Keeping the Employees You Want

If it’s true that employees leave companies chiefly because of bad bosses, it is also true that employees will sometimes stay for a really good boss. This begs the question: What makes a manager a great boss?

One compelling answer is the boss demonstrates they genuinely care about the employee.

I believe it can start with asking and then truly listening. It can include focusing on the employees’ growth and development, giving attention to their career goals, and soliciting their ideas for problem solving. This is not to say that the boss is giving up authority, or accountability.

Instead, it’s sometimes called leader as coach or the coach approach to management. This is in contrast to the command and control that has so dominated management for the last several generations. The coach approach is not a fad and without some data supporting it. For just one example, a few years ago Google conducted an internal study called Project Oxygen to determine what made some managers great. They wanted to know because the best managers had teams that performed better.

So they conducted a thorough internal study and crunched volumes of data as only Google could. They identified eight things common to the best bosses. It was the priority order that was the surprise. Number one? Coaching. Giving time and attention to their direct reports. Asking and listening. Helping employees work through problems. Last on the list? Technical expertise. It was important–like table stakes–but paled in comparison.

When I lead workshops training leaders in the coach approach, we usually ask them early in the day how they would describe coaching as it currently is in their company and second, how they would like it to be.

Having heard back from hundreds of these managers: the theme for the current communication is described as one-way, top-down, usually negative, sporadic, rushed and diminishing. The desired communication is two-way as between peers, an emphasis on listening, room for possibilities, scheduled with enough time, and respectful.

So, what exactly is executive coaching? Unlike sports coaching which is defined largely by telling (and sometimes even yelling!), coaching is focused on asking. What is the employee in the coachee role trying to accomplish? What is the ideal outcome? What’s different in this desired outcome from where they are right now? How will they get there? What resources do they need? What obstacles can they anticipate they will have to overcome? Bottom line: what’s the goal, where are we now, and how do we close the gap?

It’s easy to start. The next time you start to tell someone what to do, pause and ask them an open-ended question. What would the ideal outcome look like?