Coaching the Gifts to Be Given

Last week I was working with a young manager I have been coaching for a while who had just delivered a tough review to one of his direct reports. In reflecting on how his session had gone he mentioned that the employee’s last manager had stopped by recently and apologized for not previously addressing the employee’s performance shortcomings.

“So why couldn’t he have handled this before now and skipped the apology?”, my young colleague quipped. “What good does that apology do me now? So one more time I am left to be the bad guy!”

He may have thought he was asking a rhetorical question but I decided to provide him an answer, albeit perhaps not one he was looking for. “So did you hear the invitation in the other manager’s apology?” I asked. Silence…”What do you mean invitation?” the young manager asked in return. I responded, “Well you asked why he couldn’t have skipped the apology, how about interpreting the apology as an invitation for some coaching?” Again the young manager was silent for a bit, then chimed in, “Wouldn’t that seem a bit arrogant on my part, suggesting that maybe he was looking for some coaching?”

So here was a young manager expressing the limits of his vision* in much the way Arthur Schopenhauer  a couple of centuries back suggested that we all do.

“Everyman takes the limits of his own field of vision to be the limits of the world.”        from ‘Studies in Pessimism’

* I have reached this point time and again with managers I have coached over the years; a failure to be able to look beyond some disappointment they have experienced and create an empowering alternative interpretation of something that has occurred.

So I responded, “Well maybe it would depend on how you asked the question.” The point I was getting to was that this young manager had a gift to offer the employee’s previous manager. So I went on, “You have spoken to me before about this manager as someone you work well with and you know he has trouble with confrontations. What if you went back to him now and asked to talk about the apology again and made him an offer?” For a moment it seemed that I had really thrown my colleague a real curve ball when finally he asked, “Could you tell me how that might go?”  So here now was the request for coaching that had been missing.

“OK!”, I said, ” How about this, you could go back and ask to revisit the conversation. Knowing him as you do I expect he’ll accept the request. Once underway I suggest that you thank him for the apology then let him know that it would be of greater importance to know that he was going to correct this shortcoming and not have a similar situation occur in the future. You then can offer your own skills and let him know that you’d be more than happy to coach him when the next opportunity comes along for a tough conversation and he is thinking of passing it up. He’ll either accept the offer or not and let him know that whatever his choice the offer will remain open.” I finished off with this question, “Which do you find preferable, leaving things as they are, wishing that manager would change and being pretty sure that on his own he won’t, or taking this initiative and recognizing that your gifts are to be given, not to be apologized for and definitely not used to make yourself feel superior to those you work with?”

Maybe to you as the reader the answer to my question seems obvious but it is not. For this young manager to accept my suggestion he was going to have to break through one of his own limitations, not wanting to appear arrogant. There was going to be a win in this for everyone involved if it could be pulled off. We’ll see.  

  • Where are you watching someone struggle and being judgmental rather than offering to help?
  • What are the gifts your employees have that they could offer each other?

 

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