I have a new, wonderful Instruction Coordinator. We work very well together. She, however, has a very difficult time making decisions and often turns to me to make the final decision on an issue. How do I coach her through the decision making process while not making the decision for her? What if I have an opinion on the final decision to be made?
Thank you for leading with the positive in this scenario—it shows that you are approaching this question from a place of trying to shape and nurture talent that is perhaps a bit raw or undeveloped, which is some of the most important work a manager can do! And it also places you in the necessary mental mindset: yes, this will take a bit of work and patience between the two of you, but it can absolutely be done.
First, I would encourage you to be empathetic to your Instruction Coordinator’s role as a middle manager–if she does, in fact, have any formal managerial responsibility. If she doesn’t have any formal managerial responsibilities but is nonetheless expected to be responsible for the overall direction of your library’s instruction program, that is an incredibly difficult position to be in and a line which she will need your help and guidance to walk. If you haven’t already had extensive conversations about these boundaries and your expectations for her as a coordinator, I would actually walk it back a bit and start here. Together, review her job description and look for anything that needs to be clarified, either in her eyes or yours. For which decisions and areas of responsibility is she the primary point of contact? What are the areas that are a bit out of her purview and require her to bring you in? These types of professional boundaries can be incredibly difficult for anybody to navigate, but particularly someone who is new to a role and new to your organizational culture and history. This is some of the most critical work you can do as a manager: help your direct report understand what is expected of her, what autonomy she has, and when something is “a bit above her pay grade,” as they. I am going on 13 years as a professional librarian and I still need help with navigating these boundaries! Do you have regular weekly or biweekly meetings with her? If not, get those on your calendars ASAP. These types of conversations and check-ins are essential for manager/direct report relationships, whether or not any issues exist.
Second, once you feel like you both are on the same page in terms of her expectations and responsibilities (you’re both documenting everything you discuss in these standing meetings, right?), you can move on to the more specific skill of decision making. To approach this issue, I would start with one or two of the most recent decisions that you would have preferred she made more independently. Begin by asking her questions: “I noticed you asked for my help in deciding [XYZ]. Can you tell me a little bit about your thought process? What were you unsure about in this situation?” These questions are not supposed to put her on the spot but are intended to help YOU see a bit more about what’s going on behind the scenes. Is she dealing with recalcitrant team members and is reluctant to have an unpopular decision be seen as coming from her? (If that’s the case, that’s a whole separate blog post!) Is she nervous about asserting her authority or leadership, especially if she does not have previous coordinator or managerial experience? In that case, she may need more positive feedback and reassurance from you that you believe she is talented and you trust her instincts. Is she nervous about the repercussions if a decision she makes doesn’t turn out well? If that’s the case, then ask yourself what you can do to build her trust that you will have her back even when things go wrong? (And when they do go wrong, that you will help her figure out where they went wrong and figure out how to not have that happen in the future.)
Some of the best advice I got as a manager is that feedback to my direct reports should be FAST: Frequent, Accurate, Specific, and Timely. In other words, address each of these issues that arise in the moment (or as close to it as possible), rather than saving them all up and blindsiding someone on an annual review. Use specific examples to coach someone through a time when they could have done something differently (or to praise them when they did something really well). Another piece of advice that has served me well: always start these types of guiding conversations with questions—questions that come from a genuine place of you trying to learn more, rather than questions that serve to put someone on the spot or make them feel like they’re under a microscope. Some of the questions on this list could serve you well as you coach her through her decisions, and here is some further guidance about coaching employees from the Harvard Business Review blog. (You might also want to look at the FUEL Coaching Model and at the book The Extraordinary Coach: How the Best Leaders Help Others Grow by Zenger and Stinnett.)
A lot of this, to me, has to do with trust, and the best place to build that trust is in regular meetings. When you have regular meetings with your direct reports, you are (hopefully) leading regular, frank conversations in which you’re both bringing to the table things that happened, decisions that were made (by either one of you), and issues that have arisen. You and your direct report get to work together to take these issues apart and put them back together as a team. This type of work is not immediate, but it’s the type of work that, when you put in the effort now, pays off dividends in the long run.
Mary Moser, Engagement and Advancement Librarian, UMass Boston
Ask a Library Leader 