A Manager's Guide: To Coach or Not to Coach
- Feb 24
- 9 min read
Dear Readers,
This one’s for all the managers out there—your very own guide to answer the age-old question—"to coach or not to coach.”
We want people to be in roles and environments that make the most of their natural talents and treat them well. Often, that means managers need to have difficult conversations or move through friction-filled situations to improve the role or environment, and sometimes it means there’s not a fit.
No matter the circumstances, letting someone go should never be taken lightly.
Your team is a reflection of you as a coach.
You may have heard folks refer to a company like a professional sports team. Now, I’m not well-versed in the world of sports, but I was on a competitive dance team for several years. Everyone had a position, and everyone had to rely on each other. Some dancers had more experience than others, but everyone was expected to play their part, find chemistry with the squad, and evolve their craft.
You win or lose together.
Sometimes a loss was a leadership failure, like a poorly choreographed routine. Sometimes we hadn’t collectively practiced enough, or someone was out sick. And sometimes an individual truly faltered.
No matter the result, we always did the tape playback. You’d watch yourself and others in excruciating detail to identify any points of failure to adjust for the future. Occasionally, that meant putting dancers on the bench, and rarely, it meant removing them from the team.
At work, when something’s not working, there are a host of reasons it could be. It’s not always as easy as playing back the tape. But, as a manager, it’s crucial to unearth the reason(s), even if that reason is you.
Because you cannot address a problem without understanding it, and it’s not a sustainable option to simply let go of people when something is awry.
You’re only as strong as your weakest link, or are you?
Teams and individuals can be sidelined by so many things outside of their control. The most sustainable approach would be to address the root cause, yet it's easier to place the blame on an individual. It gives the illusion of taking action, but doesn’t change anything.
Over time, not only is individual blame unproductive, but those cultures eventually erode under the tyranny of competition and fear.
So, I’m going to start by challenging you to look at the structural impediments as well as your role. It might be uncomfortable, but the only way to salvage your soul when letting someone go is to truly believe that you considered and did everything you could.
Let’s start with the company.
Is there anything in the company folklore, history, policies, goals, or incentives that may have influenced or impacted an individual's performance? Consider your own experience as well as the experiences of others. If yes, can you focus on addressing those issues or advocating for change upward?
Now, what about the team?
Are there any team dynamics, constraints, or unusual pressures being placed on them that may have spiraled into an individual’s performance? If yes, can you reset expectations with the team and ensure everyone’s working well together?
Time for the tough, let’s talk about you.
As their manager, it’s on you to give them knowledge, importance, and accountability. It’s impossible for anyone to do their job well without these things. Before rushing to solve a performance issue, take stock of how you’re doing.
Knowledge:
Have I onboarded and trained them?
Do they have the resources to succeed?
Do they understand the company goals and priorities?
Importance:
Do I make time for this person via 1:1s and feedback conversations?
Does this individual trust and rely on me?
Do I empower them by clearing barriers and giving support?
Accountability:
Have I defined areas of ownership and commitments?
Do they have the authority + autonomy to act upon those commitments?
Do I have a true understanding of what they’re doing and how it’s going?
If you answer “no” or “I don’t know” to any of these questions, start there. If you’ve genuinely given these things, then you have an individual performance issue.
Why are you considering letting them go?
Let’s dig into some of the common scenarios and whether coaching through resources, training, and growth planning could make sense. As always, if you haven’t given them any feedback, start here.
Role Change/Elimination
What it is:
The need for or needs of a role may change as the company changes. A role may be eliminated or altered in such a way that it’s no longer compatible with an individual’s talents.
Considerations:
These changes are rarely in the individual’s control. Giving them a growth plan or shoving them into another role makes the exit longer and unpleasant for all.
Traps:
Always, always, always evaluate if you can transfer an individual if they’re performing and believe in the company. However, do not place them into a role they’re neither qualified for nor interested in. This creates uncertainty for everyone. If you identify a role they may be qualified for, interview them and let them interview you before mutually making that decision.
Coach or Not:
Don’t coach unless there is a different role that’s a clear fit for them.
Recommended Read:
Traction digs into how to identify the roles you need for your team before you hire. Often, companies get themselves into this situation because they hired someone they liked without having a clear need or aligned role for them, so a role change or elimination becomes inevitable.
Not a Fit for Role/Skillset
What it is:
Every manager will make a mistake in hiring or promoting. You may find that someone doesn’t have the skillset or demeanor for the role. This situation’s distinction is that it’s the wrong person for the role. It should feel incredibly clear. It would be like hiring a seller who’s uncomfortable and unwilling to lead sales calls.
Considerations:
These situations are difficult, so the best approach is to move quickly and learn from them. Evaluate the situation and hold a retrospective: Did you understand the role priorities and needs when hiring/promoting? If so, what happened?
Traps:
Don’t overreact in the beginning. Everyone needs time to adapt to a new role or company. It’s crucial for managers to have 30/60/90-day goals and expectations when someone is hired, transferred, or promoted
Coach or Not:
Once you’re past the “onboarding” period, don’t coach.
Over-leveled
What it is:
Hiring or promoting someone to a level they’re not ready for. These individuals are contributing to an extent and have potential. Managers are loath to address these situations, but they have a ripple effect. Others want to be at the same level/pay and see it as inconsistent expectations.
Considerations:
Presumably, you hired or promoted the individual because of their potential. This happens a lot with new managers who get the role but no training. The first step is ensuring they have the resources and training to perform at a higher level.
Traps:
Most options for correcting over-leveling are painful—you upset the team by doing nothing, you upset the individual via a demotion, or you lose the individual. Don’t fall into a lose-lose. Talk openly and honestly with the individual. You’ll find many folks are open to moving down a level or dedicating extra time to getting to the necessary level fast.
Coach or Not:
Coach. There may be exceptions, like an executive where there’s no time to coach them to perform at a level, or the gap is too great to overcome, but those are rare.
Not Growing/Stagnant
What it is:
When an individual truly becomes stagnant, they’ve stopped learning. Someone who’s not growing is not contributing new knowledge, ideas, or approaches to the team. They may even reject change. It can feel status quo and frustrating to those around this individual, even if they were once considered a high performer.
Considerations:
If someone is set in their ways and beliefs, that will permeate into the team as well as impact their resiliency and success.
Traps:
Don’t confuse not growing laterally with not growing. At a certain point in one’s career, an individual may not continue to grow laterally.
Reasons include: not wanting to be a manager, being content with their role/level, and not wanting to work more. Organizations benefit from steady performers who aren’t seeking promotion; they’re critical to a healthy team ecosystem. But they should still be growing by learning and trying new things.
Coach or Not:
Depends. A manager needs to figure out if they’re fixed-minded or in a funk. A funk or hard time personally can be overcome. However, being fixed is tough.
Recommended Read:
Mindset is freeing. If you let go of a fixed mindset for a growth one, it allows you to feel in control of your development and relinquish limiting thoughts. I helped myself and my team by letting go of the belief that success should feel effortless.
Values Misalignment
What it is:
An individual doesn’t embody the company values and habits. It can be overt (e.g., yelling or belittling), annoying (e.g., not following processes), or seemingly innocuous (e.g., showing up late for meetings). If the behavior is persistent, it eats at others. It can degrade the culture and experiences of others, especially if excuses are made for one’s behavior.
Considerations:
Values break down into habits and expectations. Ensure that leadership is aligned with what those habits and expectations are for them and the team.
Traps:
Don’t assume the extreme. If you assume that it’s unintentional, it’s easy to dismiss, which exacerbates the problem. If you assume the individual is bad, you’ve made a character judgment, which is a hard perception to change.
Coach or Not:
Depends. Coach first to ensure those habits and expectations are clear, and if they are and the behavior persists, let them go. The one exception is egregious behavior, which needs immediate attention and likely termination.
Recommended Reads:
What you allow becomes who you are as a company. The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team highlights the destructive nature of an absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results.
Ambiguous Performance Issues
What it is:
Sometimes, people don’t meet our expectations for performance.
Finding the balance between supporting an individual and ensuring a team + company have the support they need is one of the great ongoing dilemmas of work.
Considerations:
It’s disturbingly common for managers to let ambiguous performance issues linger. These are the situations where it’s not clear-cut and can feel like a surprise. If you find yourself in this boat—start with a conversation.
Try questions like:
What do I know about their intentions and motivations?
What’s in and not in their control to improve performance?
Do I even know what good looks like? If not, how could they?
What have I told this individual? Did they understand?
Do I have any evidence to show they won’t or can’t improve?
Have I known this person to underperform in the past? If yes, what were the circumstances? If not, what could be going on that might explain this?
All too often, the ambiguity is due to miscommunication and/or an individual experiencing a personal hardship that can be accommodated or supported.
Traps:
Not giving feedback because you assume the individual is a mind reader or will pick up on subtle hints isn’t helpful. Neither is making assumptions about what’s going on without talking to them. Treat the person with dignity and respect.
Coach or Not:
Coach. Always coach first via direct, clear feedback and time to improve.
Every company should develop its philosophy around what constitutes good and great performance, how it will be communicated if someone isn’t meeting the bar, and how it will reward folks when they meet or exceed the bar. It’s a shared set of expectations between the company and team; a building block of trust.
Being a manager means signing up to nurture another human—helping them learn about themselves, holding them accountable, and reaching their potential.
EverMore is designed to be a companion to managers—to help them reflect, process, and learn how to coach their teams through all these situations.
Let’s take a quick detour back to the competitive dance chapter of my life. As with any craft, it takes a lot of vulnerability to keep trying a skill until you’re good at it. To put your mind and body through that process, you need to be around people who are in it with you and can push you to your potential.
To be quite cheesy, it changed my life to have a dance coach invest in me, and it changed my career to have managers who held me to my highest potential.
Being that person is usually as easy as knowledge, importance, and accountability.
xoxo, Courtney
p.s. I focused on the nuanced scenarios most managers face. For egregious behavior like harassment, bullying, stealing, that’s a report to your legal team situation. I still recommend reflecting to unearth if there’s anything the company culture or you as a leader did to model, allow, or encourage the behavior. But don’t go at it alone.
Courtney Branson is the cofounder of EverMore, the career reflection engine. She's a former Chief People Officer and will forever be designing kind and innovative cultures. You can find her on LinkedIn, Instagram, and as the cohost of the Dear Evermore podcast.