As a manager, you are great at your job. You know how to run projects, hit deadlines, and keep the work flowing. Your primary focus is on delivering results and managing your team's day-to-day tasks. But if you want to move up to the next level, just managing the work is not enough. Senior leaders are looking for people who can build and develop talent, not just oversee it. They want to promote multipliers, not just managers. This is where coaching comes in. Shifting from a manager who directs to a coach who develops is the single most powerful thing you can do to accelerate your career. A coaching approach doesn't just improve your team's performance; it makes your own leadership capabilities impossible to ignore. It shows that you are not just a contributor to the business, but a builder of its future talent.

Shift from Giving Advice to Asking Questions

Your instinct as a successful professional is to solve problems. When a team member comes to you with a challenge, your first impulse is to give them the answer. A coach resists this urge. Instead of providing the solution, a coach asks powerful questions that help the person find the solution themselves. Instead of saying, "You should do this," you can ask, "What are the options you've considered?" or "What do you think the first step should be?" This simple shift from advice-giving to question-asking builds critical thinking skills on your team and frees you up from being the bottleneck for every decision. It shows you can develop independent thinkers.

Set Clear Expectations and Success Metrics

Coaching can only happen when everyone knows what the goal is. Before you can coach someone to improve, you must define what success looks like in their role. This means going beyond a vague job description. Work with each team member to set clear, measurable performance expectations. For a salesperson, this might be a specific revenue target. For a software engineer, it could be a metric around code quality or deployment frequency. When people know exactly what they are being measured against, it becomes much easier to have objective, productive coaching conversations about how to get there.

Build a Foundation of Psychological Safety

For coaching to be effective, your team members must feel safe enough to be vulnerable. They need to feel comfortable admitting they don't know something or that they made a mistake. This is called "psychological safety." You create it by being vulnerable yourself. Admit when you are wrong, ask for help when you need it, and thank people for respectfully disagreeing with you. When you model this behavior, you create an environment where your team feels safe to take risks, ask for feedback, and engage in the real conversations that lead to growth.

Run Structured One-on-One Meetings

Your one-on-one meetings are the most important tool you have as a coach. They should not be simple status updates. A great coaching one-on-one is a structured conversation focused on the team member's growth, challenges, and career goals. Create a simple shared agenda where both you and your direct report can add topics for discussion. Dedicate time to talk about their long-term aspirations, not just the current week's projects. Always end the meeting by summarizing the key takeaways and any action items, which shows you are listening and committed to their development.

Give Specific, Behavior-Based Feedback

"Good job" is nice to hear, but it isn't helpful feedback. To help someone grow, your feedback must be specific and focused on their behavior, not their personality. Instead of saying, "You're a great presenter," try saying, "In the client meeting today, the way you used a specific customer story to illustrate your point was incredibly effective." This tells the person exactly what they did well so they can repeat it. The same goes for constructive feedback. Instead of "Your report was confusing," say, "The report's executive summary was strong, but I had trouble following the data in the second section. Next time, let's try adding titles to each chart to make the key takeaway clearer."

Create Growth Plans and Stretch Assignments

A coach is always thinking about what's next for their people. Work with each team member to create a simple, individualized growth plan. This plan should identify one or two skills they want to develop over the next six months. Then, your job is to find opportunities for them to practice those skills. This is where "stretch assignments" come in. If someone wants to improve their presentation skills, ask them to lead the next team meeting. If they want to gain leadership experience, ask them to mentor a new hire. These assignments push people out of their comfort zone in a supportive way.

Delegate Outcomes, Not Just Tasks

Many managers delegate by handing over a list of tasks. A coach delegates by handing over ownership of an outcome. Instead of telling someone to "send an email to the marketing team and then schedule a follow-up meeting," you can say, "Your goal is to get the marketing team's approval on this campaign brief by the end of the week. You can decide the best way to make that happen." This approach empowers your team members to think for themselves, take initiative, and develop their own problem-solving skills. It shows you trust them, which is a powerful motivator.

Unlock Motivation with Strengths and Purpose

A great coach understands that motivation isn't something you give to people; it's something you help them find within themselves. Pay attention to what energizes each person on your team. What tasks do they seem to genuinely enjoy? These are often clues to their natural strengths. Whenever possible, try to align their work with these strengths. You should also help them connect their daily tasks to the bigger picture. Help them see how their work contributes to the team's goals and the company's mission. This sense of purpose is one of the most powerful drivers of performance.

Measure Your Coaching Impact

How do you know if your coaching is actually working? You can measure it with a few simple metrics. Are your team members' performance metrics improving over time? Are they getting promoted or taking on more responsibility? Is your team's employee engagement score going up? You can also simply ask for feedback. In your one-on-ones, you can ask questions like, "What is one thing I could do to be a more helpful coach for you?" This shows you are committed to improving your own skills as a leader.

A 90-Day Plan to Build Your Coaching Habits

You can become a better coach through deliberate practice. In your first 30 days, focus on asking more questions. In every one-on-one, set a goal to ask at least three open-ended questions for every one piece of advice you give. In the next 30 days, focus on feedback. Make it a point to give at least one piece of specific, behavior-based positive feedback to each person on your team. In the final 30 days, focus on delegation. Find one project that you would normally do yourself and delegate the outcome to a team member who would benefit from the stretch assignment.