When coaching might not work…

As much as I advocate using a coaching approach whenever possible, it’s important to remember that it’s only one tool in your toolkit.

In professional coaching, we talk about “coachability” – whether a person is ready and willing to be an active participant in their development in this area. This isn’t meant as judgment toward them, because there are many reasons a person might not be in a place to benefit from coaching. But it does mean that their energy would be better spent seeking other types of support. To complicate things even further, a person may be very coachable on one topic, but not at all coachable on another topic at the same time.

Professional coaching focuses on developing a partnership. During the 30-60 minute coaching session, we work out what the real challenge is and identify some steps to move forward in addressing the challenge, and then it’s up to the client to actually put those steps into action in between sessions.

In using a coaching approach to leadership, that partnership ideal is complicated by your hierarchical relationship within your organizational structure. For this approach to be effective, the employee needs to want to have some autonomy over their own professional development and feel safe in leaning into this autonomy.

In my own experience, psychological safety has made a huge difference. When you don’t trust that your supervisor will actually follow through on supporting you in the changes you discuss making, why invest energy into those discussions?

Years ago, before I had even heard of coaching, I was a member of a department with a leader who regularly failed to respect boundaries – both around their own workload and our workloads and priorities. In departmental discussions about how to establish and maintain sustainable workloads, one colleague just “noped” out of participating. Some of us were on the edge of burnout and pushing to set clear departmental priorities and boundaries around that time, in an attempt to prevent being expected to jump to contribute to every new initiative that flittered across that supervisor’s attention span. I still remember the frustration in that one colleague’s voice as they said they wanted to “just be told what to do”. There was a lot of dysfunction in that department, as toxic leadership triggered less than ideal reactions, so it was more complex than just the department head / one department member relationship. But the key was that this person chose not to participate in this collaborative process in that context.

A few years later, we had been through a reorganization that positioned me as the head of a new department that included this colleague. We were tasked with assessing and redesigning our liaison program in our first year as a department. This same person took an active role in crafting what our jobs should be – the very thing they previously refused to participate in. I won’t take all of the credit, because we had been through changes in leadership at higher levels as well. But I can say that I felt like those earlier group discussions were a battlefield, while the discussions in this new department felt like teamwork. This was before I learned about coaching, but my approach was already aligned with what I later learned is a coaching approach.

One of the questions I wasn’t able to get to during the webinar I offered last December was:

Would you say that some people react better to a coaching approach? Should a manager use this approach for some people, and maybe a different approach for others?

You may already guess that my answer to this is definitely yes, but it’s complicated! Some people may never respond well to a coaching approach. Some people may not react well now, but may warm up to it over time. Some team members are still coping with trauma from past toxic workplaces. Some leaders join teams with legacy toxicity and have to adjust their approach while working to address those challenges.

So just because it doesn’t work now doesn’t mean that it won’t ever work. It may be that using this approach where you can will create an environment where others feel safe engaging with this approach as well. You may have a blend of early adopters and those who prefer to wait to see how it works before they invest their energy.

So how would you like to interact with those who aren’t ready to engage in a coaching conversation? How could you practice using a coaching mindset – staying curious a little longer, actively listening to them, respecting them as being responsible for their own decisions, etc – with an employee who may respond better now to a more directive leadership style?