Most managers were promoted because they were good at their jobs. They had answers. They solved problems. They knew what needed to be done. These were precisely the capabilities that made them effective as individual contributors.
And those same capabilities become a liability once they are responsible for a team.
The research on this is consistent and striking. A manager who tells people what to do develops dependent team members who wait for instructions and struggle when the manager is unavailable. A manager who coaches, who asks questions and creates space for people to find their own answers, develops autonomous team members who grow in capability and take ownership of their work.
Gallup's 2025 research found that only 21% of employees globally are engaged at work. The factor most consistently associated with engagement is the quality of the relationship with the direct line manager. Specifically, managers who take an interest in employees as people, who have conversations about development, and who help employees understand how their work connects to broader purpose, are the managers whose teams are most engaged.
This is coaching. Not formal coaching sessions with contracts and agreed goals, though those have value. It is the coaching approach embedded in the daily conversations between a manager and the people they lead.
What Makes Coaching Different from Managing
The distinction between managing and coaching is not about the conversation topic. Both are concerned with performance and development. The distinction is in the orientation. Managing is primarily directive: here is what we need to do, here is how to do it, here is where you are falling short. Coaching is primarily facilitative: what are you trying to achieve, what are the obstacles, what options do you have, what will you do?
The directive approach is efficient in the short term. The facilitative approach is more effective in the long term. It builds capability in the team member rather than dependency on the manager. It creates engagement through autonomy and mastery. It surfaces the team member's own thinking rather than overlaying the manager's assumptions.
This does not mean a coaching approach is always appropriate. There are situations where clear direction is the right response: a new team member who lacks the knowledge to make good decisions, a genuine crisis that requires immediate coordinated action, or a performance situation that requires explicit clarity about expectations and consequences. The skilled manager knows which approach the situation requires.
The GROW Model: A Simple Framework
The most widely used coaching framework in a management context is the GROW model, developed by Sir John Whitmore in the 1990s and still the starting point for most coaching skills training programmes. Its value is its simplicity: four questions that structure a coaching conversation without requiring extensive training to apply.
Goal. What does the person want to achieve? Not what does the manager want for the team member, but what outcome matters to the person themselves. Connecting development to personal motivation is what makes it sustainable.
Reality. What is currently happening? What has been tried? What are the obstacles? The manager resists the urge to diagnose at this stage. The questions are designed to help the team member develop a clear, honest picture of the current situation for themselves.
Options. What could be done? What else? The manager generates options alongside the team member without directing toward a specific answer. The range of options that emerge from a genuine exploration is almost always wider than what either party would have identified alone.
Will. What will the person actually do? By when? What support do they need? Coaching without a commitment is just a conversation. The Will stage converts insight into action and creates accountability.
Managers who learn the GROW model often report that the most difficult part is the silence after the question. They ask "what options do you have?" and then, when the team member does not immediately respond, they fill the silence by answering the question themselves. The coaching skill is to wait. The thinking happens in the silence.
Common Mistakes in Manager Coaching
The most common mistake is premature solution-giving. A manager asks a coaching question, hears part of the answer, and immediately offers a solution before the team member has had the opportunity to develop their own. This feels helpful but is counterproductive. The team member learns that if they wait long enough, the manager will provide the answer. The dependency continues.
The second mistake is confusing coaching with performance management. Coaching is a developmental conversation between a manager and a high-trust relationship. Performance management is a different conversation with different objectives and different dynamics. Attempting to use a coaching approach during a performance management process is almost always counterproductive because the power dynamic makes genuine coaching impossible.
The third mistake is using coaching language without genuine curiosity. Asking "what do you think you should do?" in a tone that implies the manager already knows the answer and is just testing whether the team member gets it right is not coaching. It is direction with extra steps. Genuine coaching requires genuine curiosity about the other person's perspective.
Building a Coaching Culture
The real benefit of coaching skills for managers is not the individual conversations. It is the cumulative effect on team culture. When managers routinely ask good questions, listen fully, and create space for team members to develop their own thinking, the team develops norms of reflection, autonomy, and ownership.
Deloitte's research on high-performing L&D teams found that organisations with strong coaching cultures are significantly more likely to outperform peers on revenue, retention, and employee engagement. The mechanism is relatively direct: people who are treated as capable, autonomous professionals behave like capable, autonomous professionals.
The development of coaching skills in managers is therefore not a soft HR initiative. It is one of the highest-return investments in organisational capability that an L&D team can make.
Try This
For one week, commit to asking a question before offering a solution in every development conversation you have. When a team member brings you a problem, before you respond, ask: "What have you already tried?" or "What options do you see?" or "What would be most helpful from me right now?" Notice what happens to the quality of the conversation, and to the team member's engagement with the problem.
References
Deloitte (2025) Human Capital Trends Report. Deloitte University Press.
Gallup (2025) State of the Global Workplace Report. Washington, DC: Gallup Press.
Grant, A.M. (2012) 'An integrated model of goal-focused coaching: An evidence-based framework for teaching and practice', International Coaching Psychology Review, 7(2), pp. 146--165.
International Coaching Federation (2023) ICF Global Coaching Study 2023. ICF Research Portal.
Whitmore, J. (2009) Coaching for Performance: GROWing Human Potential and Purpose. 4th edn. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.