From Manager to Leader – A Coaching Perspective

Managers play a unique and crucial role in associations.  They are much more than individuals who keep up on the status of a team’s tasks.  The manager’s job is to be a leader, to influence and to support employees to do their job well and more importantly to develop the leadership capabilities of their team members.  

Judy Lubin, MBA, PhD, PCC, ACTC is a transformational coach specializing in empowering leaders and teams to navigate complex environments with purpose and agility. She particularly enjoys coaching social sector and mission-driven leaders, helping them to make a meaningful impact faster. She facilitates Association Forum’s Emerging Leaders program. This article highlights several recommendations from Dr. Lubin on how managers can support their teams for success. 

The Math of Teams

A manager becomes a team leader when they focus on creating conditions where the team performs beyond the sum of its parts. A high-performing team isn’t just a group of high performers working individually, it’s a team that gains synergy through intentional leadership.   There are three components of teams:

1. Coordinating and executing the work. The leader’s role is to help the team align on a shared purpose, one specific to that team’s function not just the larger organization’s mission. Teams should understand who their stakeholders are, what those stakeholders need, and maintain goals and outcomes that are aligned with that purpose.
2. Interpersonal dynamics include how team members interact, give feedback, and handle conflict. The leader must foster a culture of psychological and relational maturity, encouraging a space where safety is created by each member of the team, not imposed by the leader.  The focus is on trust, open communication, feedback, and ensuring each person feels they matter.
3. External communication and stakeholder engagement. Every team member should act as an ambassador of the team.  Teams should collectively communicate their purpose and value to stakeholders, rather than relying only on the leader.  Each team member must be aware of how their team’s mission matters to the rest of the organization, to the members, to stakeholders. Teams must regularly evaluate that that they are doing the right work at the right time, thus meeting stakeholders’ needs, and be agile to adjust as necessary.

Leader As Coach

One of the most effective ways for managers to build supportive, high-performing teams is by adopting a leader-as-coach approach. Rather than giving answers, leaders guide through meaningful questions that help employees think, learn, and grow.

The goal is to prioritize employee development over just providing an answer. Instead of asking evaluative questions like “What’s the status of that project?” leaders can ask exploratory ones such as “What’s been the hardest part about this project?” “Where are you encountering hurdles?” or “How can I help you move forward?”

These questions move team members into a creative, problem-solving space. Over time, they build confidence, independence, a sense of mattering, and that their contributions count.  Developing a team through coaching while simultaneously maintaining accountability for day-to-day work is a valuable skill for any manager to cultivate.

Effective Feedback That Builds Trust

Providing employees with effective feedback is another important role of a leader.  The Situation, Behavior, Impact (SBI) Model helps managers frame feedback in a way that builds maturity and encourages employee decision making.  The model centers on description of behaviors, which are not feelings, interpretations of motivation, or opinions. 

To employ the model, managers should describe the situation clearly, focus on observable behavior, and then share the impact, including how it affected you, the team, or the organization. This approach removes evaluation and lets the employee decide how to act, fostering maturity and accountability.

Feedback shouldn’t always be negative, feedback is encouraged much more often to affirm positive actions.  Frequent, genuine feedback, whether a quick message or an in-person conversation, helps employees feel seen, trusted, and valued.  It also creates a culture where judgement is removed and the team can have difficult conversations, solve problems and provide effective feedback among each other.

Developing as a Leader

Becoming a manager can feel both exciting and intimidating.  One tool to grow a manager’s skillset is the Association Forum’s Emerging Leaders Program, which teaches the leadership model and important skills such as direction, alignment and commitment.

Additionally, effective leadership development starts with adopting the right mindset and understanding that your role is to help employees learn, grow, and feel that they matter, and support them to do their jobs well.  Growth as a leader requires patience, grace, and a commitment to continuous learning through experience-building.  Engaging a professional coach at key career transition points, such as when first managing people or stepping into senior leadership, can also accelerate personal professional development. 

Central to a manager’s individual growth is self-leadership, the lifelong practice of motivating yourself, staying accountable, and cultivating self-awareness.  These power skills, once called soft skills, are qualities that evolve through mindful reflection, coaching, and real-life application.  Some of the greatest leaders in history, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., embodied these skills, understanding that there is no plateau, you can always work on strengthening your skillset.  These skills are also not ones that you can simply learn from a book, these must be honed through intentional action.  Ultimately, true leadership growth moves you from being simply smart to becoming wise.