Don't Boss, COACH:
Productive supervision

By Forrest C. Greenslade, Ph.D.

From The Simple-Minded Manager, Cutting Through Your Work-Life Chaos

My colleague Chantal told me about her first experience with a boss.

"I was a college kid, and I had a summer job cleaning dorm rooms. I was enthusiastic about the job...until my supervisor yelled at me about the way I was cleaning the garbage pails. Yes, you heard me right...the garbage pails! Did you know that there was a right versus a wrong way to clean garbage pails????

Neither did I.

It was about power. She loved the fact that she could have power over the students. Here we were, a bunch of Ivy-League students...and we were training to go somewhere. She decided to exert her power where she could, before we became her bosses.

It may have made her feel better, but what did it do for the workplace? I know someone who was so resentful that she managed to figure out how to sleep, all day, on the job! This person would pull out the couches in the student lounge and sleep behind them! Somehow the supervisor never thought to look there.

The rest of us supported our coworker. We helped her to do this. Obviously our attitudes were not too great either."

Chantal also told me about her friend who had worked very hard on a report. Finally, after she was done with her masterpiece, she handed it to her boss.

After about a week, she still didn't have any feedback, so she asked her boss about the report. He just said, "the report needs work." Well...the "work" that he did was to change one sentence out of a 24-page report. One sentence out of a 24-page report! Would you consider that to be significant work?

Chantal's stories are actually very minor examples of bad bossing that occurs in today's work place, Bad bossing results in poisoned relationships, high turnover, lost productivity and, in many cases, law suits.

When I look back on my own career, I have has a bad boss or two -- bosses who took credit for my ideas, bosses who excluded me from the decision-making process, bosses who paid little attention to my professional development. But I also had some excellent supervisors -- mentors who saw in me qualities that didn't even know that I possessed, facilitators who furthered my own and the organization's accomplishment.

When I look back at my own managerial experience, I must admit to occasions when I failed to catalyze optimal professional growth in people who reported to me, and times when I did this very effectively.

When I think about it, the most productive supervision occurred, whether I was the supervisor or the person being supervised, when neither of us was very bossy. It is important to remember that the word "boss" has the connotations of "control", "dominate" and "roughen", as well as "supervise." The most productive supervisory relations in my experience were much more like those developed between a professional performer and a coach. These were designed alliances, where we recognized that the real power was in the relationship, rather than in either of the individuals. Such relationships were obviously based on shared understandings of both personal and organizational missions, shared values, and common visions of the future.

While every person in an organization needs to contribute to the most productive supervisory relationships, it is clearly the supervisor's responsibility to initiate them. So, here is some simple advice to supervisors, Don't boss, COACH.

Collaborate -- Form associations with people who report to you for common benefit -- benefit to you, benefit to them, and benefit to the organization. Together, negotiate goals consistent with personal and organizational missions. Share the outcomes.

Observe -- Continuously monitor their progress. Watch their activities. Examine their approaches. Elicit information from them. Pay attention to the feedback that they provide. Consider their feelings as valuable information. Celebrate their accomplishments.

Ask -- Seek information from them. Invite their participation. Request their input. Require their involvement. Impose responsibility, obligation and accountability.

Challenge -- Engage them in dialog. Dispute their assumptions. Take exception to their answers. Confront their problems. Defy their fears.

Hypothesize -- Formulate theories for them to explore. Apply logic to their assertions. Assert explanations accounting for facts for them to test.

When you COACH as a supervisor, you motivate employees to maximize their performance and growth. When you COACH, you provide employees with the context of their work and the autonomy to accomplish it. When you COACH, you are demanding of employee accomplishment. When you COACH, you recognize that their work is their accomplishment, but their accomplishment is your accomplishment. When you COACH, your employees benefit, you benefit and the organization does too.

Now, I recognize the pressures that today's competitive environment imposes on today's supervisors. We are all worried about our own jobs. We are pressured to operate with short-term mentalities. We can probably boss, bully and squeeze employees into productivity for a while, and replace them when they are burned out or quit in desperation.

But this is a disastrous strategy for everyone -- a strategy that you can change. Be a catalyst for productive supervision where you work. It is simple,

don't boss -- COACH.

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