How to Succeed as a Manager: Coach for Results

I created this course for younger managers who’ve been promoted on their technical or problem-solving skills but who haven’t learned the ‘soft skills’ of people management and worry they might flop as a result. (This was me for the first 20 years of my career as an engineer and manager)

It’s also for mature managers who need to upgrade their management style to get something new or out-of-the-ordinary done. You’ll take your team to the next level when you stop controlling and start coaching.

You’ll learn how to incorporate basic coaching techniques into your management style. Based on the International Coaching Federation’s competencies, the techniques can be used right away to get tangible results.

When managers coach, they enable their people to think for themselves, which means they grow in confidence and capability, and they start really enjoying their work.

Wait, is it okay for managers to be coaches?

Yep. In fact, it’s essential.

For years, consulting giant Gallup has studied the links between low staff engagement and poor productivity in companies around the world.

In 2017, Gallup chairman Jim Clifton said 30-year-old management practices were creating an epidemic of stress and burnout, and was the reason global productivity has been in general decline for decades.

He insisted that companies should phase out command-and-control managers and bring in coaches able to hold high-development conversations.

It would, he said, ‘boom productivity and save the world’. (Jim Clifton, Chairman’s Blog, ‘The World’s Broken Workplace’, Gallup, 13 June 2017)

Why am I qualified to teach this course?

Because I lived the transformation.

For 20 years, I was a tough, command-and-control project manager rising through the ranks of national construction companies.

Once, I saw ‘Dave Stitt is a b*****d!’ scrawled on a site toilet wall, and I was proud.

Then I was introduced to coaching when I led a number of big company transformation programmes, and I’ve never looked back.

Today, I’m a Professional Certified Coach, and have spent over 20 years coaching company boards and major project leadership teams.

I created the course so you can avoid the stress I felt, and caused, for all those years.

What do people who’ve taken the course say?

They love it.

Many young managers completed the course, and I wasn’t prepared for the avalanche of positive feedback I got. Some of them agreed to let me tell their stories.

Nathan Oliver, a sought-after freelance architectural technologist, said the course prepared him finally to take on staff and grow his business.

Alexandra Smith and Holly Williams are business development managers for a national company. They said the techniques boosted their confidence and helped them hold better conversations to secure the help they needed from more senior technical people.

Alex Young is a rising star at a national water company who turned to command-and-control management out of fear that something would go wrong. ‘I essentially tried to turn my team into robots, or messengers, or go-betweens, acting purely on my instructions rather than trusting them to think and make decisions for themselves,’ he said. It worked for a while but soon he was burning out.

He credits this course for giving him strategies for getting results through his team, not in spite of them.

Civil engineer Michael Fisher said he’d drifted into the habit of command-and-control management (as I did) because he was unaware of alternatives. Relationships in his team were deteriorating as a result.

‘I will use these tools for the rest of my career!’ he told me.

Care for a taste?

Here’s a little example of what the course teaches.

When managers switch to coaching mode, they initiate a particular type of conversation called the coaching conversation.

It has a beginning, a middle, and an end, each of which needs correct handling.

One lesson shows you how to prepare for ending the conversation mid-way through it, the way pilots get ready for landing long before they tell the cabin crew to buckle up.

This allows for smooth endings, with both parties satisfied and ready to go, which you need because suddenly announcing ‘That’s it, time’s up!’ is jarring and unpleasant.

That’s how practical and no-nonsense the course is.

What now?

Coach for Results gives you exactly what you need to develop your leadership skills on a secure and sustainable foundation. It’ll guide you every step of the way as you become a confident and effective coach-manager.

The course has 20 short videos each with a recommended activity. I'd suggest you do two per week making it a 10 week course, though all the material is available at the start so you can go at your own pace. There is also a Workbook to capture your thinking and learning as you go, this becomes a record of your learning journey.

The only thing left to do is sign up!

Ps and there is my Coach for Results book, it's available on Amazon.