[00:00:00] **Andrew:** Hi, I am Andrew. Welcome to the Work Unravelled podcast. In each episode, we break down a piece of the workplace puzzle, providing practical insights, fresh perspectives, and actionable solutions to help you navigate the ever-changing world of work. 

[00:00:15] **Scott:** And I'm Scott, whether you are a leader, a professional, or simply curious about what makes organizations tick, this show offers strategies to think smarter, work better, and lead boldly join us as we turn workplace complexity into clarity.

One episode at a time.

[00:00:32] **Andrew:** Scott, think of the best boss you've ever had. And I'm imagining you think you were the best boss that anybody's ever had.

[00:00:40] **Scott:** I wish.

[00:00:40] **Andrew:** We'd like to think that. Um, I bet the chances are they were the sort of boss that didn't tell you what to do. They weren't micromanagers. helped you like figure it out yourself.

[00:00:52] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:00:52] **Andrew:** And, and really for me, that's the, the power of coaching. And what we're gonna talk about in this episode is the idea of manager as coach. as I say, Scott, I know you were a very good manager, but 'cause you've told me, um,

[00:01:05] **Scott:** haven't.

[00:01:07] **Andrew:** why, why do you think managers often fail? Or, or will they fall back on this sort of delegating, telling people what to do?

They give quick answers instead of coaching. Why do you think they, they default to that? Do you think that approach?

[00:01:20] **Scott:** I think part of it is, and certainly I fell into this trap early on in my. Leadership, stroke management career. And I think the two are quite different things. , Was I, I felt that I had to have the answers when I was kind of, right now you're in charge of, people felt to me like, oh, they're gonna look to me to answer all the questions and tell 'em what to do 'cause they won't know what to do.

And I was very naive in that early on. I'm not afraid to admit. And I think there's a bit of that still for some people. Uh, but also I think it's. It's sometimes easier to do it yourself. I think some people will feel like, well, I know the answer so I can just do it for them. It'll save a bit of time, it'll free them up to do other things.

So I think people kind of def default into a combination of those two.

[00:02:06] **Andrew:** Hmm.

[00:02:06] **Scott:** easier to just do it, or you know, maybe I should, if I say I don't know, or push back to them, they might think I'm not a good manager. So I think there's a combination of those things and. I think the danger is then it becomes a bit like micromanagement and you can kind of fall into that trap where if your staff ask you to do stuff or ask you for help and you give all the answers all the time, then they're just gonna keep coming back to you for the answers next time.

And they're not gonna develop and you are then gonna be swamped doing their work on top of your work. And it's a recipe for a bit of stress for everybody all around. So I think from a coaching perspective, it's about flipping that and saying. It can help improve performance and avoid that micromanagement and encouraging your teams and employees that work for you to develop themselves to solve problems themselves.

And quite often, and I've seen this many times after switching that mindset, is your employees tend to be, you know, I always say smarter, certainly one of their development teams. I would, I knew they were much smarter than me. My job wasn't to tell 'em what to do, 'cause I didn't know what to do from their perspective.

So I think encouraging your employees to find their own solutions, , leveraging the skills that you've employed them to have that quite often the leader and manager doesn't have is really important. So it's, it's shifting your mindset as a manager to. A facilitator rather than a director and allowing you as a manager to focus on what you are good at and employed to do, which is being a bit more strategic thinking, big picture, looking at the vision for the team, the director of travel competitors, all that kind of stuff.

[00:03:45] **Andrew:** What I think you've touched upon there is that choice that we can make as leaders and managers. You can make a choice that these people are just like my minions in the, I love the film Minions, one of my favorites, um, where you've got all these little sort of figures who just run around and you are the great person.

And we used, we used to talk about in, in leadership psychology, this idea of the great man. Leader. We don't obviously talk, talk that way anymore, thank God. But you've got this sort of group of people and they're just here to achieve your goals. That's one approach, and I think this is where perhaps what like you are saying is that somebody comes to me, I just, they're here to serve my needs and my goals, so I just send them away.

Off you go and do what I tell you to do. Switching it around. This is what we're talking about in this episode. The coaching mindset is this person has brought a. An issue to me and a problem, if you like, and we can solve it together. And this is an opportunity in this moment with this person to develop them. So I think that the switch in mindset is, is how do you perceive the people that are reporting to you? Are you there as, as, as it were, like servant leader, which is this idea of, you know, you're there to develop them and grow them, or are you there to achieve your goals and they're a means to an end. So really is it is a, a switch.

Now some people are naturally inclined to one way or the other. Um, did you see that guy that took the, um, baseball cap off the kid as we were recording this in, in early September, 2025? Was it, was it the US Open and see that? Um, was he a Polish guy that snatched the baseball cap off the

[00:05:25] **Scott:** I haven't seen that. No, I missed that one.

[00:05:27] **Andrew:** on, if you search on, on the internet, there's a, I think it was like the US Open. And there's this tennis player he's handing out like the ball, and he's signing things from the audience as they're leaning over. As as like, I think he won the match and he hands his baseball cap up to the crowd young child, maybe six seven a boy grabs the cap, but then next to him is a fully grown man snatches it out the hand of the child and passes it to his wife to put in the bag. The internet doing its internet thing worked out. He's A-C-E-O-I think of a Polish company he initially sort of tried to say, you know, if you were me, you'd probably do the same thing in the excitement. 'cause he wanted the memento, he wanted this object from the the winning player. But the Internet's come down on him really hard because like, how dare you take. The cap out the hand of a child, literally, and the child is like crying, wants this cap back. And, and what people have pointed out is that sometimes people who are in management positions actually have, and there's a lot of research around this sociopathic, even psychopathic tendencies, they tend to be people who care less about the emotions of of the other. So I suppose. Going back to what I was saying is some people are naturally inclined towards the coaching side and some people are naturally inclined towards the just do what I say. So I think anybody who's listening to this, what I'd ask you to think about is where are you on that continuum? Are you frustrated with the people that report to you?

Are you annoyed by them? Are they problems to solve? So I've worked with clients, I'm sure they're probably the same. They'll say things like. If it wasn't only for the people here, I can't get good people. I've actually worked with clients that have said that to me. I can't get good people. you think that says a lot about you a manager.

It says a lot about you as a, as a leader. So the people that are interested in this, what I suggest to you is that the coaching approach taps into the intrinsic motivation. we all have as human beings now, everybody, whoever they are, research suggests that we are driven by a sense of autonomy. We feel happier when we feel that we are in charge of our lives and are in charge of our work, in charge of our jobs. So if trying, trying to coach people means they feel they have more ownership. Um, and also if you coach people instead of directing them, like I think you were just saying, is they start to develop. And they start to develop their thinking skills. They start to develop their problem solving skills. Now, what that means for you as a manager is they come to you less often with problems, that means that frees you up as a manager, as a leader to get on with other things. so before I add it back to you, Scott, really, I think as well, the other thing it, it helps is it, it builds up people's self-confidence.

It builds up their. Self-worth build up the quality of the team around you. And as a leader, as a manager, surely that's what you're looking for. You're looking for that quality team in order for you to be more effective. So if we break it down, in your experience and you know, with your opinion, how would managers start using this coaching approach rather than the sort of dictation approach?

You know, dictatorial approach.

[00:08:47] **Scott:** So just before I come onto that, I just wanna pick up, there's another aspect I think that is, part of that is around maybe some insecurity from management. Because if they, if they feel that, what if I give my employees all the skills and knowledge to. Do things themselves, then am I going to be needed?

And I think there's probably that aspect there at playing where, and, and for me, a good benchmark would, would be that I could go on holiday for a week and the wheels wouldn't fall off. Actually, my team didn't feel they needed to wait for me to get back to then run a load of decisions past me that the team were trusted.

And empowered is a word that gets thrown around, but empowered to make decisions themselves without me. And I think that's tied into this coaching approach in terms of saying, you know, I trust you to make decisions and I will back you up if even if it goes wrong, it's okay. How can we work together to solve this problem, as you've said so.

So I think the way to look at it is something called the Grow Model,

[00:09:49] **Andrew:** Mm-hmm.

[00:09:50] **Scott:** and that stands for goal, reality options and way forward. It's a simple framework to structure those kind of coaching conversations that we're encouraging our listeners to, to try and take with their employees. And it helps managers, guide employees through this process that can help them develop and grow, have some self-discovery, and create some actionable plans.

So an example would be an employee maybe comes to you and says, this project's running late. I dunno what to do. Previously as a manager may have said, you need to finish this by Friday. Actually, the manager taking the grow approach would say, what's the goal first? So what's the goal for this project now, considering the delay, then what's the reality of the situation?

So what is genuinely holding you back? So asking the employee, putting it onto them. So what do you think is the problem? What do you think we could do to, to solve this? Or you could do to solve this? Then think about options. Okay, so you've identified that. What options could you explore to get it back on track?

And then finally, what's your way forward? So what specific action will you take next? So that's a different approach to try and structure that, to get the employee to maybe start to think about, okay, maybe they might come to you in a panic with a problem and hopefully you'll just solve it for them. It's actually.

Gently supportively, pushing that back to them to say, okay, can we take this stepped approach and try and think about this, how we can take this forward? So that's quite a powerful way of approaching it.

[00:11:24] **Andrew:** I love grow. I think Grow is a really good It's a very useful model to use in your head. You can just run through it, can't you? If you remember that word. It's such a great acronym. Um. I suppose we should stress that. Of course there may be situations where some, something really urgent has happened. You know, a, there's an order that's not been delivered to the client or the server's gone down. Um, in that moment, at that stage, as a manager, you do switch back into, right, this is what we need to do, go away and do this. So, yeah, I, I think you're absolutely right. I think the grow model is, is fantastic for this coaching, but not every situation, a hundred percent the time you would go through that, I guess.

[00:12:04] **Scott:** You think about it quite simplistically, you've got a team of five people who aren't able to solve their own problems coming to one leader. There's gonna be that bottleneck there, and she said the team are just gonna feel that lack of autonomy that's gonna be demoralizing.

Oh, the bosses too busy to answer the question. I'm just gonna have to wait. Actually flipping it, and it's back to, you mentioned earlier, the servant leader model

[00:12:26] **Andrew:** Yes.

[00:12:26] **Scott:** actually. How can you, as the leader, help those five employees be super successful? Be as autonomous as possible. Answer the questions that in, they may come to you themselves.

And actually that'd be one thing that I learned from one of my bosses. You asked if I, you know, my favorite bosses, my most helpful bosses were those ones that gave that coaching style. And quite often the, one of the questions that stuck with me, that I learn to apply to my team was, "what do you think?" So when you're asked, oh, what boss, please help?

How can you help me solve this? I would then say back, well what do you think? And just flipping it, given that it's okay for you to like have an opinion, maybe they're just default 'cause it's too hard. I'll get the boss to answer it. So flipping it back is quite a powerful question.

[00:13:13] **Andrew:** Yeah, I had a boss. If I think about my bosses, had mostly bad bosses, or I felt they were bad bosses. I've got a handful of maybe one po I think of one guy actually was really good, but the rest of them were quite, um, they just came and told me what to do. And the boss that stands out that I can think about, a guy called, um, Alan Moody, he, um, since long passed away, bless him. he was great because he would just say what you've just said. He would just say to you, so what do you think? What do you think we should do? And really this goes back to the neuroscience of of, of, um, the way that people can develop is when you ask a question, what? People's brains start working to try and answer that question, and literally you are helping change that person's brain because if all you do when your team member comes to you with a problem is you tell them what to do, it's almost as though they go away and just follow that checklist you've given them. And they don't really do any creative thinking they do. don't do any sort of innovative thinking. They just. Do what you've just told them to do. Now going back to what I was saying earlier, there may be situations particularly where it may be like a junior member of the team, and I can imagine if you've got a very new person, you know, a freshly minted graduate who comes outta university, has got no idea to do, and you said to them, what do you think?

They freak out. They'd probably go, I have no idea. It's not to stress. You have to be. You have to be able to flex with this. And we've talked about in previous episodes the idea of emotional intelligence as you're using the grow model, you know, you, you wanna pick up how this person is responding.

Some people would find this very, very stressful and that that's a coaching, that's a coaching opportunity anyway. But some people would actually just, you can see their chest, you know, they breathe in and they're sort of proud because you're actually asking their opinion. You know, people really value, they, they, they like to think that you value them as a human being, not just as a robot.

So asking questions, like you've said, and, and the grow model, you know, gets people to think for themselves and it rewires the brain, the neural pathways in the brain. They'll actually become a better person, if you like. They become a more capable person, become a more capable. employee. And something that struck me as you were talking about, um, about the grow model is, you know, that idea called the theory of constraints. And I know you're a sort of productivity person, but the theory of constraints, if anybody doesn't know it, it's called toc. You can do TOC analysis. So you look at any process and you can see where there's a constraint. is you work on the constraints and you free up that bottleneck. You, you tend to have lots of bottlenecks in in any organization, but if you are relying on people coming to you for answers, guess who is the constraint? You are as a manager, you are as a leader if everybody has to go through you to get anything done and sometimes bosses and managers will say, this project has slipped, we've fallen behind. maybe they should look to themselves and go, that's because everybody has to wait for my decision before they can proceed.

So that's why it slowed down. So, yeah, as I say, I think this questioning approach, asking people what they think, like you said, is really powerful from sort of all sorts of perspectives. And the other thing I said, you touched upon this asking questions, be careful not to jump in too quickly. So you asked that question, what do you think? Do you count? Did you count in your head? You know, 1, 2, 3, before you answered, did you give 'em space? 'cause of course, you need people to have some time to think themselves, don't you? Otherwise they feel as though they've been. Put on the spot. It's a tricky thing to pull off, I guess.

[00:16:52] **Scott:** Yeah, and, and actually I think there's also some people that. Are uncomfortable with that. I have managed people in the past who literally don't want to be coached. They just want to be told what to do. So I think, again, it's, it's not everybody is coachable. Some people are quite happy to just be told, just tell me what to do.

I, I don't wanna think for myself,

[00:17:13] **Andrew:** yeah.

[00:17:14] **Scott:** is a shame, but everybody's a bit different.

[00:17:17] **Andrew:** People have different motivations, you know, there might be different points in their lives, different levels of engagement. But um, so if we bring this back into sort of the everyday, and you've already, you know, offered the grow model, have you got any sort of everyday tips and suggestions that managers could start using sort of immediately?

[00:17:33] **Scott:** Yeah, so I'd build it into any moment you're with your team. So it doesn't have to be in a, in necessarily a formal setting. It could be in a. Corridor conversation. It could be just when you're passing, you know, just try and think about how you can empower those people that are coming to you or you're, you're working with to think for themselves to solve problems for themselves.

'cause quite often that's where the real, um. Secrets to success lie, and we talked about this in a previous episode about meetings. In that meeting environment, for example, where you have the quiet ones in the room teasing out people, that's coaching as well to say, Sandra, over there, you've been a bit quiet.

Have you got any thoughts on this? Actually encouraging people to speak up if they might naturally be quite quiet. So look for those , opportunities beyond the more formal setting in face-to-face. Uh, and also think about what would you try next would be quite a powerful question to, to ask an employee or colleague

[00:18:32] **Andrew:** Yeah.

[00:18:33] **Scott:** well, they've come to you and say, well, this isn't working.

And say, okay, well what would you try next? Other than what we've said is, what would you think? These are quite powerful questions to ask in the workplace and actually it's for leaders trying to build this coaching mindset to think, actually this is gonna pay off in the long run. Because whilst it might seem like how work up front, we've said, you know, sometimes it's easier to just do it yourself and solve for yourself. Actually, the more you free yourself up and the more you give your teams the confidence to solve problems themselves and develop themselves.

The better for the team and the better for you, because you said you're reducing that bottleneck, but also you are freeing yourself up to be more big picture stuff as you would hope to be as a leader in the organization.

[00:19:16] **Andrew:** I think you offered some really great suggestions there, Scott, and as we are trying to bring this to a close. I think what we started with is it, it's a mindset, it's a choice. Like a lot of things in life. You can either be the manager that tells people what to do, or you can have the coaching mindset and you can, you can learn how to be a coach. So if you've got that growth mindset yourself, you are always thinking about how can I be a better leader and how can I be a better coach for the people that I serve? And I think. What you're really sort of suggesting is it's, it's less of a sort of directing approach and it's more of a questioning approach using lots of open questions. What do you think, what would you do next? What are the options? that your, the people that report to you will still look for some direction in certain areas and they'll appreciate you making a choice.

So you've asked them what the options are, your job might be then to say, okay, you've given me three options. I think we should use option two. if they push back and go, actually I think we should use option three. You can. You can discuss it, but your job is still to make the final choice. But you've based it on their input and you will see people just be inspired by that.

Their enthusiasm will increase, they'll feel as though they're valued and seen by you, and that's gonna make a huge difference in the team in terms of their. Energy levels in terms of their performance, it makes business sense if we're being absolutely blunt about it. So I think it is that, is that coaching, um, skill. And I think what you need to do as a manager is always praise, uh, progress, not final performance. So people are always gonna be learning, they're gonna be making mistakes, so try and praise them for progress, you know, moving forwards in the way that they present something or their report that they've produced.

You know, always recognizing and rewarding that. And I think really the other thing I'd say as a, as a coach is have a learning mindset for yourself. You know, be curious about the people that around you. Try to get to understand them as people. Understand what motivates this person over that person. We've talked about that.

Not everybody will respond to this, let's be honest. Some people just want to come into work. They want to get the salary and they want to go away. Again, that's a, an an episode that we could do in the future, why people are like that. But it, it works with most people. It. So yeah, don't make it formal. Don't keep it to the one-to-ones, you know, don't reserve it for the annual personal development review.

Use it daily in your team and it really will, really will, uh, make a difference. And it's one of the most powerful tools. The coaching approach is one of the most powerful tools that you have as a manager, don't you think?

[00:21:48] **Scott:** Yeah, and I think for managers, we talked a lot about managers coaching their staff. I think there is absolutely significant benefit in those managers having a coach themselves,

[00:21:57] **Andrew:** Absolutely.

[00:21:59] **Scott:** the organization or seeking a coach from outside the organization because the best athletes, the highest achievers, the highest performers have coaches themselves.

[00:22:09] **Andrew:** that's

[00:22:09] **Scott:** not that just 'cause I'm the best athlete, I don't need any support and coaching. So I think. Definitely as leaders as well, seek a coach. Whether it's someone in another part of the organization that you respect or someone even outside the organization, coaches can be powerful for you as well.

[00:22:24] **Andrew:** Well, we should drop in there, Scott. We both offer coaching to individuals and teams,

[00:22:30] **Scott:** Of course, I was avoiding the obvious plug, but uh, yeah, absolutely.

[00:22:33] **Andrew:** get the plugin

Thank you for listening to the Work Unravelled podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to subscribe to the show so you don't miss the next one. If you'd like Andrew or me to help you or your business, whether it is for team productivity, leadership, coaching, or communication skills, our website addresses are in the show notes.

[00:22:55] **Scott:** Thanks, and until the next time.