Your Line Manager Isn't Your Therapist (and That's OK)

I think we sometimes ask an awful lot of our line managers.

We expect them to set direction, manage performance, develop people, handle conflict, spot potential, support wellbeing, navigate organisational politics and somehow notice when someone is having a difficult week, all while delivering their own targets and answering the 47 emails that arrived before 9am.

Then, when someone is struggling, we wonder why their manager doesn't always have the time or capacity to sit down and really listen.

The truth is, most good managers care deeply about their people. They want to support them. They want to be available. They want to create a team where people feel safe enough to talk about what's going on.

But caring and having capacity are two very different things.

Sometimes a leader needs somewhere to think through a difficult situation without worrying about how it will affect their team, how it might sound to their manager or whether they're supposed to have already worked out the answer.

They might need to say, "I don't know what I'm doing here."

Or, "I'm really struggling with this."

Or even, "I know what I should do. I'm just not sure I want to do it."

That's not necessarily a conversation for their line manager.

It doesn't mean the manager is unsupportive. It means that leaders, like everyone else, sometimes need a space where they aren't being managed at the same time as they're trying to make sense of something.

This is one of the things I think coaching can offer that is often overlooked.

Not advice.

Not another solution.

Not someone telling you what you should do.

Just a confidential, uninterrupted space where you can put the whole messy thing on the table, take a breath and start to work out what you actually think.

Because sometimes the most valuable thing a leader can have isn't another person with an answer.

It's another hour in which nobody needs anything from them.

So here's today's question.

Where do your leaders get to think out loud without having to be the person who already has it all figured out?

#Leadership #LeadershipDevelopment #ExecutiveCoaching #ThinkingSpace #PeopleLeadership #WorkplaceCulture