Leadership Hacks, 2nd Edition

Chapter 5Coaching

One important skill all leaders should possess is the ability to coach their staff. The challenge is finding the time, given how busy most leaders are with competing priorities pulling them in multiple directions. But coaching has changed over time. In the 1960s and early 1970s, when someone started a new job, they were quite often mentored by their boss, who took them under their wing for the first 90 days to help them integrate into the role. This used to be normal business practice because business moved much slower back then. There are three main reasons why leaders had — or had to have — more time in the past.

• It used to take longer to learn a new job. Before the days of personal computers and the internet, most tasks had to be performed manually, which was much slower and meant it took longer for people to learn new skills. In addition, systems and procedures varied greatly from one company to another, so when a new person started, they would have to learn everything from scratch.
• Leaders' workloads were not as constant as they are today. In the past, at 5 pm people would go home and leave work at work. Leaders didn't have email or mobile phones that swamped them at work or followed them home. They also did not work remotely or have to lead remote staff. Essentially they could ‘turn off’ when they left work to focus on the other important things in their lives, which reduced their overall stress. From a coaching perspective, this meant leaders had more ...