A manager can answer every question, solve every problem, and make every decision for the team. From the outside, that might look like effective leadership. Inside the organization, something less productive may be happening.
Employees stop making decisions they’re capable of making themselves. Problems travel up the organizational chart unnecessarily. The manager becomes the person everyone waits for, and the team gradually loses the ability to operate independently. The irony is that the manager may have created the problem by trying too hard to be helpful.
Dr. Chris Bittinger, who has coached more than 1,000 individuals and teaches coaching and leadership at Purdue University, sees a fundamental difference between how managers typically approach problems and how effective coaches approach them. Managers are accustomed to finding solutions. Coaches recognize that the person sitting across from them often has enough knowledge, experience, and judgment to develop a solution without being given one. For executives responsible for developing future managers, improving performance, and building organizations that don’t require their constant involvement, that difference deserves attention.
Are You Developing Employees or Training Them to Depend on You?
Consider what happens when an employee brings a difficult decision to a manager. The manager listens, evaluates the situation, and recommends a course of action. The employee follows the recommendation, and the immediate problem disappears. Everyone gets what they wanted, at least temporarily.
Longer term, the employee hasn’t necessarily learned how to make that decision. The next time something similar happens, there’s a good chance the employee will return for another answer. Repeat that pattern across an entire management team, and you’ve created a decision-making bottleneck.
Bittinger connects this dependency directly to succession planning and employee development. When employees repeatedly rely on their managers to solve problems, organizations struggle to develop people who can assume greater responsibility.
I’ve always believed that decisions are only as sound as the information they’re based on. Something managers occasionally overlook is that the employee seeking advice may possess considerably more relevant information than the person providing it.
That employee knows the history of the situation, the personalities involved, the previous attempts to solve it, and details that might never surface during a brief conversation. A manager who immediately supplies an answer may be replacing a reasonably informed employee’s judgment with a recommendation based on incomplete information.
A better starting point is often a question. What options have you considered? What do you think should happen next? What information would help you make the decision? These questions require employees to exercise judgment rather than simply accept instructions.
That doesn’t mean managers should refuse to make decisions or withhold expertise. It means recognizing when supplying an answer is genuinely necessary and when doing so prevents someone else from developing the ability to find one.
A Question Can Be Advice Disguised as Coaching
Changing statements into questions doesn’t automatically make someone a better coach. Bittinger identifies a common mistake: managers who already have a preferred solution ask questions designed to steer employees toward that answer. “Do you think you should do this?” is technically a question. It also communicates a recommendation.
The employee can usually recognize where the manager wants the conversation to go. Instead of examining alternatives, the employee begins working toward the expected response. The manager may believe coaching has occurred, but little independent thinking was required.
Genuine curiosity produces a different conversation. Bittinger emphasizes observing what someone says, noticing possible inconsistencies, and asking about them without prematurely deciding what those observations mean.
If an employee becomes visibly uncomfortable discussing a particular responsibility, a manager could assume resistance or lack of commitment. A better question might explore what’s causing the reaction.
The difference is especially noticeable during one-on-one meetings. Bittinger encourages managers to examine the percentage of time they spend talking compared with listening. An executive who dominates these conversations may be collecting updates while overlooking what employees actually need.
It’s worth examining whose agenda controls the meeting. If every conversation revolves around the manager’s questions, priorities, and proposed solutions, employees have little opportunity to surface problems the manager hasn’t anticipated. Sometimes the most productive thing a manager can do is stop talking long enough for someone else to think.
The Smallest Behavioral Changes Can Produce Noticeable Results
One of Bittinger’s coaching experiences involved a client who repeatedly dropped his hands emphatically while speaking. The behavior had become habitual, and the client didn’t appear to recognize that he was doing it.
Bittinger noticed the movement and described how he experienced it. Rather than labeling the behavior as inappropriate, he asked whether that impression matched what the client intended to communicate. The client hadn’t realized he was making the gesture. Once he understood how it might be perceived, he decided to change it.
Approximately 90 days later, the client reported that he had stopped the behavior. Other members of his team had noticed the change, and the client believed it was improving how he led people.
There was no elaborate development program or lengthy diagnosis. Someone identified a specific behavior, described its impact, and allowed the individual to decide what to do about it.
The example illustrates something useful about management development. Executives sometimes approach performance improvement as though they must fundamentally change someone’s personality. Yet an employee’s effectiveness may be limited by a narrow, observable behavior that has never been brought to their attention.
The difficulty is providing feedback without turning the conversation into an accusation. An observation invites examination. A judgment invites defense. The employee still has to choose to change. The manager’s responsibility is to make the behavior and its consequences visible.
Poor Performance Requires Clarity Before Correction
Coaching isn’t an excuse to avoid uncomfortable performance conversations. When someone isn’t meeting expectations, a manager still has to establish what acceptable performance looks like and address the gap between current and required results.
Bittinger recommends identifying the person’s existing strengths and considering how those abilities could help improve performance. That’s a useful departure from the tendency to build every improvement conversation around weaknesses.
If an employee has demonstrated abilities that could contribute to better results, those abilities deserve a place in the improvement plan. Strengths alone aren’t enough. Expectations must be unmistakable. A manager can explain a requirement thoroughly and still leave the employee uncertain about what’s expected.
Silence is particularly misleading. An employee may remain quiet because they understand the assignment. They may also remain quiet because they’re confused and don’t want to admit it.
Bittinger recommends checking understanding by asking employees to explain what they’ve heard and identify their next steps. That provides a more reliable indication of alignment than asking whether everyone understands and receiving no objections.
The conversation also needs to remain focused. In From Conflict to Courage, Marlene Chism describes what she calls the “island of distraction,” a situation in which someone redirects an uncomfortable conversation away from its original purpose. An employee confronted about missed expectations might introduce complaints about coworkers, question the manager’s behavior, or raise another unrelated problem.
Those concerns could be legitimate, but addressing every new topic immediately can prevent the original issue from being resolved. A manager can acknowledge the concern, establish that it deserves a separate discussion, and return to the performance expectation.
The purpose is to get from current performance to an agreed-upon result. Once that destination is clear, the conversation can address missing skills, available resources, operational barriers, and individual accountability without becoming a contest over blame.
How Do You Coach Someone Through Conflict When You Only Know One Side?
Managers rarely receive a complete account of a workplace conflict. The person describing the disagreement naturally presents events from their own perspective, often emphasizing what someone else did wrong.
Bittinger recommends moving the conversation toward a question that can initially feel uncomfortable: How did you contribute to the situation? That question shifts attention from evaluating another person’s behavior to examining what the employee can actually influence. It also creates an opportunity to prepare for a more productive conversation.
Bittinger uses role-playing to help people work through difficult interactions before having them. The preparation involves deciding how to open the discussion, what to say as it develops, and how to close it. The desired outcome becomes the organizing principle.
An employee who enters a conflict conversation determined to establish who’s wrong will behave differently from someone who wants to clarify responsibilities and restore a working relationship.
This is where managers have to distinguish between supporting an employee and validating every assumption the employee makes. Listening carefully doesn’t require agreeing with the employee’s interpretation of events. A manager can acknowledge frustration while still examining the employee’s contribution, preparing for the other person’s perspective, and identifying what a successful resolution would look like.
An Overwhelmed Employee May Need a Different Conversation
Performance problems and stress can look similar from a manager’s perspective. An employee misses deadlines, struggles to prioritize, or appears disengaged. The manager assumes the person needs better direction or greater accountability. The underlying problem may be an employee struggling to cope with competing demands.
Bittinger’s doctoral research examined executive coaching, stress, and burnout. He distinguishes temporary stress responses from burnout, which involves persistent exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy. That difference influences how a coaching conversation should proceed.
When someone is experiencing stress, Bittinger emphasizes providing enough room to process what they’re experiencing before moving toward problem-solving. He observed in his research that people processing stressors often began identifying practical responses around the eight-minute mark.
The managerial implication is straightforward: An immediate solution isn’t always the most useful opening. Sometimes employees need space to organize their thoughts before they can evaluate their options.
Boundaries also deserve attention. When an employee already has a full workload, accepting another assignment without adjusting existing priorities can make the situation worse. A productive conversation might establish which responsibilities must remain, which could be postponed, and what resources are available.
Persistent burnout calls for more than another productivity plan. Managers need to recognize when the workload or working conditions themselves require attention. The objective is to understand what kind of problem exists before prescribing a response.
AI Can Supply Answers, Which Makes Human Judgment More Valuable
Artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly capable of analyzing information, suggesting solutions, and helping employees work through decisions. That creates an interesting question for managers: If employees can obtain reasonable answers without consulting their supervisors, what value should a coaching conversation provide?
Bittinger points to empathy, careful listening, presence, and the ability to recognize what someone needs beyond an immediate solution. A conversation about a difficult decision may require reflection rather than another recommendation. A performance problem may require an observation the employee hasn’t recognized. A disagreement may require someone to examine a contribution they’ve been unwilling to acknowledge.
AI can help generate questions and explore options. Managers remain responsible for understanding the actual people, relationships, and expectations involved. That responsibility becomes harder when the manager is accustomed to demonstrating value by having the answer.
The executive who makes every important decision may feel indispensable. Unfortunately, indispensability becomes expensive when the organization can’t function effectively without that person’s constant involvement.
Perhaps a better measure of managerial effectiveness is what employees can handle when the manager isn’t available. If employees can evaluate problems, communicate expectations, resolve disagreements, and make sound decisions without waiting for permission, something valuable has been developed.
The manager has become less necessary to the routine decision, while becoming more valuable to the organization’s long-term capability. That may be the clearest evidence that coaching is working.