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Coaching – A required IT Leadership Skill


There was upon a time when IT Managers were people focusing just on target setting and process control. The line manager was a person having special focus on proper delivery and project achievement rather than anything else.

In recent years coaching has become a required skill for any senior manager driving a team to excel on everyday challenging agendas. Still very often some business leaders believe that coaching has to be a separate management activity in order to not interfere with the day-to-day activities.  Based on my own experiences this statement is far from the reality.  

It has been demonstrated that an IT leader having the capabilities and the means to act as a coach in parallel to the rest of his/her managerial activities is a person that will get the best from their team, either operationally or from the compartmental point of view.

Coaching is all about listening, paraphrasing and guiding rather than anything else. It is a time well expended to develop your teams on individual basis, whether there is a problem on the quality of delivery or a relationship issue with other member of the group.


You don’t need to be a “certified” coach in order to give a first try (although a certification will help). What you need to develop is your own capability to influence others by listening carefully what they have to say. Just by doing this most of the people will have the opportunity to think twice about their own ideas and most probably they will reach a new conclusions and/or they will be able to find a better solution.

As time passes and you become more confortable with this coaching role, you will then naturally develop some questioning techniques. This will enable a new enterprise communication; the debate scenario.  This method is richer than the pure question-feedback as it gives the opportunity to rethink about their initial position, fine-tuning the support elements reaching a better outcome.

Time is a short asset in todays IT management agendas? Indeed it is. However there are certainly some current activities from which you can get some additional time to be invested in coaching. It will pay the bill, no doubt about. 


Recommended book: Becoming a professional Coach by Patrick Williams & Dianne S.Menendez    

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