We all know, or should know that one of the highest impact activities managers can do with their people is coaching them, enabling them to discover and learn how to continually improve their performance.

But what about managers? We seldom hear about managers, yet coaching managers–at all levels even up to the CEO is critical in maximizing their performance and, in turn, enabling them to maximize the performance of their people.

Perhaps, the most impactful way to help managers understand the importance and impact of coaching, and learn how to coach, is through their managers setting great examples in coaching. Managers will tend to model their behaviors and approaches after what they see from their own management.

At the risk of being redundant, how can we expect front line managers to coach, if they aren’t coached themselves?

In addition to helping improve the abilities of our people to execute, coaching provides managers great insight into how their people are thinking, what’s happening in the business, where there are issues that impact our success. Likewise, senior managers coaching the managers reporting to them keep in touch with what’s really happening in the organization and where the leverage points are for driving organizational performance. It’s far more powerful than sitting behind a desk, staring at dashboards. We get rich context and color that give meaning to the data.

If you are a senior managers, are you coaching the managers reporting to you?

If you are a manager, are you asking your manager for coaching and help.