Who's Thinking? - Alex Martynov

This resource first appeared in issue #20 on 17 Apr 2020 and has tags Becoming A Manager: Coaching, Becoming A Manager: Managing Individuals

Who’s Thinking? - Alex Martynov

I’ve written earlier about the benefit of coaching employees — not just giving them answers to problems (which is a hard reflex to suppress given that we’ve gotten to our positions by being knowledgeable and having answers) but coaching them to find the answers themselves. They’ll probably find better answers (they’ve been wrestling with their problems for longer than you have and understand the nuances better), you’re developing their problem-solving skills, and you spend less time doing other people’s jobs.

This article makes the same argument, but casts it in a very simple light, to maybe help make it clearer whether you’re answering questions or coaching them along:

So the distinction is: are you as a manager thinking or is the other person thinking.