Submitted by ofironen on
in
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I started a new job and found out that one of the teams (under one of my directs) feels that their manager is too strict, blasting them for every little mistake and sometime for no good reason (at least in their mind).
I know that he is a tough manager and the feedback from his former manager indicated that this issue came up in the past.
what would be the best way to coach him out of this dictatorship mode and into a more ease & comfortable environment? I have few ideas but would like to get some feedback on this to further develop my solution.
Give feedback and teach the trinity
I think you need to focus on giving feedback for every instance of the behaviours you don't want the manager to engage in (along with plenty of feedback for those behaviours you *do* want to encourage, of course). This is especially useful in this case, because you're not only setting your expectations, but you're also modelling a more appropriate way that the manager can interact with his own team.
If I had to guess (and I don't like to), I'd say that the manager probably behaves in the way he does because he doesn't have any other tools at his disposal to talk with his directs about their performance, so he goes back to the old standby of letting fly. Coaching him on the trinity, starting with building relationships (with an explanation of why they're important, and how blasting people doesn't help build the relationship) then moving on to feedback will probably result in a sharp decline in incidents as he learns a more effective way of communicating with his direct.