New Managers: How To Coach and Enjoy It!

Picking up from last week’s post about fitting in as a new manager, let’s look at ways to provide direction and shape a Direct’s behavior. Your organization believes you can develop and lead people. Do you believe it?

Leadership Requires Confidence

To thrive in your role as a new leader, you must first realize you have a lot to offer, hence your rise to the level of leader/manager. Your Directs will look to you for guidance and you are prepared to give it to them. You must demonstrate confidence in your own ability so that they believe in those abilities too. Once you gain their trust, you can turn your attention towards shaping how you want them to be in their positions.

Give Them Goals That They Want

Each Direct requires a clear set of success guidelines that you BOTH establish. Think joint authorship. They must want the success they will get with your guidance or, they won’t go after it. The more you involve your new Direct in their success, the closer they’ll get to achieving it. You accomplish this by observing their internal and external behavior first. Then, determine for yourself what you can contribute to their success. Once you discover how best to contribute to each Direct, enjoy giving them constructive/specific feedback.

Feedback Comes for Your Knowledge

Discipline yourself to realize your feedback is a “service” to them, not “criticism.” If you can’t deliver genuine constructive criticism, you can’t coach or lead. You have experiences and knowledge that they do not yet possess. Share it with them and they will be the richer for it. You will be providing them with a gift that they can use to further their own careers and, you will be assured that they are pulling from a similar knowledge base when they make decisions. All oars will then be rowing in the same direction…with you at the helm. Congratulations! You have just established yourself as their leader. 

Can you do it?