Employees appreciate a leader-coach who does less problem solving, more listening

People are asking for leaders who are willing to question their own assumptions through active listening and by giving teams the space they need to develop their own solutions. However, the gap between this aspiration and everyday reality is still wide. In fact, in a survey that will be included in The Leader Coach , forthcoming from Egea (in Italian), only 47% of the nearly 180 participants often or always observe coaching behaviors in their manager, while 76% would like to see them more frequently.

People want leaders who let go of their expectation of always having the answer. Leaders who instead create the conditions for people to think, decide, and act on their own. But greater autonomy also entails greater responsibility: Having more room to act means owning one’s choices and the results that ensue.

Space and autonomy

Coaching has long been part of the vocabulary of organizations. Listening, trust, autonomy, and empowerment are considered the essential ingredients of contemporary leadership. The challenge now is to close the gap between stating an intention to help people grow and adopting consistent behaviors in day-to-day relationships between managers and employees.

The risk is stopping at the most immediate aspects of the new model. Managers may communicate respectfully, encourage their team, and express confidence in people’s abilities while still making all the major decisions. They may ask questions only to steer someone toward a predetermined answer or allow freedom in execution without genuinely sharing the power to interpret problems and plan actions.

Then, the research in the book mentioned above focuses on two questions:

• How much space do managers currently give their people to think for themselves?
• To what extent are people willing to accept the other side of autonomy, namely taking greater accountability for the commitments they make?

The effectiveness of coaching depends on striking a dual balance. For leaders, doing less problem solving necessarily means listening to different perspectives and helping the team come up with their own answers. For employees, being granted greater autonomy means taking responsibility for the decisions they make, the commitments they pledge to keep, and the results they achieve. The partnership works only if both sides are willing to change.

The seven competencies of the leader as coach

The research involved 179 people from different age groups and companies of all sizes. A questionnaire was used to analyze 35 behaviors associated with seven competencies of the leader as coach, i.e., a person who:

• Cultivates trust and safety.
• Embodies (rather than merely advocates) a coaching mindset.
• Facilitates employee growth.
• Maintains presence (is fully focused on the person and the conversation).
• Establishes and respects agreements.
• Evokes awareness.
• Listens actively.

Respondents were asked both how frequently they observed these behaviors in their managers and how often they would like to encounter these behaviors in the future.

The picture that emerges is one of a transformation that is still incomplete. People in positions of responsibility appear to have absorbed the behaviors that make relationships less hierarchical and more psychologically safe, for the most part: maintaining a respectful style even when disagreeing, expressing confidence in people’s abilities, and giving them the opportunity to speak. But difficulties arise when managers are asked to take a genuine step back. Only 40% of respondents often or always see managers who are willing to reconsider their own assumptions. The figure falls to 38% for those who use open-ended questions and to 36% for those who are able to avoid immediately jumping to a solution. The results therefore reveal leaders who are capable of supporting people but are still reluctant to give up their monopoly on solutions. Coaching is often still confined to focusing on the quality of the relationship without fully transforming the way problems and decisions are addressed.

People’s expectations confirm the demand for change. Looking ahead, they place great importance on trust, listening, openness to dissent, and consistency between what managers promise and what they deliver. What’s more, people are looking for reliable leaders who can exercise their authority without stifling the contributions of others.

Not only leaders, but employees too face a challenge. The most sought-after components of coaching are listening, respect, feedback, and recognition. Less appealing are behaviors that require people to set their own goals, accept periodic reviews, and take full responsibility for the commitments they make. The behavior that ranked last (although 64% of respondents still wanted to see it) is taking responsibility for commitments and results. In sum, the benefits of autonomy are immediately attractive, but the price is to become more directly accountable for one’s own decisions.

Leadership must make this tradeoff explicit. If managers stop providing all the answers, the team cannot simply wait for support and recognition, but must instead participate in developing solutions, making measurable commitments, and taking responsibility for results.

A two-way partnership

People in leadership roles must recognize that listening requires more discipline than speaking. They need to know how to ask questions that do not already contain answers, tolerate silence and uncertainty, explore hesitation, and reconsider their own beliefs in light of new information. Value increasingly depends on the ability to bring out the knowledge available within the group.

This means adapting one’s approach to the person and the situation. An experienced employee may prefer clear objectives and broad freedom in execution, while someone just starting out may need more guidance. Even checking in too frequently on progress can be perceived as a control tactic. All in all, leadership skill lies in understanding when to listen, when to challenge, when to decide, and when to give decision-making authority back to employees.

Organizations should develop both sides of this partnership. On the one hand, they need to train managers to give people genuine space, and assess their listening skills and willingness to correct themselves. On the other, companies need to make clear that greater autonomy comes with explicit objectives, measurable commitments, and accountability for results.

Developing coaching skills for team management is the central focus of the live online course Il leader coach (in Italian).