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Needed: More coaches and fewer bosses

If you think back over your career, who was your best boss? My guess is that regardless of your age, race, or profession, your best boss was actually a great coach. To be honest, the term boss seems pretty dated. In most settings, it has been replaced by words like manager, supervisor, or leader. When I first entered the workforce, twenty-five years ago, people actually used the term boss and most people had limited expectations of their boss. We believed that no news was good news. As long as our boss wasn’t in our office or standing at our cubicle door with a look or horror and negative comments, things were ok.

And while some things have changed, some things remain the same. One thing that has changed is that we no longer believe that no news is good news. In fact, we think no news is BAD news. We want and need feedback. If we have no news, it means we are irrelevant. We do not want to be irrelevant at work. Another thing that has changed is that we have much higher expectations of our boss. A good boss is someone who understands us, wants to develop us, and challenges us with interesting work.

This may lead you to ask, then what has stayed the same? What remains the same is that the boss who acts like a coach was the best boss twenty-five years ago and continues to be the boss we want and need today. Unfortunately, most bosses need training to be a good coach.  The rules have changed but the players (ie: your boss) did not get the new rule book and has not constructed plays for these new rules.

There’s more to come on this topic. Stay tuned.

 

 

 

 

 

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