It is difficult to decide on a single definition of the word management and this is not helped by the modern trend in organizations to label almost everything and everybody as management in some way. Arguably, everybody in an organization is a manager to the extent that management is about deploying resources to get the job done, however, most would agree that a manager in an organization has some degree of responsibility for people and some say in how those people go about their work.

With this in mind it follows that managers are coaches and always have been; it's just that not all managers realize this and many would prefer it were not the case. However, if you are a manager with responsibility for people than you need to understand what good coaching is all about and should be congratulated for investing time in researching it!

The most prevalent management style - even now - is a command and control type approach. Management structures for most of the last century were modeled on the military and despite the advent of 'flat structures', 'matrix management' and the like; this is still the most common approach and feeds the appetite for command and control. Command and control - or telling people what to do and how to do it - work well in dangerous situations, emergencies or where there is no time for anything else. However, it does little for learning and enjoyment at work and thus becomes hard to sustain and causes resentment and poor performance in the end. Why does it persist? Because so many of our role models behave like this, reward structures are geared towards short term results and because, until recently, there was a lack of a viable alternative.

Coaching has changed all this and gives us great cause for optimism. Coaching is still about mobilizing people to get things done, but in a way that recognizes that people are complex, living, feeling human beings and that these factors cannot be ignored.

Managers are coaches and coaches are managers. It is perfectly possible to combine both roles though not always wise to do so. There is an imbalance of power with managers having more power and resources than the people in their teams. This is not an insurmountable barrier to coaching but it cannot be overlooked.