Don’t Just Coach Your Employees—Teach Them

Summary

Podcast Summary: HBR On Leadership - "Don’t Just Coach Your Employees—Teach Them"

Episode Overview In the episode titled "Don’t Just Coach Your Employees—Teach Them," released on May 28, 2025, Harvard Business Review's HBR On Leadership features an insightful conversation between host Sarah Greene Carmichael and Sidney Finkelstein, a management professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. The discussion delves into the paradigm shift from traditional coaching to a more comprehensive teaching approach in leadership, emphasizing that effective leadership encompasses a set of teachable skills rather than inherent traits.

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1. The Teaching Leader Mindset Sidney Finkelstein begins by contrasting traditional management with the approach of teacher leaders. He emphasizes that successful leaders recognize the necessity of surrounding themselves with great talent and are committed to investing time in their team's growth. Finkelstein states:

“Leaders who coach give clear feedback and invest in their direct reports’ growth, have better relationships and stronger performing teams.” [01:18]

This investment involves personalized attention, even if not daily, ensuring that each team member feels valued and motivated to elevate their performance.

2. Types of Lessons Great Leaders Impart Finkelstein categorizes the lessons that effective leaders teach into three main areas:

• Professionalism and Ethics: Leaders instill values related to ethics, credibility, and professionalism. For example, Ralph Lauren taught his team the intricacies of merchandising, while Larry Ellison focused on software architecture and technological nuances.

• Technical Skills ("Points of Craft"): Leaders provide specific, job-related skills that are crucial for business operations. This specialized training ensures that team members excel in their respective roles.

• Life Lessons: Beyond professional skills, leaders also guide employees in personal development areas such as time management and goal setting. Finkelstein shares insights from Bill Frist, former CEO of Hospital Corporation of America, who emphasized the importance of setting and regularly updating short-term, intermediate, and long-term goals to enhance personal and professional growth. [02:17]

3. Benefits of the Teaching Leader Approach Adopting a teaching mindset offers multiple advantages:

• Enhanced Team Performance: Continuous learning leads to improved skills and better overall team outcomes.

• Master-Apprentice Dynamic: Leaders, akin to masters, mentor their team, fostering deep learning and mutual respect.

• Strengthened Team Bonds: Teaching creates meaningful connections, as team members appreciate the leader’s commitment to their growth. Finkelstein remarks:

“You’re not only improving the content skill set of people around you, but at the same time you’re tightening the bonds between them and you and creating a real team.” [03:40]

4. Real-World Examples of Teaching Leadership Finkelstein shares compelling stories illustrating the impact of teaching leadership:

• Case of a Coffee Chain CEO: A CEO invested time in mentoring a young employee with a criminal record, using the situation as a teaching moment to challenge assumptions and foster a supportive team environment. This approach resulted in an exceptionally tight-knit team that valued the leader’s non-judgmental stance. [04:54]

• Renowned Chef Rene Redzepi: The chef took his entire staff to another country to run a pop-up restaurant for several weeks, providing immersive learning experiences that strengthened team cohesion and expertise. [09:32]

5. Implementing Teaching in Various Industries Finkelstein underscores the universality of teaching in leadership, noting its applicability across diverse industries and cultures. He highlights that teaching is a fundamental aspect of human development globally, emphasizing its critical role in professional settings where continuous learning is essential to avoid imposter syndrome and ensure ongoing competence. [06:03]

6. Leading When Managing Subject Matter Experts For leaders managing individuals with specialized expertise, Finkelstein advises adopting a reciprocal learning approach. He suggests that leaders should respect and learn from their experts, fostering a two-way learning street that enhances mutual respect and team effectiveness. [07:15]

7. Integrating Teaching into the Workday Addressing time constraints, Finkelstein recommends optimizing existing time allocations, particularly by improving the efficiency of meetings. By repurposing unproductive time and fostering meaningful discussions during interactions, leaders can seamlessly incorporate teaching moments without needing additional time slots. [07:54]

8. Navigating Sensitive Mentoring Situations In the context of heightened awareness around sexual harassment, Finkelstein acknowledges the challenges men may face in mentoring female colleagues. He advises maintaining professionalism by focusing mentoring efforts within the workplace environment and seeking appropriate opportunities to support and teach without overstepping boundaries. [10:26]

9. Ensuring Lessons Stick To make lessons impactful, Finkelstein emphasizes the importance of real-world application and continuous feedback. He outlines a three-step process essential for effective learning:

1. Great Content: Providing valuable and relevant information.
2. Application: Encouraging the practical implementation of lessons.
3. Feedback: Offering constructive feedback to reinforce learning and facilitate improvement. [11:50]

10. Rethinking Feedback Through Teaching Finkelstein suggests reframing feedback as a teaching opportunity can alleviate the discomfort managers often feel when delivering critical feedback. By positioning feedback within the context of teaching and development, it becomes a more natural and productive interaction. [13:52]

11. Assessing and Enhancing Teaching Effectiveness Leaders should regularly evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching methods by observing whether team members are absorbing information and applying it successfully. Finkelstein recommends seeking feedback from peers, coaches, and the team to identify areas for improvement. When faced with team members resistant to learning, leaders should first evaluate their own teaching methods before considering changes to team composition or addressing performance issues directly. [14:47]

12. Ensuring Clear Communication Effective communication is paramount to successful teaching. Finkelstein advises leaders to confirm understanding by having team members articulate the lessons in their own words and to seek continuous feedback to refine and reinforce messages. This approach ensures that lessons are not only heard but also comprehended and retained. [16:30]

13. Potential Challenges and Mitigation While the teaching leader approach offers numerous benefits, Finkelstein acknowledges potential challenges, such as cultural resistance or mismatches in team dynamics. He recommends customizing teaching methods to fit the team’s culture and being patient during the transition. By attentively managing time and adapting to team needs, leaders can mitigate risks and maximize the benefits of this approach. [17:50]

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Conclusion The episode "Don’t Just Coach Your Employees—Teach Them" presents a compelling case for adopting a teaching-oriented leadership style. Sidney Finkelstein elucidates how teaching not only enhances team performance and cohesion but also fosters a culture of continuous learning and mutual respect. By integrating teaching into daily leadership practices, managers can effectively guide their teams toward sustained success and personal growth.

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Notable Quotes

• "Leaders who coach give clear feedback and invest in their direct reports’ growth, have better relationships and stronger performing teams." — Sidney Finkelstein [01:18]
• "You’re not only improving the content skill set of people around you, but at the same time you’re tightening the bonds between them and you and creating a real team." — Sidney Finkelstein [03:40]

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Additional Resources For more insights on leadership and management, visit hbr.org and explore a wealth of articles, case studies, and expert discussions.

Transcript

[Hannah Bates]

Before we begin, we have a couple of questions. What do you love about HBR on Leadership? What do you want less of? What would make HBR on Leadership even better? Tell us. Head over to hbr.org podcastsurvey to share your thoughts. We want to make the show even better, but we need your help to do that. So head to hbr.org podcastsurvey thank you. Welcome to HBR on Leadership case studies and conversations with the world's top business and management experts hand selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. The Best Leaders are Great Teachers that's the title of an HBR article by Sidney Finkelstein, a management professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. He says that leaders who coach give clear feedback and invest in their direct reports growth, have better relationships and stronger performing teams. In this 2018 episode of HBR IdeaCast, Finkelstein talks with host Sarah Greene Carmichael about how managers at all levels can adopt a teaching mindset, even when they're short on time or not. Subject matter experts.

[Sarah Greene Carmichael]

So how do these kinds of teacher leaders approach managing really differently from other managers?

[Sidney Finkelstein]

Well, I think that they understand that to win, to be successful, you absolutely have to have great talent around you and they're willing to invest in that. And that means specifically spending the time working hand in hand, sometimes very personally. And I don't mean every day, because if you have five or 10 or 15 direct reports, you can't possibly be spending all your time with everyone else but periodically, and they value it and they recognize it and, and at the same time, what they're doing is they're pushing people, they're forcing people to kind of raise their own game. And so it's one of the best ways to not only motivate people, but also get them to perhaps a different place and a higher level than they might otherwise have been.

[Sarah Greene Carmichael]

What are the types of lessons that great leaders should be teaching to their direct reports? Like particular are you talking more about like life lessons or elements of the work itself? Basic professionalism? What are you talking about here?

[Sidney Finkelstein]

Some leaders would teach about general professionalism, about ethics and about what was right and what was wrong, and about credibility. Other leaders would focus on what I call points of craft, so very specific lessons on how to run your business. Looking in the fashion industry, Ralph Lauren, and the way he would specifically teach people around him on what it takes to be a great merchandiser. Actually, Mickey Drexler more recently is another good example of that. Larry Ellison, known as a particularly tough boss, but one that would Constantly be talking about software architecture and the nature of technology. But there's also life lessons, and by that I mean maybe some discussion about how to manage your time, how to think about your goals. Bill Frist was a longtime CEO of Hospital Corporation of America, would tell many of his proteges, and they shared those stories with me when I interviewed them about how he would have. He'd always have a list of his short term goals, intermediate goals and long term goals, and he'd be updating them on a regular basis and which is, you know, a discipline that maybe we all know that's not a bad idea, but how many of us actually do that? But when you have someone that you respect, your leader, your boss, in this case a CEO, explaining how this made such a difference and makes such a difference for him, it's going to have a little bit more weight, I think, in how the rest of us might want to manage our time and our careers.

[Sarah Greene Carmichael]

What are some of the benefits that the teacher leader gets out of leading this way?

[Sidney Finkelstein]

Benefits are many. Number one, your team gets better. They're learning what works and what doesn't. Number two, if you're a leader, presumably you have more experience at doing whatever you're doing than the people that are under you. And we saw something akin to a master apprentice type of relationship in some of these situations where the leader was the master, if you will, who had spent the years to understand the ideas and the challenges in the business and the people that were on the team were, were learning and wanted to learn. That's another. Another benefit. And I think the third thing is, and I've seen this as a teacher or professor myself, when you really dedicate yourself to teaching other people, they really appreciate it and you create a bond, a connection that is quite meaningful. People inevitably value others that try to help them. That's what teaching is. And so you're not only improving the kind of the content skill set of people that are, that are around you, but at the same time you're tightening the bonds between them and you and creating a real team.

[Sarah Greene Carmichael]

I'm just wondering if there was an example or a story of people that you studied for this project where you really saw those sort of bonds of loyalty in a dramatic way.

[Sidney Finkelstein]

There were several, but here's one from a smaller coffee chain whose CEO told me this story about how there was a young team member that actually had a prior criminal record. And then there was a story in the town where one of the coffee shops was in about how someone had stolen something from a Local liquor store and people started to point fingers. He hadn't done it, but once you're guilty, people think you continue to be guilty. She spent a lot of time talking to him and then talking to a lot of the other employees. To use it almost like a teaching moment about how we make certain assumptions about other people that could be wrong. They could be, and in this case you could see extremely damaging to someone's life, someone's livelihood, someone's self confidence. And, and when she was telling me the story, she talked about how in this particular coffee shop, probably rotating group of six or seven people, and she said they were never tighter because people felt like she didn't jump to conclusions. She didn't let anyone else jump to conclusions. She had that debate, that discussion, and people respected that.

[Sarah Greene Carmichael]

So it sounds like it's not just something for knowledge workers or it's not just something for, you know, a certain kind of company. It sounds like you've seen this in all industries.

[Sidney Finkelstein]

Well, I've looked at dozens of industries and companies in different countries as well. And there must be something universal about teaching. And that shouldn't be a shock to anyone because how much time do we spend in our lives in every country in the world learning and teaching? And in most countries we spend the first, you know, from age 3 or 4 or 5 till age 18 or 22 or 26 or what have you in a form of teaching. Then you go to work and all of a sudden it's all gone, it's over. You're assumed to know everything. You could begin to feel it's like an imposter syndrome. You've been part of a team and you've been learning for years and years, and then all of a sudden you're expected to know everything. And we all know that's not possible. So it's fundamental, I think, to people.

[Sarah Greene Carmichael]

The people you studied for this are at the top of their career and really experts in their field. But there's also a lot of us in organizations who are managing people who, who actually know more about the craft than we do. You know, for example, some young MBAs who are out in the world managing people who are subject matter experts. How do you lead someone through teaching if you are managing someone whose job you don't necessarily fully understand?

[Sidney Finkelstein]

There's something to be said to reverse engineering a little bit of this. I have found almost again without exception, that these leaders that are great teachers are also great learners. What that means is if you're the younger person or the MBA or what have you that supervising someone has deep specialization. You need to spend the time and provide the respect to learn from that person because it's a two way street. And it turns out that when you're open to learning, other people are very often open to learning from you as well.

[Sarah Greene Carmichael]

One of the things that I think managers do struggle with is finding ways to work this into their workday. How does a good manager sort of find those pivotal moments and intervene in a way that will have an impact down the line?

[Sidney Finkelstein]

Yeah, I have a couple of specific suggestions. Number one, take a good look at your calendar. The amount of time that all of us spend in unproductive time is actually rather remarkable. Top of that list is meetings and how many meetings we go to. And then the meetings we go to, how effectively run are they? How much time are we spending? Do we need to be there? Do we need to go through all those PowerPoint slides? Can't we just look ahead of time at some of the data, some of the ideas, and then when you're face to face, have a real discussion. Now take that idea about when you're face to face, really engaging in a real discussion, getting into the issues. That's what teaching really is. It's taking advantage of the opportunities you already have. So I would say it's not that you have to find all of a sudden an extra 30 minutes or an hour in a day. It's about repurposing time that's not being used as effectively as it could.

[Hannah Bates]

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[Sarah Greene Carmichael]

I mean, there are moments when important lessons can't necessarily be learned in an efficient way or when they can't really be talked about openly in an open office. Right. Almost none of us have actual office doors anymore. So how can leaders really create those kinds of moments for a sort of deeper learning?

[Sidney Finkelstein]

Well, you could go out of your way to create some of those moments. Some of the leaders I looked at were people that actually believed that you can go off campus, so to speak, you know, having somebody over for dinner or going out for dinner. Trying to take advantage of that opportunity by engaging, by talking, by pushing, by providing these little hints about what you should be thinking about. And the most extreme cases were people like Rene Redzipi, who's a famous chef from Nomad in Copenhagen, one of the most highly rated restaurants in the world, and he would take his entire staff, chefs and staff members to another country for a three or four week period of time where they'd open up a pop up restaurant. Now, I know you're not going to easily find an equivalent for most people in a company, but we do that already. If you think about retreats and off sites, why don't we use them more, not only more effectively, but let's be alert, let's be wise about how we try to use that time.

[Sarah Greene Carmichael]

Sid, one of the things I've been wondering about in this environment of many, many, many sexual harassment allegations being publicly made is I know that even before all these allegations were coming out, some men were just very nervous about mentoring female, younger female colleagues. I worry that one unintended consequence of all of this might make some really good men even more hesitant to mentor younger women. And some of this teaching and learning does happen outside of the workplace. And I'm just wondering, like, what are your thoughts on that and what would your sort of advice to other guys be about how to mentor younger women in a professional way?

[Sidney Finkelstein]

Yeah, well, that is a very challenging concern. And I've spoken to a lot of people, a lot of men that are leaders, and many of them are confused, they're not quite sure what they could do. So the off sites become a little bit more complicated if they're one on one. And maybe that's not the right thing to do at this point. Maybe what you need to do is in the office in real time. So maybe it's about picking your spots, looking for the opportunities. I do think it's more challenging and maybe it needs to be because of everything that's happened. But I think it would be a shame if all of this led to women having fewer opportunities to be mentored and taught by great leaders.

[Sarah Greene Carmichael]

Now, how do you get the lessons you're teaching people to stick? Right? Because there's telling someone what to do, then there's them actually doing it.

[Sidney Finkelstein]

Well, you want to make them as real as possible. When it's something that you need to do to be more effective on the job, it becomes much more likely something that's going to be part of your repertoire. And by the way, the experts about learning, and these are people that in many walks of life, including K12 education, universities and elsewhere, they understand that the best learning is when there's good content, but then you can apply it it's critical to apply it, to figure out what works and what doesn't and then to get feedback on it. Those are the three steps that are essential to any effective learning. Great content application of those ideas and then feedback. And that's exactly what these leaders do with their one on one teaching.

[Sarah Greene Carmichael]

Well, and how does this approach change the way that we might think about feedback?

[Sidney Finkelstein]

The best way I think about it, I was talking to a former COO of Sotheby's the other day and we were talking about feedback and he said, you know, everyone knows the rules of feedback. If you have something negative to tell someone, well, you need to say two or three positive things to them and then you hit them with what you really want. Well, everyone knows that, so why bother with the two or three things that the good people know? That you're just kind of treading water until you get to the good stuff. The best people, the highest aspiration people, they want to know it. Tell me what you think, tell me why, back it up and tell me what you think I should do. And I'll decide whether I want to adopt that or not. But I know that there's an issue and so being much more direct, that's certainly the case for these leaders that I studied. And being clear on what you can get better at, I think is a big differentiator. Now, having said all that, there are a lot of people that are quite sensitive to feedback. Those are the types of people that I don't think are going to be the leaders of the future.

[Sarah Greene Carmichael]

It's interesting because I have seen some surveys that really show that managers hate giving critical feedback and try to actually avoid it much more than like the recipients of that feedback feel like mostly recipients are interested in receiving. They say at least that they're interested in receiving critical feedback. And I just wonder if thinking of it as leading as teaching is a way of getting around some of the awkwardness of giving critical feedback.

[Sidney Finkelstein]

It's a great insight, Sarah. In fact, if managers were to say or think teaching involves helping people understand new things, but also learning what they could do better, it may be a way of reframing feedback that makes it a lot easier. Absolutely.

[Sarah Greene Carmichael]

How do you know if you are basically good enough at your job to manage that way?

[Sidney Finkelstein]

One thing you're going to discover and you got to be alert, self aware, emotionally intelligent, all those other good things is pay attention to your class, pay attention to the people that you're talking to. Are they taking it all in? Does it appear like it's Adding some value and then maybe more practically speaking, does it lead to some change in their behavior or their action that you think is useful? So in a way, it's a bit of a market test. You may or may not know how good you are at this, and I'm not going to say everyone is automatically going to be great at it, but I also don't think it's all that difficult to do. And I know it's extremely easy to try. It's just a mindset shift that says that's part of my job.

[Sarah Greene Carmichael]

What if your direct reports are, you know, bad students, so to speak, and just aren't taking the lessons to heart, don't seem to be paying attention, aren't improving, then what do you do?

[Sidney Finkelstein]

Well, number one, I'd say is, well, let's make sure you're reasonably effective at teaching. Let's make sure that you're teaching reasonably useful ideas. You don't want to put the blame on team members automatically. It could be you. And you could find that out through a coach by talking to your boss, talking to peers, talking to colleagues, putting that to the side. And you're actually really good at this or reasonably good at this, and nobody's taking it well. We have, we have a question to ask and that is do you have the right team? And not everybody has necessarily the right team, or to be more precise, certain team members might not be as open to learning as high aspiration as the best teams need to be. And then there are a bunch of things you can do about that. From a one on one conversation where you bring it up and you ask for feedback on what could I be doing. Better to share this point of view with you? Because we're not seeing the type of change or adjustment that might be reason. Maybe I'm missing something. So some humility goes a long way here. And after you've done that a couple of times, you still see no result, then you want to start to think about the bigger picture and is this person really actually producing? And sometimes changes are going to be needed.

[Sarah Greene Carmichael]

Yeah, I do wonder about the communication piece of this because I know managers will often say like, oh, we had a real come to Jesus meeting and I think we're gonna be on the same page now. And then, you know, the person that they had the meeting with may have no idea that they supposedly have just been given a very strong lesson. They sort of walk out of thinking, huh, like that was an interesting meeting. But they don't really get the message. So sometimes I just wonder like how can you just make sure your message is really being received?

[Sidney Finkelstein]

It is actually amazing how often that's the case. And this is not just about business. This is, this is called life. You think you've communicated effectively and your partner, your business partner, your team members, they're not getting it. And there are a lot of things you could do about that. Number one again is well, ask people to share with you what the message is. Have them repeat it back in their own words because you may not have communicated as effectively as you think you have. Not everything we say is going to be perfect. In fact, there are flaws all the time. But it's not about that. It's about doing everything we can to reinforce the message and try to make it as clear as possible. But I think one of the best ways is asking for feedback directly and real time. And that also gives them an opportunity to add something or extend what you just said. And that's a great way to get a little bit of feedback from them and allow them to be a little bit more independent and not just parrot back what you said and then you can continue the conversation.

[Sarah Greene Carmichael]

So we've been talking about this teacher leader approach and it sounds sort of universally glorious, but I am a little bit of the mind that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Are there cases where either this is really costly or there's risks involved, or there's some kind of downside or some kind of trade off involved, or is it truly that this is like universally glorious way to manage people?

[Sidney Finkelstein]

I have a tendency of talking about this as if it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. And that's probably being communicated right now. So the question to ask is, what is the culture and environment of the team? How are they used to working? And if you started all of a sudden to show up and start to do this one on one teaching, would they be wondering what the heck is happening? That doesn't mean it's a bad idea. It means the transition. And try to do it a little bit is going to probably be a little bit, a little bit bumpy or take a little bit longer. So one of the things that I think great teachers do to kind of flip the question a little bit, one of the things great teachers do is they customize their lessons to the people on their team. And so I would that you want to customize how you introduce or begin the process of thinking about yourself as a teacher. If you haven't done that as much or if you want to increase how often you're behaving and acting in this way, you want to think about the team you're in and what's going to work and what's not going to work and kind of think about the sequencing of it. So I think if you're not paying enough attention to the people in your team and how they behave and what they're doing, then I think that could make this much more difficult than it might otherwise be. As long as you can manage your time again, as we've spoken about, I think there's going to be much more upside than the occasional hiccup that might occur.

[Sarah Greene Carmichael]

Well, Sid, this has been a really fun conversation and I've learned a lot, so thank you.

[Sidney Finkelstein]

Thank you.

[Hannah Bates]

That was Tuck School of Business Professor Sidney Finkelstein in conversation with Sarah Greene Carmichael on HBR IdeaCast. We'll be back next Wednesday with another handpicked conversation about leadership from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, be sure to leave us a review. And when you're ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books and videos with the world's top business and management experts, you'll find it [e-mail] this episode was produced by Mary Dew and me, Hannah Bates. Kurt Nickish is our editor and music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Ian Fox, Maureen Hoch, Eric Truxler, Ramsey Gabaz, Nicole Smith, Ann Bartholomew and you, our listener. See you next week.