer you want to hear. And the tricky part is that from your side, it feels like coaching. You asked questions, you didn't give orders, you were kind of doing what the book said.

Now there's some research that backs this up. Zenger Folkman, a leadership research firm, looked at over 3,700 leaders who rated their own coaching skills and then had the people around them rate those same skills. And 24% of those leaders had overrated themselves. So about one in four thinks that they're a better coach than their team would say they are. And just to put some context into this, in most cases, leaders actually underrate themselves in comparison to how their direct reports or people around them would rate them. So this is the opposite. In this particular competence, leaders overrate themselves.

So here's what we're going to cover. We're going to look at the five most common mistakes that people make who want to coach effectively, who do think that they're coaching, but they're unintentionally doing things that actually make the coaching ineffective. And then at the end I'm going to talk about something that kind of gets overlooked, which is that coaching doesn't have to happen in a meeting. It can happen over Slack, in a Teams chat, in an email, you name it, or even in a comment in a document. And we'll talk about how to do this.

Now before we get into it, let me define the term, since coaching gets used for everything from feedback to pep talks to mentoring and probably a lot more. What I mean in this context is question-oriented guidance. You help someone think through a problem so they reach a decision that they actually own instead of you handing them your own decision.

Now notice what the definition leaves out here. It doesn't say coaching is the greatest leadership tool. It doesn't say you never give any answer. It just says that coaching is one way of leading alongside directing, teaching and giving feedback. And a lot of the mistakes we're about to go through come from thinking that asking questions is kind of the only acceptable way. And so we're trying to put that, you know, round peg into a square hole and it doesn't work.

So sometimes coaching is not the right way. And in order to do coaching effectively, we have to know which tool we're picking up from the toolkit and why. The skill really is knowing when coaching is the right fit.

So let's get into the five mistakes.

Mistake number one, you coach a problem that needed an answer. Let me give you an example here. A new analyst, three weeks into the job, comes to you and asks how to pull a report from a system that she's never used. And you, being a good coach, say, well, what do you think you should do? She doesn't know, that's why she's asking. So now she's standing there trying to invent an answer to look competent.

And you've turned a two-minute question into a test. And likely one that made them feel uncomfortable.

Questions work when the person has the knowledge and needs help thinking. They don't work when the knowledge isn't there yet. Ferdinand Fournies wrote a well-known book on why employees don't do what they're supposed to do. And the top of the list is pretty unglamorous. They don't know why they should do it, they don't know how to do it, they don't know what they're supposed to do. None of these get solved by asking, what do you think?

So before you coach, run a quick check. Is this a skill gap, a clarity gap, or a thinking gap? If they've never done it, teach. If they don't know what good looks like, tell them. If they have what they need and they're stuck on judgment, priorities, their way of thinking, or confidence, that is exactly when you coach.

Now here's a line you can use to find out which one you're dealing with. Have you handled something like this before or is this new territory for you? And if it's new territory, give the answer and add the reasoning so that next time they can get there on their own. Hey, here's what I'd do, and here's why. Next time something like this comes up, take a first pass and then bring me your thinking.

Asking someone to discover an answer they've never been taught is a quiz. People don't want to have a quiz. They don't sign up for that.

Okay, so that is mistake number one.

Mistake number two is the one I opened with. You ask questions that are really advice in disguise. You know these. Have you thought about talking to finance first? Do you think it would be better to wait until Q2? What if you just told the client, no, we can't do that. Those have question marks at the end, and they're still instructions.

Your employee hears them exactly that way.

Michael Bungay Stanier, who wrote two great books on coaching, calls this urge the advice monster. You've already solved the problem in your head, right? As they were talking, you're like, yeah, I got it. You know you're supposed to ask instead of tell. So you put your solution into a question format. And now you've got the downside of both.

The person doesn't get clear direction, and they don't get to do their thinking either, which would really be why we want to coach. They spend the conversation now trying to guess what you want and what was a directive, versus what was just a suggestion.

Now, the pushback I hear on this sometimes is, well, Ramona, sometimes I do have a view, and it's a good one, and I want them to know, yes. So say it as a view. If you have an opinion, but it is a coaching moment, own it as an opinion. And do ask a real question. For example, hey, I have a view on this, and I'll share it in a minute. But first, can you walk me through how you're seeing it or how you're thinking about it?

So a real question is one where you don't already have the answer that you're hoping for in your mind. And then it's either, did they get it right or did they get it wrong.

Coaching comes from a place of curiosity, not from a place of judgment. Two very different things. Here are a few additional examples. What have you already tried or ruled out? Which part of this are you unsure about? If this was entirely your call, what would you do?

If their answer would annoy you, you weren't asking a question with curiosity. You were trying to make a judgment.

Okay, so that was mistake number two.

Mistake number three. You forget that your title is in the room. When you're someone's manager, your ideas don't land as ideas. You say, hey, one thing you could try is restructuring the deck. You mean it as an option among several, but they walk out and will restructure the deck just like you suggested. You thought you brainstormed, but they received it as an assignment.

And I see this a lot with senior leaders. For example, if a client tells me their team never pushes back and just does whatever comes up in a one-on-one, the first thing I'll look at is how that senior leader shares ideas. Usually a team is being rational. When the person who writes your performance review thinks out loud, making suggestions, having ideas, treating them as a to-do is actually a safe move. It makes rational sense.

So you have to label what you're saying. Is this an idea, a strong preference, or a requirement? And those are three very different things. And your team can't tell them apart unless you say which one it is. Hey, I'm thinking out loud here. This is an idea and you're free to drop it.

You have to actually say you're free to drop it. This one is a requirement. How you get there though, is up to you. So I need this to be that way at the end or this part needs to be done a certain way. The rest is up to you.

The second fix is order, speak last. If you give your take first, every answer after that is likely shaped by it. So ask for theirs. Let there be a pause, which is going to feel long maybe, but it kind of helps just to let things settle. Then you add yours if it's even still needed.

When the boss thinks out loud, the team hears it as a to-do list. Label your ideas or they become assignments. And most people totally understand this intellectually. They see this all the time, but yet they forget to label their ideas or suggestions as optional. You have to actually say that out loud. If it's implied or not communicated, it likely won't land like that.

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This is our 90-day manager readiness program that we run for new and early-stage managers, people who are good at their jobs and now need to become good at leading. We go deep on exactly this kind of thing. When to coach and when to direct. How to give feedback, how to delegate, how to manage your time, how to have tough conversations, how to run a conversation that ends in real commitment and with accountability, plus so much more.

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If you're a manager whose conversations aren't producing the change you want, or you are leading a larger organization or an HR team and you want to build this capacity across several managers, then check out the link in the description to learn more about the program and for us to schedule a strategy call.

Now we're on to mistake number four. Coaching to dodge. And this is one I'd ask you to pay extra attention to. You use conversations to avoid a direct conversation. Happens all the time.

Here's how it often shows up. Someone on your team has been late on deliverables, let's say three times. Okay, you know it's a problem. But instead of saying so, you open with, How do you feel the project is going? You're hoping that they'll bring it up themselves, right? So that you don't have to.

That they say like, yeah, I've been late and you can just kind of nod along. But if they say, hey, it's actually going pretty good, they didn't realize that you wanted to give them feedback. Your back is kind of against the wall and you are stuck now.

This is problematic. And it feels like if you don't jump in with feedback, then that initial question seems a bit like a setup and disingenuous. So ultimately this is avoidance with good manners and often actually seems more confusing than helpful. Coaching can feel kinder than saying the hard thing, so it becomes a hiding place, but again, not effective.

There's, by the way, a second version of this mistake and it's a bit quieter. This is never stating the expectation clearly in the first place. You can't coach someone toward a standard that they've never heard. So if you haven't said what you expect by when and what good looks like, then every question you ask is asking them to guess something that they don't even know exists or they know exists only in your head, but they don't get it. And when they miss it and they don't really give that answer or aren't performing according to standards, now it starts to feel like a performance problem when really it's an expectations or a clarity problem that often the manager created. So the order really matters. Expectations first, then the gap, like the gap in behavior performance stated, stated really plainly.

Then comes coaching.

I want to give you some examples here. Here's what I expect. Send me the draft by Thursday afternoon. Make sure you check for errors first, so I have a day before it has to go to the client. So that is the expectation first.

Now in a follow-on conversation, if that standard wasn't met, we would say the last three drafts came in Friday morning. That's a gap I want to talk about because when I don't receive it on Thursday afternoon, as we aligned on earlier on, then I don't have enough time to review it and ensure that's in a great spot before we send it to the client. So I just highlighted the gap really clearly.

Now comes coaching. What is getting in the way? They answer and then what will you do differently starting this week so you have the report ready for my review on Thursday afternoon. That happens at the end. So coaching still happens, but it happens third, the person now knows what the standard is and they know that they're not meeting it. And the questions help them figure out how to close the gap.

Without the first two steps, those same questions become confusing.

Here's a check you can run on yourself before a one-on-one. Could this person tell me in one sentence what I expect from them on this? Like if this is, you know, coaching, talking about a behavior that's not working well, Are the expectations clear? If you're not sure, start there, reiterate the expectations. State the expectation, then name the gap and only then ask the question.

Okay, that was mistake number four.

Mistake number five is if the conversation ends and it felt great, feels good, and nothing was agreed. So this happens when the conversation itself becomes the goal. You ask good questions, they had a realization, there was real energy in the room, and then you both go back to your desks, two weeks later, you're having the same conversation again. Or you just have no idea whatever happened.

A coaching conversation is finished when there's a specific action, an owner or a date or something. And the commitment has to come from them in their words. Remember, if you summarize it, you do the heavy lifting in the conversation, especially at the end. You've taken the ownership back. It is their growth.

So if you come to the conclusion that this person needs a bit more visibility or better stakeholder management and you ask, what do you want to commit to doing in the next couple of weeks? They need to be very specific. I'm going to reach out to them. I'm going to do this and this. Okay, great. Next time you speak with them in two weeks, hey, how did that go?

And maybe there's good reasons why they didn't do it. Fair enough. But you want to make sure that you took note, you checked in. So they know, my boss is taking note, they're going to ask me about it. You're going to increase that sense of self-accountability.

If ownership or commitment is lacking, ask, so what are you going to do? And by when? Or, how will I know it happened? And even what could get in the way? What is your plan if that does? Those are good questions to ask at the very end to ensure your conversation ends with a clear commitment, an anchor that you then can go back to.

And I just alluded to this, right? One part is to actually make that commitment. The second part is to actually follow up. You put it in your notes and you open the next one-on-one or conversation with that. If you never come back to a commitment, your team learns that commitments made in your meetings are optional. By the way, this extends way beyond coaching conversations to just delegating work. If you're not checking in on what someone else commits to you, It's sending a weak signal.

And if in a conversation nobody committed to anything, then it was just a pleasant chat.

Okay, those were the five mistakes I see most often with people who are actually understanding coaching, want to do this well, want to use it effectively, but are still struggling to fully reap the benefits of it.

Okay, now a part that I promised you at the start. When people picture coaching, they picture a meeting, two chairs, a closed door, 30 minutes on the calendar. And written communication doesn't even get considered. And that means actually a big share of your daily interactions with your team, especially if you have a remote team. Happens in Slack and email and Teams and Zoom chats and all that. But they then become all advice giving all the time.

And coaching is sort of reserved for the sit-down, the one-on-one.

Question-oriented guidance works in writing too. If someone messages you and says like, Hey, the vendor pushed a date again. What should I do? Sure, you can quickly answer that question, but you could also, with probably the same amount of words, write a response that's more question-oriented. What are the options as you see them and which one are you leaning toward? Or someone sends you a draft, instead of rewriting it or giving detailed input, you leave a comment: Who is the reader in your mind and what do you want them to do after reading this?

Take another pass with that in mind. Very simple.

Writing has a couple of advantages here. The person gets time to think before they answer, which helps, particularly the people on your team who don't think out loud or have a hard time being quick on their feet. And the question stays on the page, right? So you have like a written record so that you can go back to it.

Now there are these benefits. But there's also two caveats. Everything from the first four mistakes still applies. If they need an answer, give the answer. If there's a performance gap, that's a live conversation, and you don't run it over Slack. And keep it to one or maybe two questions. A message with five questions can start to feel like an interrogation and a waste of time.

Coaching doesn't need a meeting. One good question in a Slack reply or Teams chat can count just as much.

So let me bring this together. There are five mistakes. One, coaching when the person needed an answer. So check whether it's a skill gap, a clarity gap or a thinking gap. Two, questions that are advice in disguise. So state your view as a view and ask questions you don't have the right answer to.

Three, forgetting your title is in the room. Label your ideas and speak last. Four, coaching to dodge a direct conversation, make sure you state the expectation, name the gap and then coach. And five, ending without a commitment. So close with what, by when, and how you'll know. And all of it works in writing as well with a few tweaks as much as it does in meetings.

Underneath all five is one idea. The goal of coaching is that the other person leaves more capable and with more clarity than they came in. Questions are one way to get there. Sometimes a direct answer does it or a clearly stated expectation. Your job as the leader is to pick the right one for the right person in front of you and the situation you're dealing with. Most of us, vast, vast majority lean way too much on advice giving.

This is the default tool that we pull. And the most important part is that you understand no, there are different tools in my toolkit and I have to be intentional. When is advice giving and when is coaching? You probably have to move into coaching a lot more often than you currently think. That's true for most of us.

Now here's what I encourage you to do this week. Pick one conversation you have coming up and before you walk in, decide which mode it needs, teach, tell or coach. Then also pick one written message and reply with a question where you would normally reply with the answer.

Now, as always, be easy on yourself with this. Coaching is a muscle and the first few times or as you're developing this, it will feel slow, sometimes even awkward. But that's all part of the process and making coaching a lot more like a habit.

If this was useful, please subscribe and share it with a colleague, a friend, another manager that you know who would benefit from this as well. Plus check out additional resources, including the cliff notes to this specific episode so you have it handy and easy to reference. All of that linked in the show notes. With that, I'll see you next week with another episode of The Manager Track Podcast. Bye for now.

If you enjoyed this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader people love to work with. This includes a free masterclass on how to successfully lead as a new manager. Check it out at archova.org/masterclass. The second resource is my best selling book The Confident and Competent New Manager: How to quickly rise to success in your first leadership role. Check it out at archova.org/books or head on over to Amazon and grab your copy there.