Why managers don't, coach

The term coaching comes from the sports field, where an experienced and knowledgeable player watches the way the less‐skilled batsman or golfer makes his shots, and suggests ways of improvement — ‘Keep your eyes on the ball, use your wrists’ and so on. Increasingly the development of subordinates is seen as a major responsibility of managers. But what is accepted in principle is found to be very difficult to practise in the day‐to‐day pressures of industrial life, because it involves the interactions of people with each other. This article takes a typical make or break situation. Built on a case‐study, it shows how a deputy, who might have been passed over, becomes the man ready to take the place of his promoted boss.