leadership, Recruitment & Retention | Article

Why Leaders Need to be Coaching, Not Managing

A whopping 94% of employees say they would stick around longer if their company invested in their development.

Managing involves supervising the work of others. Managers are leaders that direct the workflow of employees and ensure they are meeting organizational goals. It’s more of a results driven way of leading. While it’s important, there are elements of leadership that matter more than delivering results.

One of those elements is coaching. Coaches aim to help employees develop their skills and competencies. Focus doesn’t solely lie on organizational goals. Rather, leaders genuinely care about their employees’ career goals and guide them on their journey to reach them.

The main difference is managing tends to be organization-centric while coaching is employee-centric. Naturally, your employees benefit when they are the focus, but so does your organization!

How Organizations Benefit from Coaching

1. Overcoming performance problems

Coaching is a great way to overcome time-consuming and costly performance problems. You will be able to identify problems more quickly. As a coach, you’ll know your employees and their goals better which makes solving those problems easier. You may realize you need to re-align objectives, provide additional resources, or offer more mentoring to employees to help them succeed.

2. Strengthen skills

As you coach your team, you will pass on valuable knowledge and skills to them along the way. Being more tuned in to your employees allows you to spot areas of potential where they can grow. You’ll then be able to look for more opportunities to develop employees’ skills. It could be something like specialized training or attending a conference.

3. Retain more employees

As we mentioned at the beginning, an overwhelming majority of workers want a company that will invest in their development. Employees are also more productive and engaged when they feel supported and encouraged by their bosses. Engaged employees that are having their needs and desires met are much more likely to stay your organization for a long time.


It may seem backwards. Don’t focus on organizational goals, focus on employees. That employee-centric mindset ends up benefitting your organization in greater ways down the line. In other words, coaching does deliver results – even more results than if you were to only care about results.

So coach your employees daily. Open up a line of engaging two-way communication with your employees. Invest in your employees – not just with money, but with time and effort too. Recognize the personal and professional milestones that they reach along the way. Your impact as a leader will be taken to the next level when you move from managing to coaching!