Coaching
For the impatient, glance at the the key takeouts at the bottom. 😉
The moment you rise in seniority level, you would find yourself needing to teach others. Naturally, you would tell the other person what they need to do to solve some issue, based on your experience. Most of the time this goes ok. You would notice, though, that your direction is not always fruitful or not to the extent you were hoping. Someone might even react badly to a certain direction. Or, when you are a leader, you might notice that the ones you lead are not growing as fast as you want. As you read or you are being mentored on the subject, you notice that there are different ways on how to enable someone to solve certain challenges and grow.
Most people use the terms teaching, coaching, mentoring, directing interchangeably, though there are subtle differences in
a. seniority level at which you apply,
b. maximizing growth potential,
c. how fast you want the problem to be solved.
Marcus’ distinction⁴ plays well with my practice.
Following are the ways of teaching ordered by lowest to highest growth potential of the person you teach. Growth potential is usually inversely proportional to seniority and proportional to the time to resolution of the challenge. Although sometimes, someone at a more junior level, might come to a resolution faster than you intervening.
Intervention
As mentioned, the most natural thing we do is letting someone know what they need to do. And, sometimes the other, usually junior person would fail those instructions repeatedly (fixing failure with build tools, e.t.c.) or the cost of failing them repeatedly is high (deployment on a staging environment that clients use, or even more so, on production). If you are a manager of engineering managers, a similar situation would be when resolution of a certain subject depends on you rather than the manager’s area of responsibilities (perhaps outside of your organization), and hence the manager would not be able to resolve the issue even if they go to their peers within your organization. In these cases, you would need to intervene.
Definition: Doing the things yourself on behalf of someone. “Let me do this thing for you.”
Growth potential: Lowest
Time to resolution: Highest
Level: Junior, or any in case urgent and important
Recommendation: Most invasive way. Avoid it, as it has the lowest growth potential. It is not a good sign. A red flag to think about why this is happening and how to push them out of this position.
Directing
The person you are teaching has an understanding that after trying, when they are stuck, they should come to you for direction, as they know you know how to do the task or goal. The person trying and after a certain amount of time coming back to you, keeps the delivery of the tasks or goals within the estimated time.
There is yet another level of teaching that stands between intervening and directing, that should be used usually by team leads rather than managers. Sometimes direction itself wouldn’t be enough, and you wouldn’t want to go into intervention as you believe the person has the capacity to solve the challenge, but might be missing some aspects that they are struggling to achieve. You would pair up to start revealing (intervening) step by step. If you both don’t know, admit that you don’t know, to show vulnerability in order to build trust and psychological safety. And try to uncover the unknown for the other person. You do this until you feel that the other has enough knowledge to continue and let them continue by themselves. Sometimes this process might lead to solving the solution, ending up with full intervention. Maybe the best phrase for this would be pair-intervene-direct.
Definition: “Do these things to solve it”
Growth potential: Low
Time to resolution: High
Level: Junior to Medior
Recommendation: Use it when the person is just starting on the learning curve, and mentoring (below) is too high of a challenge for them.
Mentoring
You let them choose between options so they can think for themselves what the pros and cons are for each option and learn and fortify that process in order to use it themselves in future. You are providing a bit less of your experience (and more growth possibility) than when mentoring, yet more of your experience than when coaching.
Definition: “You can try A or B. What do you think about it?”
Growth potential: High
Time to resolution: Medium (to High if the employee has mastered decision making and applying the solution)
Level: Medior
Recommendation: Use it when the employee can’t come up with ideas/solutions or they don’t feel psychologically safe enough (they require a bit more hand holding).
Coaching
Definition: Guided questioning of the employee to unlock answers within them.
Growth potential: Highest
Time to resolution: Lowest (to High if the employee has mastered solution proposition, decision making and applying the solution)
Level: High
Recommendation: Use this with caution, as the more junior the person is, they might take this approach as “I am not good enough, as I can’t think of any solutions.” e.t.c. Some psychological safety is required for them to increase their growth potential. So keep explaining the reason for guiding them in this way, while using the other approaches (mentoring, directing) in order to unlock a higher growth potential in them and eventually reach coaching.
— — — — — —
Generally, the “Level” at which you apply might slightly differ. Try to apply these tailored to the person you are leading. Some people tend to excel for different subjects and seniority levels. If the challenge is not important or urgent, always try to start from Coaching and move to the right of the Coach, Mentor, Direct, Intervene framework.
Three key takeouts an eureka and a quote
- Use Guided questioning of the employee to unlock answers within them (Coaching) when possible for highest growth potential.
- “You can try A or B. What do you think about it?”(Mentoring) when the employee has no ideas/solutions.
- “Do these things to solve it”(Directing) when the employee tries, but gets stuck, they are just starting on the learning curve, and mentoring is too high of a challenge for them.
The eureka
Pair-intervene-direct: an approach between directing and intervening where you pair up and start revealing (intervening) step by step, until the other has enough knowledge to continue, to prevent full intervention, get them to grow as much as possible, and to build a relationship and trust.
The quote
If the challenge is not important or urgent, always try to start from Coaching and move to the right of the Coach, Mentor, Direct, Intervene framework.⁴
Summary
- Using coaching, mentoring, directing depend on
a. seniority level at which you apply,
b. maximizing growth potential,
c. how fast you want the problem to be solved. - Intervene when an employee fails instructions repeatedly, the cost of failing them repeatedly is high, or when a manager of engineering managers, resolution of a certain subject depends on you and the manager can’t resolve it.
- Intervention: “Let me do this thing for you” junior, so we can get to the resolution faster.
- Avoid it as it has the lowest growth potential, and never a good sign.
- Directing (“Do these things to solve it”) when the employee tries, but gets stuck, they are just starting on the learning curve, and mentoring (below) is too high of a challenge for them.
- Directing helps keep the delivery of the tasks or goals within the estimated time.
- Pair-intervene-direct when someone is failing a direction, but you feel the person has the capacity, or you want to build a relationship and trust.
- Pair up to start revealing (intervening) step by step, uncover the unknown for the other person, until you feel that the other has enough knowledge to continue. Might end up with full intervention.
- Mentoring (“You can try A or B. What do you think about it?”) when the employee can’t come up with ideas/solutions or they don’t feel psychologically safe enough (juniors might think “I am not good enough, as I can’t think of any solutions.”)
- Coaching: Guided questioning of the employee to unlock answers within them.
- Use coaching when possible (usually for medior and senior employees) as highest growth potential.
- For building psychological safety in juniors keep explaining the reason for guiding them in them with higher then current teaching types, eventually reaching coaching level to unlock a higher growth potential in them.
- Try to apply these tailored to the person you are leading.
- If the challenge is not important or urgent, always try to start from Coaching and move to the right of the Coach, Mentor, Direct, Intervene framework.⁴
Resources
The Coaching Linkedin resource for additional audiance to comment, interact and share with.
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Reference
[4] Marcus F., https://lnkd.in/dghjKmQB, youtube videos
