Why become a coach-manager?

At the beginning of its history, Google was a company created by developers for developers. And developers have a reputation for preferring to spend their time coding and debugging rather than communicating with their superiors or supervising the progress of others. So, in 2002, Larry Page and Sergey Brin decided to eliminate all managers. The experiment lasted only a few months. They decided to stop it when Page found himself directly approached with questions, particularly regarding interpersonal conflicts. As Google grew into an increasingly large company, Brin and Page became more than convinced of the importance of managers to handle conflicts, share the company’s strategy, help their employees prioritize projects, enable development, and ensure alignment with company objectives.

With the importance of managers established, the next question was what distinguishes a good manager from a bad one. Google launched “Project Oxygen” to find out. After hundreds of interviews with managers and their employees, the most important factor for effective management was determined: a good manager is a good coach.

1. Stop giving instructions, ask questions and listen

As a manager, you likely have extensive experience and a high level of expertise. Naturally, you may be accustomed to giving instructions and advice on how to do things to your employees. But this approach overlooks how your team members perceive and experience things, which can differ greatly from your own perspective. Therefore, before giving instructions, start by asking questions! For example, if an employee seems to have a problem, ask: “What’s on your mind?” or after a meeting: “What did you take away from our session?” There’s no need to start with a 10-minute introduction. Think of a James Bond movie: it doesn’t start with a long setup—we dive straight into the action!

And, of course, take the time to listen to the answers. According to Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, the most effective managers are not always the most charismatic. What matters for your team is the ability to listen with humility.

2. Become an accountability partner

As a manager, it is essential to create a work environment that fosters personal development. Start by allowing employees to dedicate time to develop or learn new skills. Another highly effective method is to implement mentoring or reverse mentoring. Generation X employees have significant expertise and experience they can share with Generation Y, while the latter often has deeper knowledge of new technologies and where to find the latest information.

You can also help employees challenge themselves by assigning projects that require them to learn new skills. We retain 70–90% of what we experience compared to only 10–20% of what we hear or read. With such projects, employees develop skills much faster!

We all want to adopt new habits for professional or personal development, but we also know that establishing these habits—and eliminating “bad” ones—is not easy. Excuses like “I can’t do it” or “I don’t have time” are never far away. As a manager, you can help your team stay accountable by becoming their accountability partner. For instance, if an employee wants to develop a particular skill, you can encourage them by asking them to outline their strategy and agree on a deadline together. This helps prevent procrastination.

3. A coach lives within each of us

By coaching our employees, we help them develop their own coaching skills. Recently, a BNP Paribas executive told me that the manager who inspired him most had set up a structured space where his boss coached him for an hour every two weeks. Even today, he remembers this manager as the one who helped him grow the most and become the successful leader he is.

You can, of course, offer formal coaching training, but more importantly, within the managerial space, you can schedule one-on-one meetings on complex topics. During team meetings, allocate time to collaboratively address personal challenges using collective intelligence techniques such as co-development.

By implementing these practices, we enable employees to see their colleagues as sources of support and to share the strategies they use to develop themselves.

The manager’s role is also to create a framework of positive support among employees. This was demonstrated by Google’s extensive study on teamwork.