Many managers and supervisors are excellent at their jobs, but when they take on a leadership role, they often face the challenge of “knowing how to do, but not how to teach.”

As a result, they become exhausted, and the team cannot grow to its full potential

As a manager, your role isn’t just about getting things done yourself—it’s about empowering your team, helping them develop their skills, and turning them into capable individuals who can contribute independently. This, in turn, drives the team’s overall growth.

3 Essential Coaching Principles to Empower Your Team and Drive Growth

Here are three practical coaching techniques to help you become a coaching-based leader faster:

1. Talk Less, Ask More: Guide Your Team to Solve Problems

Managers often enjoy sharing their experience with their team, but talking and helping too much can make the team overly dependent. When problems arise, the team may rely on the manager to fix them, and nothing advances without them. Over time, this causes manager burnout and hinders the team’s growth.

This doesn’t mean you can’t help your team solve problems, but you need to change how you help. When team members face difficulties, try asking guiding questions to spark their thinking, such as:

• " What options do you see for solving this?”
• "How do you think we should handle this situation? Why?"
• "If we want to achieve this result, what should we do or avoid doing?"

After the team member shares their ideas, you can then add your suggestions. This approach keeps team members proactive while letting them know they have your support. For instance, you could say, “Would you like to hear my thoughts on this?” or, after affirming their ideas, add your input: “Great! You’ve considered the customer’s perspective. Let me add one more point—this method might miss some details…”

This kind of response respects their ideas and helps them recognize areas for improvement. Over time, they’ll build the habit of independent thinking, making them grow faster and solve problems on their own.

2. Extract Key Principles: Help Your Team Apply Lessons to New Situations

Managers often share detailed real-life examples with their team, analyzing what was done well and what could be improved. These examples typically include specific details, such as customer behavior, preferences, and the team member’s response, enabling the team to learn by immersing themselves in realistic scenarios.

However, if you stop at case studies, your team may only learn how to handle that specific situation. When faced with a different problem in the future, they may freeze because they don’t know how to adapt.

To overcome this, as you review case studies with your team, take it a step further: help them extract actionable principles or methods that they can use in other situations. For example:

• “In this kind of situation, we can do [this], because [reason].”
• “To achieve this goal, there are three possible approaches…”

By turning examples into clear takeaways, your team can apply what they’ve learned in new and different contexts. This greatly enhances their ability to solve problems independently and boosts the overall capability of the team.

3. Focus on Follow-Up and Reinforce Learning

Many managers understand the importance of timely feedback, ensuring team members can reflect on their strengths and weaknesses. However, feedback alone isn’t enough—without follow-up, it’s easily forgotten, and behavior may not change.

To make feedback impactful, managers should focus on follow-up and reinforcement. Discuss next steps with the team member, set a timeline (e.g., “Let’s check in next week”), and support their growth. This shows that their improvement matters and encourages lasting change.

Additionally, you can use morning meetings, briefings, or team discussions to remind everyone of key lessons and share successful examples. Team members who succeed will feel recognized, and those who haven’t yet will feel encouraged to improve. This process lifts the entire team’s performance.

The goal of feedback isn’t just to point out problems—it’s to help team members develop good habits and turn what they’ve learned into lasting progress.

Becoming a coaching-based leader requires patience, guidance, and a long-term vision for your team’s growth. By stepping back, giving your team the space to think and act, and offering support when needed, you enable them to grow through learning and practice. This not only builds a more capable and independent team but also frees managers to focus on higher-level goals and strategic development.

Want to learn more about our training programs? Visit Tiptop Corporate Training or contact us anytime!

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