Everything you need to know about Accidental Manager Coaching
Accidental Manager coaching is my unique, signature programme for business owners and new managers who want to feel more confident about managing people. It helps managers learn how to juggle managing people with the 73 gazillion other tasks that come with managing a team and doing a day job.
But is Accidental Manager coaching right for you?
In this blog I am going to answer the questions you might have about my Accidental Manager Coaching programme. If you have any unanswered questions, please email me at marion@marionparrish.com
Let’s start with the elephant in the room...
How much does Accidental Manager coaching cost?
Between you and me, if there is one thing I truly hate on the internet, it’s really long sales pages where you have to scroll through 45 screens of sales guff before you find out the price. Or where you have to have a sales call and listen to the same stuff you’ve already read on the 45-screen sales page before anyone will tell you how much it will cost.
I like to do things differently!
So here it is, up front at the start of this blog.
Accidental Manager Coaching is £350 per coaching session.
Or if you want to grab a bit of a discount, you can pay for 6 sessions in advance for £1850, saving you £250.
Each session lasts between 60-90 minutes, and they take place once every 3-4 weeks, to fit with your diary.
Now, let’s have a good look at why I created the Accidental Manager coaching programme, and what you get for your investment.
Why did I create the Accidental Manager Coaching programme?
In my first management job, I witnessed someone committing gross misconduct – something so serious they could be sacked for a first offence.
And I didn’t know what to do.
Bear in mind, I’d got a degree in Managerial Sciences, had worked in HR for 18 months, was studying for a post-graduate diploma in personnel management, and had spent a week on a residential management training course before taking up the role.
So you might have expected that “what to do when someone breaks a really serious rule” would have been mentioned somewhere.
Nope.
Several years later I taught and assessed management qualifications. At the end of each course the delegates would give us the same feedback – they now knew WHAT they should be doing as people managers, but they still weren’t really sure HOW to do it.
How to juggle the day job, managing a team, being a parent or friend, and grabbing a few hours sleep each day without feeling they were losing the plot (the sleep and family always missed out)
How to get the best from different personalities – especially those you don’t particularly like (because we’ve all been there haven’t we?)
How to stop conflict from starting, spreading, and eventually destroying your team
How to look someone in the eye and tell them they aren’t performing, their attendance isn’t up to standard, or they have broken an important company rule.
For the last 10 years running my own HR Consultancy business, I've seen business owners and new managers who put up with problem employees, and difficult HR situations for FAR longer than they need to. Usually because they don’t really know where – or how - to draw the line. Or they worry about doing it wrong and landing themselves in an employment tribunal.
They waste hours, days, weeks even, hoping things will improve, underperforming employees will transform overnight or leave, and the problem will go away.
But it rarely does without some kind of management intervention.
And I knew I could help managers learn how to deal with difficult situations effectively, how to spot future problems brewing, and how to nip them in the bud to prevent them becoming a real issue.
The solution couldn’t be a training programme, because they only teach you WHAT to do.
I wanted to fill the gap and help managers learn HOW to do it.
How to manage within the culture and values of their business
How to put the right structures and routines in place to get the best from their teams
How to organise their time – and their team’s time – effectively
How to delegate so work gets done the right way, on time, every time
How to recruit better candidates, and manage their performance more effectively
How to use HR policies and procedures to improve team performance
How to work more productively with key colleagues (including their own manager, if they have one).
And so my Accidental Manager Coaching programme was born.
Who is Accidental Manager Coaching for?
I’ve designed this programme specifically for people managers who want to feel more in control, and more confident, about managing their teams.
Those people managers might be:
Business owners who are great at running or growing a business, but struggling with the people management side of building a successful company.
A new manager, promoted from within into their first management role, but finding it more difficult than they expected
A new manager, recruited from outside the organisation.
I can also help you if you just want someone to help you all the time with HR issues as they arise – but that is best dealt with under one of my HR retainers.
Accidental Manager Coaching will work for you if:
You're growing your business and realising that current ways of managing people aren’t going to work as your business scales.
You’re a newly promoted or appointed manager with less than 18 months’ experience in your role.
You’re overwhelmed by all the stuff you have to do as a people manager.
You’re working long hours doing work that should really be done by your team.
You’re nervous about tackling HR issues in case you make things worse or break the law.
You feel your team are in control, or taking advantage of your good nature.
You’re open to trying different ways of managing people issues, and you’re willing to commit an hour a week to activities that will help you improve the way you manage.
In a nutshell, you need to have been managing people for long enough to realise that it’s not as easy as it looks – but you’re sure it should be easier than this!
Who is it not for?
You want a leadership programme
Accidental Manager Coaching is for those moments when you are sitting, face to face across the table from someone, and you have to look them in the eye and tell them something unpleasant. Those experiences that neither of you are going to enjoy.
It’s about the nuts and bolts of managing people and getting things done though others.
Thinking about day to day tactics and delivery of operational objectives.
We’ll talk about leadership themes, but as they apply to a manager who has to get the job done.
If you’re looking for a strategic-level programme, this isn’t right for you.
You are looking for a group programme
This is a 1:1 programme which will help you solve real problems in your team. Sometimes these are deeply personal HR issues that need to be handled confidentially.
It is also focused on the individual manager, helping you to find ways to manage that fit your personality and personal style, so it’s a really tailored approach.
And sometimes, it gets very personal. We talk about how it feels to manage people, and how you feel about your role. Sometimes, where it’s required, we go very deep.
None of these things can happen as powerfully or as effectively in a group environment, which is why Accidental Manager Coaching is a 1:1 programme.
I do run in-house group training programmes for management teams that can cover any or all of the topics in the coaching programme, but delivered in a way that is suitable for an in-house group setting. If this is something you are interested in, please give me a call to discuss what you are looking for and I can design a programme for your business.
You need a qualification
I don’t deliver management qualifications. They’re a lot of paperwork for me – and a lot of written course work for delegates that I would probably have to mark too. Adding even more paperwork. No thank you!
Now, don’t get me wrong. I'm a big fan of management qualifications. I used to teach and assess them in my last employed role. And I have several myself – enough that I have more letters after my name than are actually in it! Each of my management qualifications have been really useful at different points in my career.
But Accidental Manager coaching is designed to fill a gap that management qualifications just don’t fill. It solves real life problems in real time. If you need or want a qualification, this isn’t the right programme for you.
You can’t find an hour a week to try something different
When you are really overwhelmed with demands coming at you from your manager, your team and your customers, the last thing you want to do is add another task to the mix.
I can promise that if this is you, I can help you see results inside 3 months – and usually a lot less. I’ll help you prioritise what to work on first, and how to tackle it, to get some quick wins under your belt that will create some space in your diary.
But you have to commit to doing the work. If not, Accidental Manager Coaching will be a waste of your time and money.
You want someone else to manage the difficult stuff
I’ll be there to coach you through difficult situations, and help you work out what end result you want, and how to get there. I’ll tell you what to say and what order its best to do things in, if that is what you need.
But if you want to have any credibility, or control as a manager, you have to face your team and lead on the difficult stuff.
I’ll help you. I’ll do it with you. But if you want someone else to take the flack while you drink coffee in your office, this isn’t the right programme for you.
You’re looking for someone who’ll tell you it’s all your team’s fault
To be truthful, it’s rarely your team’s fault.
Usually, difficult teams are reacting to the way they are managed, communicated with or generally treated. Change the way you manage them, and your difficult team will almost always become much easier to lead.
Of course, if it IS all their fault, I will tell you, and we’ll deal with them together. But 30-plus years’ experience in HR and people management tells me that it probably isn’t.
How does Accidental Manager Coaching work?
The programme can be run virtually, via Zoom, or face to face (if you are based within 30 minutes drive of J25 M1).
First off we’ll have a discovery session, where you can tell me about the problems you are having, and what results you are looking for. If you are considering coaching for someone else (a manager that reports to you) then I will also need to meet that manager to check that we can work well together.
I will then draw up a coaching programme to cover the key areas of people management agreed in the discovery session
The sessions themselves will be between 60 and 90 minutes each, every 3-4 weeks. We’ll cover one topic each session. If problems have emerged since our last meeting, we can address them as we go.
This programme is designed to be proactive and reactive – so topics might be addressed in any order to suit the needs of the Accidental Manager. If a topic is no longer relevant, but something else comes up, we can swap to a different topic.
What happens in a coaching session?
Each session will include:
✓ A review of what is currently happening in the team - the good, the bad and the ugly!
✓ Next steps to build on the good practice already put in place.
✓ A main coaching topic to build the manager’s knowledge, skills and confidence.
✓ Goals to be achieved before the next session.
How long does it take to get results?
Most managers start to feel more relaxed, confident and organised during the first month.
It usually takes around three months to see real progress in any difficult people issues (such as underperforming team members).
So why is it 6 sessions long?
6 sessions normally take between 4-6 months to deliver. Within that time – and subject to the manager having done the work between sessions to put new practices in place - we will have made significant progress with the main problems the manager had at the start of the coaching programme.
Routines take a while to become habits. 6 sessions gives most accidental managers time to resolve the initial problems they had, put effective routines in place for “normal” day to day people management, and plan ahead for any known future people management challenges they anticipate, such as a recruitment campaign, a team restructure, or introducing new ways of working.
This sounds EXACTLY what I need - what do I do now?
If you’ve read this far then first of all thank you, and well done!
If you’re also thinking that Accidental Manager Coaching sounds just what you are looking for, either for yourself or for a manager who reports to you, then let’s have a chat about it.
For a free discovery call, get in touch by calling me on 07902 903086, or filling in my contact form to book an appointment.
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