Shift the Mindset from Supervisors to Performance Coaches
We’re all trying to achieve individual, team, and organizational success in today's work environment.
If we revise our definition of what being a supervisor means, from oversight to performance coaching, employees and organizations will perform better. Being a performance coach means asking two key questions: how do I help this person be better tomorrow than they are today, and what can I do to help them? In many cases, senior leaders may operate as performance coaches for their team members, but often, it doesn’t trickle down to the line and middle management levels.
I'll share my logic of why the time has come for a shift and what I think should be part of any leadership development approach.
Looking Back
If we go back in time, many people were working on farms in the agrarian society or fishing on a boat, and the complexity of what people were focused on was not as high as it is today. This is not to say these are not challenging jobs, but the supervisory role was mostly an oversight role in ensuring the work was completed. There may have been a role to play in the best strategy to address droughts or fight off pests on the crops, but often that was more of the role of the owner/leader vs. the worker. The role of the supervisor was very task oversight-focused.
As we moved to the industrial revolution, we saw the rise of machines to help people do their jobs more efficiently and accurately. With this shift, we saw a focus on the productivity of the people - how many widgets could be produced in an hour, a day, etc., and how we could minimize waste during this process. The supervisor's role was around efficiency and optimization…monitoring what was going well or not working.
Fast Forward to Today
Now, we’re seeing the fruits of technological innovation, including intelligent automation of tasks and processes, the usage of robotics for things like surgery or work on a factory floor, and tools like ChatGPT that are changing how we think about information synthesis. This change in how people focus their time changes the needs around supervision. We need those in the workplace to focus on human skills - negotiation, relationship building, communication, and innovation. This rise in the importance of human or power skills doesn’t mean there isn’t a need for productivity and accuracy, but the success factors for the individual may look much different now. Engaging employees to think creatively about challenging problems, find new ways of doing things, and solve customer problems requires a different mindset and approach.
When we look at our supervisory and management practices today, many employees still feel like their boss is there to check their work, make sure they’re where they need to be when they need to be and tell them what they’re doing wrong. Some of this approach may come from what is measured, or maybe the person never had a good role model.
Most of us want an opportunity to partner with our boss in a more relationship-oriented way…collaborating, knowing each other as individuals, learning from each other, and solving problems together.
Many organizations and leaders could learn from what the best coaches do. We see some common themes among the best of them, so I’ll share the eleven recommendations I identified.
Recommendation #1 – Has Passion and Enthusiasm for the Goal
The best coaches are passionate about the game. They are energetic about what works and doesn’t work, what the leading edge techniques are, how to “innovate” the plays, etc., and they bring that energy to the practices daily.
In the working world, this translates to sharing the “why” and the purpose of what individuals focus on…what will their actions impact? It’s key to ensure they see the significant value their contribution makes to the bigger picture.
Recommendation #2 - Sets a high bar on expectations and behavior
Along with teamwork and collaboration, the coach/team leader must set the bar of appropriate behavior and standards to which they will hold the team members. Each team member has come from a different set of experiences, so it’s vital to outline the expectations of what that bar looks like and the consequences of not following those expectations. Your role is to create an inclusive environment where people feel they can thrive, so the bars of expectations need to be set appropriately.
It’s key to lead by example as well. You can’t set expectations and expect your team to live by them if you are not.
Recommendation #3 - Provides Clarity on What Good & Great Look Like
For high performance, it’s critical to know what success looks like. Yes, the end goal may be to win the game or the competition, but usually, other things enable success. Maybe it’s the number of yards a player has run, the precision on the balance beam, or how your arm cuts through the water on your freestyle stroke.
Knowing the things that will facilitate the win is key so the individual can focus on them. In the workplace, we often set goals for people and tell them what the end game is, but it’s not unusual for people to not fully understand your definition of success on a task or a project. As Brené Brown puts it, we need to paint “done” so that they have clarity on what finished, good, and great look like.
Recommendation #4 - Understands each team member’s strengths
The best coaches focus on bringing out the best in each player. They know where the strengths are and where the weaker spots are, and they focus on harnessing them to the maximum value for the individual or the broader team. When it’s a team sport vs. an individual sport, like in our workplaces, it’s critical to know how to use everyone’s strength to accomplish the goal and how you shift responsibilities to allow people to deliver the most value.
Recommendation #5 – Coaches the Whole Person
The best coaches focus on the whole person, not just the athlete. They know that things that happen off the playing field impact the person's performance - health issues, a family situation, finances, etc. As humans, we can try to compartmentalize those things, but they do come to work with us, so the best coaches and team leaders recognize that and focus on knowing the whole person and what they’re going through. This doesn’t mean being their best friend or that they share their life story, but it is focused on trying to know the whole person so that approaches can be adapted.
Given the shift from a more industrial to a technology/knowledge-based workplace and more work-from-home situations, many of us can no longer leave work at work at the end of the day. Our professional and personal life are intertwined now. Personal challenges are increasingly going to show up when people are at work. We need to practice empathy and support team members through challenges.
Recommendation #6 – Believes in the Individual
Building on the point around knowing the individual’s strengths, a coach also plays the crucial role of genuinely believing in the individual and what they can accomplish. When things get tough, individuals often need someone else to remind them about what they have accomplished in the past or that they have the strength needed to persevere. When they set that stretch goal, it’s key to have someone else who thinks they can accomplish it and will coach them toward achieving it.
Recommendation #7 – Fosters 2-way Communication
Two-way communication is critical. Sometimes you hear of coaches or supervisors where team members are afraid to share their opinions. There is a time, place, and approach that should be part of the decision to speak. Still, we know that if coaches or leaders are open to hearing from their players or teams, there may be an opportunity to have an even more robust strategy or delivery plan along with greater buy-in from the team on the approach that’s being taken since they feel they were part of a discussion.
Recommendation #8 - Knows the Competition & Makes the Calls
Knowing the competition on the playing field or in the workplace is critical to success so that you know how to harness the power of your team…where the competition may have strengths that you don’t have, or what their strategy is for differentiating the value of a product or a service. Sometimes in the workplace, the competition might be internal competition for resources (time, people, etc.)
As a leader in the game, the best coaches are also willing to make the tough calls - pull out a starter when they aren’t delivering what is needed, giving a chance to an up-and-comer who may not be as ready as one would like, or reassigning work to someone else when a team member is overwhelmed without making it feel like a punishment. Being that coach or leader means you need to be prepared and constantly watch for the moves to make.
Recommendation #9 – Requires Teamwork and Collaboration
Teamwork and collaboration are critical, even in an individual sport. We rely on others for their best practices and techniques, what they’ve learned about a race course, how they deal with challenges that come up unexpectedly, etc.
In a team sport, it’s critical to remember that a team wins the game…not one individual, even though you may have a superstar player. That superstar still needs the other team members to do their parts exceptionally well so they can score the goal or touchdown, bring a run in, etc.
All of the members contribute to the win or loss. A good coach or leader recognizes the value of the whole team and embraces teamwork and collaboration over individual superstars. Ever watch a soccer team where one player just wants to be the one to score the goal and never passes to the person who might be open and have a great shot? This is what a coach and leader need to watch for and address quickly.
Recommendation #10 - Celebrates the Successes and Rebuilds from the Failures
All teams will have some wins and some losses over time. It’s key to take the time to celebrate the wins, no matter how small, so that we build up the energy bank for the losses. We tend to focus most on what we could have done differently…if I had only taken that shot, we would have won by a greater spread. We speed past the reflection about all the great plays, teamwork, and strategies we employed. When things don’t go well, the coach/leader needs to help motivate the team to return from the loss…point out what went well, where the gaps were, and how to move forward.
Recommendation #11 – Learns from Reviewing the Plays
Part of getting better is learning from what went well and what didn’t go as well. To do this, coaches watch replays of the game or the competitions with the athletes to reflect on what may have led to the success or failure of a play or a move. Often, our memories don’t capture everything because we can’t always see the other things going on….thus, a replay is needed.
The same thing is needed in the work environment…what made this project go well, what were the challenges, what would we do differently knowing how this played out, or why did we lose this deal? We must learn from each success and failure to improve individual and team players and organizations.
In Summary
Make the shift and train your leaders to be the performance coach, not just a supervisor. Emphasize to your leaders that they focus on:
✔️ Playing team members in the position that best fits their capabilities and your business needs
✔️ Showing team members the goal and what great looks like
✔️ Giving team members the freedom to choose the methods for achieving the goal
✔️ Sharing their reactions to what team members are doing - did they find it interesting, valuable, etc., or did it miss the mark?
✔️ Making the hard calls and course correcting when needed
✔️ Celebrating the wins
✔️ Focusing on how team members can be better tomorrow than they are today
This shift in how you set up your leaders to lead will inspire greater alignment, higher engagement, and, ultimately, stronger business performance.