Manager coaching breaks down in five ways: asking questions when the employee needed an answer, disguising advice as questions, forgetting that your title turns ideas into orders, using coaching to avoid a hard conversation, and ending without a commitment. Each has a specific fix, and all five fixes work in writing as well as in meetings.
Key takeaways
Coaching is one tool alongside directing, teaching and giving feedback. Use it when the person has the knowledge and is stuck on judgment, priorities or confidence.
A question you already know the answer to is advice. State your view as a view, then ask something you’re genuinely curious about.
Your title turns ideas into assignments. Label each one as an idea, a strong preference or a requirement, and share yours last.
With performance issues, order matters: the expectation first, then the gap, then the coaching questions.
A coaching conversation is finished when there’s a specific action, owner and date, stated in the employee’s words, and you follow up on it.
Why do managers think they’re coaching when they aren’t?
Many managers wrap their advice in questions and call it coaching. “Have you tried looping in the client earlier?” ends with a question mark, but it’s still an instruction, and the employee hears it that way. Instead of thinking through the problem, they spend the conversation guessing which answer you want.
The data backs this up. Zenger Folkman analyzed 3,761 leaders who rated their own coaching skills and were then rated by the people around them. 24% had overrated themselves, roughly one in four. In my experience with 360 feedback, leaders more often rate themselves lower than their teams do on a given skill. Coaching is one of the places where that pattern flips.
Part of the reason is that leaders rarely hear how their coaching lands. DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast 2023 found that many leaders overestimate their coaching quality because they seldom get feedback on it. From your side of the desk, a conversation full of questions feels like coaching. That doesn’t mean it was.
What counts as coaching in a manager’s job?
In this article, coaching means question-oriented guidance: you help someone think through a problem so they reach a decision they own, instead of handing them yours.
That definition leaves out two things. It doesn’t claim coaching is the best leadership tool, and it doesn’t say you never give answers. Coaching sits alongside directing, teaching and feedback. Several of the mistakes below come from treating questions as the only acceptable way to lead. The real skill is knowing when coaching is the right tool.
Mistake 1: When should a manager teach or tell instead of coach?
Teach or tell when the person doesn’t have the knowledge yet. Questions work when someone has what they need and wants help thinking. They fail when the knowledge isn’t there.
Picture a new analyst, three weeks in, asking how to pull a report from a system she’s never used. You reply, “What do you think you should do?” She doesn’t know. That’s why she asked. Now she’s inventing an answer to look competent, and a two-minute question has become an uncomfortable test.
Ferdinand Fournies, in Why Employees Don’t Do What They’re Supposed to Do, lists the reasons employees fall short. The first three are plain: they don’t know why they should do it, they don’t know how, or they don’t know what they’re supposed to do. Asking “what do you think?” fixes none of these.
Before you coach, diagnose the gap:
Skill gap: they’ve never done it. Teach.
Clarity gap: they don’t know what good looks like. Tell them.
Thinking gap: they have what they need but are stuck on judgment, priorities or confidence. Coach.
To find out which one you’re facing, ask: “Have you handled something like this before, or is this new territory?” If it’s new, give the answer with your reasoning: “Here’s what I’d do and why. Next time something like this comes up, take a first pass and bring me your thinking.” Asking someone to discover an answer they were never taught is a quiz, and nobody signed up for a quiz.
Mistake 2: How do you know if your coaching questions are really advice?
If you already have the answer in mind and you’re waiting to see whether they find it, the question is advice in disguise. “Have you thought about talking to finance first?” “Wouldn’t it be better to wait until Q2?” These are instructions with a question mark.
Michael Bungay Stanier calls the urge behind this the advice monster. You solved the problem in your head while they were talking. You know you’re supposed to ask rather than tell, so you rephrase your solution as a question. The result has the downside of both approaches: the employee gets no clear direction and doesn’t get to do their own thinking either.
Having a view is fine. Own it as a view and ask a real question first:
“I have a view on this and I’ll share it in a minute. First, walk me through how you’re thinking about it.”
A real question is one where you aren’t hoping for a specific answer. Coaching comes from curiosity, not from grading whether they got it right. Questions that work:
What have you already tried or ruled out?
Which part of this are you unsure about?
If this were entirely your call, what would you do?
A quick self-check: if their answer would have annoyed you, you weren’t curious. You were judging.
Mistake 3: Why does my team treat every idea I share as an assignment?
Because the person who writes their performance review is the one thinking out loud. When you say, “One thing you could try is restructuring the deck,” you mean it as one option among several. They walk out and restructure the deck.
When a client tells me their team never pushes back and just executes whatever comes up in a one-on-one, I first look at how that leader shares ideas. The team is usually behaving rationally. Treating the boss’s suggestions as a to-do list is the safe move.
Two fixes:
Label what you say. Is this an idea, a strong preference or a requirement? Your team can’t tell unless you say so. “I’m thinking out loud. This is an idea, and you’re free to drop it.” Or: “This part is a requirement. How you get there is up to you.” The words “you’re free to drop it” have to be said out loud. Implied doesn’t land.
Speak last. If you share your take first, every answer after it bends toward yours. Ask for theirs, let the pause sit even if it feels long, then add your view if it’s still needed.
Mistake 4: Can coaching questions replace a direct performance conversation?
No. Using coaching to avoid a hard conversation is avoidance with good manners, and it tends to confuse people more than it helps them.
Say someone on your team has missed three deadlines. Instead of naming it, you open with, “How do you feel the project is going?” You’re hoping they’ll bring it up so you don’t have to. They say it’s going well. Now you’re stuck: if you raise the deadlines, your opening question looks like a setup.
There’s a quieter version too: never stating the expectation in the first place. You can’t coach someone toward a standard they’ve never heard. When they miss it, it looks like a performance problem, but it’s often a clarity problem the manager created.
The sequence that works:
State the expectation. “Send me the draft by Thursday afternoon, checked for errors, so I have a day before it goes to the client.”
Name the gap plainly. “The last three drafts came in Friday morning. When I don’t get them Thursday afternoon, I don’t have time to review them before they go out.”
Then coach. “What’s getting in the way?” Followed by: “What will you do differently starting this week so the draft is ready for my review Thursday afternoon?”
Coaching still happens, but it happens third. Before a one-on-one, check yourself: could this person tell me in one sentence what I expect from them on this? If you’re not sure, start by restating the expectation.
Mistake 5: How should a coaching conversation end?
With a specific action, an owner and a date, stated by the employee in their own words. A conversation where the energy was great but nothing was agreed is a pleasant chat. Two weeks later you’re having it again, or you have no idea what happened.
If you summarize the takeaway for them, you’ve taken ownership back. It’s their growth, so they do the heavy lifting at the end. If you’ve landed on the idea that someone needs more visibility with stakeholders, ask what they’ll commit to over the next couple of weeks and push for specifics: who they’ll reach out to, and what they’ll do.
Closing questions that build commitment:
What are you going to do, and by when?
How will I know it happened?
What could get in the way, and what’s your plan if it does?
Then follow up. Put it in your notes and open the next conversation with it. There may be good reasons it didn’t happen, and that’s fair. But if you never come back to a commitment, your team learns that commitments made in your meetings are optional. The same applies to any work you delegate.
Can you coach someone over Slack, Teams or email?
Yes. Coaching doesn’t need a closed door and 30 minutes on the calendar. A large share of daily interaction with your team, especially a remote one, happens in chat and email, and for many managers that channel is all answers, all the time.
When someone messages, “The vendor pushed the date again. What should I do?”, you can reply with roughly the same number of words in question form: “What are the options as you see them, and which one are you leaning toward?” When someone sends a draft, instead of rewriting it, leave a comment: “Who’s the reader you have in mind, and what do you want them to do after reading this? Take another pass with that in mind.”
Writing has two advantages. People get time to think before answering, which helps those who don’t think out loud or don’t like being put on the spot. And the question stays on the page as a record.
Two caveats:
The first four mistakes still apply. If they need an answer, give it. A performance gap is a live conversation, not a Slack thread.
Keep it to one or two questions. A message with five questions reads like an interrogation.
What should managers practice this week?
The goal of coaching is that the other person leaves more capable and clearer than they arrived. Questions are one route there. Sometimes a direct answer or a clearly stated expectation gets them there faster. Your job is to pick the right tool for the person and the situation in front of you. For many managers, advice is the default, which means coaching is probably needed more often than you think.
Two practices for this week:
Before one upcoming conversation, decide which mode it needs: teach, tell or coach.
Pick one written message and reply with a question where you’d normally reply with the answer.
Expect it to feel slow and sometimes awkward at first. Coaching is a muscle, and the awkward phase is part of building the habit.
If you want to build these skills with a cohort of other new managers, the Leadership Accelerator is Archova’s 90-day manager readiness program, covering when to coach versus direct, feedback, delegation and accountability conversations.
Plus, visit https://resources.archova.org/334 to download the cliffnotes including scripts you can use right away to strengthen your coaching skills.
FAQ
What if an employee doesn’t follow through on a commitment they made in a coaching conversation? Ask about it at the start of your next one-on-one. There may be a good reason it didn’t happen, and that’s fine to hear. What matters is that you came back to it, because a commitment nobody checks on teaches the team that commitments are optional.
Is it okay to share my own opinion during a coaching conversation? Yes. Say you have a view and that you’ll share it shortly, ask for their thinking first, then offer yours if it’s still needed. Owning it as an opinion keeps it from turning into a disguised instruction.
Should I coach a performance problem over Slack or email? No. A performance gap is a live conversation. Written coaching works well for everyday questions, drafts and decisions, but expectations and gaps need to be discussed in real time.
How can I tell whether I’m overrating my own coaching skills? Ask the people you coach. Zenger Folkman’s research compared leaders’ self-ratings with ratings from people around them and found 24% of leaders overrated their coaching. Feedback from your team, or a 360 assessment, is a more reliable measure than your own sense of how a conversation went.
Why does coaching feel slow and awkward at first? Because it’s a skill you’re building, not a script. Asking instead of answering takes longer in the early weeks, and pauses feel uncomfortable. That’s part of turning coaching into a habit, not a sign it isn’t working.
Ramona Shaw is the founder and CEO of Archova Inc., host of The Manager Track podcast, and author of The Confident and Competent New Manager.
