When Coaching Struggles or Fails
Employee Coachability or Manager's Coaching Ability?
Coaching is a great approach for managers to facilitate the learning and development of employees, but sometimes coaching doesn’t work as well as expected. No matter how much we try, help, teach, inquire, challenge, care, and so on, an employee may continue doing things that don’t work. Their performance lags. They make mistakes. They seem unaware of the need to change or unmotivated to do it. They may resist the coaching, and they fail to improve. The manager may be frustrated or baffled as to why this happens.
The employee might earn the label “uncoachable” because the manager has done everything she knows to do. In many organizations, this label can stick and become part of the employee’s reputation, limiting perceived performance and career options. Before giving up on the possibility of helping the employee, consider the following reasons for coaching difficulties or failures. Coaching will struggle or fail if one or more of the following three issues is present.
- The employee is unable or unwilling to build an effective coaching partnership because of very low coachability.
- The manager is unable or unwilling to build an effective coaching partnership because of beliefs or skill deficiencies that are counterproductive to coaching the coaching relationship and coaching skills proficiency.
- The employee is not actually a fit for the job they have. (This article will not cover concerns about employee selection and job fit.)
- Perceived Trust. The employee trusts the manager and furthermore believes that the manager holds the employee’s best interests in mind.
- Perceived Safety. The employee perceives that the coaching conversations are safe. The manager listens without judging or criticizing and will not use any shared information against the employee.
For a review of the importance of relationship in coaching, recall that Enhance the Relationship is at the base of the Coaching Pyramid in our article, Coaching on the Go: Effective Coaching in Moments
Some Examples
Sales manager and sales rep with a combative relationship
Manager who is loved and takes care of his employees
We observed the development of a manager and his coaching over an entire year. He has had the reputation of being the go-to person for employee concerns for many years. He loves his employees, and they love him, too. When we observed his coaching, however, he routinely jumped in to solve whatever problem the employee brought to coaching. The feedback he received over time was that his coaching was not helpful, and that was devastating to him. In this case, the manager’s strong attachment to being seen as the caring, go-to person with all the answers led to ineffective coaching conversations. Instead of helping the employees learn to solve their own challenges, the manager facilitated greater dependence. He was continually stressed during coaching because of the pressure he felt to solve the problems before the session was over. He made breakthroughs in his coaching when he realized he was taking on too much responsibility in the coaching relationship and trying too hard to reach outcomes.
Manager who either will not or can not see her contribution to ineffective coaching
We observed one manager’s coaching session with a sales rep who was struggling to build rapport with prospects. The manager filled the session with advice and “Just do this” and “just do that.” “I know how to be successful, so don’t worry about it – just do what I tell you.”
In the debrief, we asked, “How do you think the session went?” He said, “It went fine. He knows what to do now, and he’s committed to it.” We asked her several questions to raise awareness about the rep’s body language, tone of voice, grudging responses, and so on. The manager didn’t see it – or perhaps would not participate in our coaching. We knew the rep to have high coachability, but the manager’s coaching approach destroyed any trust and rapport needed to support learning and change. Our coaching wasn’t working with this manager, either. The manager's coachability was extremely low for several reasons.
Assessing the Employee’s Coachability
The employee has an essential role in the success of the coaching in which they engage. Even a superior professional coach cannot necessarily cause an employee with low coachability to learn and improve. We define coachability as
The coachee’s ability and will to engage positively in the coaching partnership.
The following table describes behaviors and attitudes that are indicators of a person’s coachability level. It is derived from the Coachability Scale in Adaptive Coaching. (Bacon & Spear, 2003, p. 80)
Behavioral Descriptors of Coachability Levels
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Extremely Low Coachability
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Fair or Good Coachability
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Excellent Coachability
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Strongly independent; may be arrogant, overbearing; sees no need to change; will not admit to serious weaknesses or areas of improvement; feels invulnerable. May be antagonistic toward the coaching process and/or coach; may lobby against the coaching program, labeling it a waste of time. |
Complacent; unmotivated to change; feels that performance and business results are fine. Considers coaching a fad that will pass. May pay lip service to change but is not committed or engaged in the process. Efforts are tokens. May see value after assessment feedback. May not know how to proceed to learn effectively. Demonstrates some resistance to the coaching process, but awareness of need to change emerges. Urgency depends on the implications of not changing. |
Has an intrinsic desire to grow; lifelong learner; history shows self-directed learning; strong achievement motivation. Willing to consider feedback and commit the relevant learning and changes. Widely read and can cite books on leadership, development, and related areas. Often modest and has a realistic sense of self. |
There is no perfect assessment for coachability, but here are additional factors to consider:
- The employee’s ego strength: sense of humility vs. arrogance.
- The employee’s sense of vulnerability: too much vulnerability increases the likelihood of ego defenses and may reduce coachability.
- The employee’s openness to feedback that might disconfirm his or her self image.
- The employee’s awareness and sense of urgency about the need for change, such as performance numbers.
- The employee’s perception of value of the coaching process and likely outcomes.
- The employee’s trust in the coach.
- The employee’s fear of consequences if he or she does not seek and accept help.
- The employee’s excitement about positive outcomes if he or she does change.
- The employee’s responsiveness to external pressure for bosses, peers, subordinates, the environment.
- The presence of severe psychological problems.
Assessing coachability is not an exact science, but the essence is to determine how much a person is willing to challenge themselves to try new things and learn.
Assessing the Manager’s Coaching Ability
It’s unfortunate, but many times an employee is labeled “uncoachable” because of poor coaching outcomes even though the nature of the manager’s role in the coaching relationship is essential. But how many managers would be willing to say, “The coaching didn’t work because I didn’t coach well.”? Realizing that their coaching is not working is painful for many managers who are used to being effective and successful. The frustration frequently arises because of a common myth about coaching:
Myth: Coaches do coaching to the coachee.
This view is like a tennis match: two players in a volley, and the most effective player hits the perfect shot with just the right spin, pace, direction, location, and timing while the other player was off guard. In coaching, the manager might believe that delivering just the right words at the right time will hit the mark perfectly, and the employee is fixed because of the great competence and skill of the manager. For a manager who believes they are doing coaching to an employee, the logic might be this:
If the manager is proficient at coaching, then the employee’s learning and performance improvement will follow. Therefore, if the employee’s learning and performance are not improving, the manager’s coaching competence is questionable.
To dispel this frightening possibility, the manager might label the employee “uncoachable,” which might not be questioned in some organizations. The flaw in the logic, however, is that the essential foundation for an effective coaching engagement depends on mindset, beliefs and skills of both the manager, not just questioning skills.
Reality: Coaches do coaching with the coachee.
This subtle change in language leads to a difference in mindset that has profound effects on the coaching relationship. Coaching is a creative partnership, not an information delivery process.
A few shifts in beliefs about coaching can make a fundamental difference in the way coaching relationships develop, increasing the likelihood that coaching engagements will be productive and helpful.
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Common Belief of Managers and New Coaches |
Shifted Belief or Mindset to Support Coaching |
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Instead of doing coaching to the employee |
Participate in coaching with the employee |
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Instead of seeing the employee as a problem to solve |
Relax attachment to coaching outcomes and help the employee gain awareness of options |
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Instead of being the problem solver |
Help the employee learn to solve problems |
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Instead of doing the thinking for the employee |
Help the employee learn to do their own thinking |
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Instead of giving the answers |
Help the employee find their own answers |
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Instead of telling for efficiency and speed now |
Help the employee build their own competence |
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Instead of seeing questions as weakness or uncertainty |
See questioning as the power to direct awareness and elicit insights and learning |
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Instead of sharing your wisdom directly |
Help the employee build their own wisdom |
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Instead of focusing on gaps you see |
Be curious about how they see the situation and if appropriate, raise awareness about other ways to see it |
Summary
Even if the employee is coachable, but the fundamentals of a trusting, safe coaching relationship are not in place, the coaching will not be effective. At best, the employee will play along, but extrinsic motivators and punishments will be required for behavior change. In this case, the coaching effort is wasted or even counterproductive. When the employee believes that the coaching conversations will be helpful, and the support of the manager is authentic, then the very act of entering into the coaching relationship enables the employee to learn and make progress.
When setting up a coaching program or managing when some coaching engagements are not working, three major areas of assessment may help you determine how to proceed.
- Use the coachability index to determine if an employee is coachable. Manager coaching is worth trying for all but the very lowest coachability. For really difficult employees for which change is essential, some specialized professional coaching may be able to help.
- Don’t assume that a manager’s personal opinion of coachability it accurate. A manager may not recognize their own contribution to a difficult coaching relationship that is not working. Observe the manager’s coaching and look for signs of the important shifts that manager’s need to make to build successful coaching relationships.
- If 1 and 2 are not the problem, and coaching is still not working, it’s worth considering a managerial conversation about expectations or an assessment or conversation about job design, job fit, or cultural fit.
© 2011 Bobbi Kahler. All rights reserved. Developing Leaders, Creating Possibilities: Kahler Leadership Group
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