20 reasons why internal coaching for lawyers fails
Coaching done well helps lawyers and their firms improve their performance, and a massive 73% of companies say they use in-house coaching (1).
Yet firms that see coaching as an internal function need to avoid the common mistakes that occur when using managers to coach, especially when almost 30% of in-house coaches are untrained (2).
Jeremy Thomas is a coaching specialist at Outside Insight and works with a number of law firms to support their internal programmes.
Here Jeremy identifies 20 coaching mistakes managers commonly make:
Managers who act like managers are not best-placed to coach
1. Managers must put aside the mindset of managing and focus on nurturing and support, helping team members take responsibility for their development
2. Managers are too busy to coach effectively and will often put off coaching when other work gets in the way. Waiting for the ‘right time’ is not a successful coaching strategy
3. Managers see it as a sign of weakness to acknowledge their own willingness to be open, develop and improve, and so employees do the same
4. Managers test rather than coach, preferring to see how people react to challenges rather than help good people become better
Managers sacrifice coaching for short term fixes
5. Managers focus on putting out fires rather than coaching for long term development
6. Managers focus on coaching for underperforming employees, linking coaching to failure rather than an opportunity for improvement
7. Managers confuse coaching with on the job training or performance evaluations. All have their place, however coaching is ongoing, strategic and must be owned by the employee to be successful
Managers don’t have a coaching strategy
8. Managers highlight mistakes, which creates a passive-aggressive response from team members who acknowledge their faults but are left feeling angry at having their shortcomings identified
9. Managers make personal criticisms rather than stepping back from a situation and providing cool headed comments. Team members become defensive and move responsibility somewhere else
10. Managers don’t have a process in place that drives both parties towards a long term objective. Coaching identifies behaviours, sets targets, creates next steps and reviews results
Managers dominate
11. As leaders, managers try to dominate conversations rather than listen to ideas and responses. Good coaching is based on listening with intent, to understand how employees can be empowered to take control of their development
12. Managers have pre-formed ideas that they try to impose on the people they are coaching, rather than letting team members take responsibility
13. Managers steer conversations towards the path they know rather than finding the best route for team members
14. Managers don’t ask the people they are coaching “how can I be helpful”, so the employee never engages with the process
Managers aren’t impartial
15. Managers can’t provide confidentiality, making it difficult for team members to open up
16. Managers find it difficult to step away from an environment and impartially review how a team member’s behaviour is related to the people around them
Managers don’t see the process through
17. Coaching is best completed over a long period of time, helping the coachee review their changes and reflect on their ongoing development. Managers work to shorter timeframes
18. Rather than creating actionable outcomes, managers give well-meaning advice that is of little practical use
19. Managers don’t finish with a firm commitment from their employee that they can use to measure future development against
20. Managers don’t measure the results of their coaching
Jeremy Thomas is a qualified executive coach and founder of Outside Insight, a company created to provide professional coaching for lawyers and coaching support for law firms. Find out more at www.outsideinsight.org.
References:
(1) Hays Senior Finance and LeaderShape, Sept 2010
(2) Hays Senior Finance and LeaderShape, Sept 2010 – 29% of in-house coaches are untrained