No More Sh*t Managers Book Summary - No More Sh*t Managers Book explained in key points

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No More Sh*t Managers summary

Name: No More Sh*t Managers
Rating: 3.7 (33 reviews)
Author: Jo Wright

Jo Wright

Seven steps to a coaching culture

3.7 (33 ratings)

18 mins

Brief summary

No More Sh*t Managers equips leaders with essential skills to transition from ineffective management to inspiring leadership. Wright offers practical strategies for enhancing team dynamics and fostering a positive workplace culture for sustainable success.

Topics

Leadership Work Culture Success Career Progress Coaching

Table of Contents

No More Sh*t Managers
Summary of 7 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 7

What’s in it for me? Build a high-trust, high-performance culture through practical coaching strategies that work.

We’ve all had that manager, the one who doesn’t listen, doesn’t develop their team, and drains motivation from every meeting. Poor management isn’t rare. It’s one of the biggest reasons people leave jobs, stop contributing, or give up caring. And yet, the expectations placed on managers keep growing: lead the team, hit the targets, resolve conflicts, support wellbeing. But without the right mindset or skills, many managers fall short, and workplace culture pays the price.

That’s where coaching comes in. At its heart, coaching is about asking better questions, listening deeply, and building trust. It helps people grow, stay accountable, and do work that matters. But turning coaching into a core part of your culture doesn’t happen by accident. It takes structure, clarity, and real commitment from the top.

In this Blink, you’ll learn about a simple seven-step framework designed to help organizations move from a culture of control and frustration to one built on trust, clarity, and better conversations. This structured approach shows how to rethink leadership, relationships, and growth in a way that actually sticks, beginning with an honest understanding of your current culture and ending with lasting, visible change.

Step 1: Visualise: Start with the end in mind

A coaching culture can’t be built without a shared vision. In this first step, Jo Wright emphasises the need for senior leaders to align on what a coaching culture should look and feel like, years before it becomes reality. This starts by helping them visualise success, not just conceptually, but emotionally and practically. Leaders are invited to imagine their company winning an award for coaching culture of the year: what would people say? What would customers notice? What would employees feel?

The chapter explores both success and failure stories. We meet “Frank,” a CEO who declared a coaching culture from the top down but failed to engage or align his board. Without a shared buy-in, the vision fell flat. In contrast, Michelle from the Institute of Occupational Medicine led a successful cultural reboot by gathering insights, using storytelling, and facilitating board-level visualisation workshops. Her courage to challenge assumptions, and the emotional engagement she built was critical in gaining traction.

Jo introduces a powerful exercise that guides leadership teams through a structured visualisation process. It’s designed to evoke emotion, surface values, and clarify direction. This isn’t just feel-good fluff; it’s about getting specific on what success will look, sound, and feel like across every layer of the organisation.

The key takeaway? Without a clear and collectively owned vision, even the most well-resourced initiatives will lose momentum. Culture can’t be mandated, it must be imagined, believed in, and built together. The “Visualise” step sets the tone for the rest of the framework, ensuring that all subsequent actions are anchored in a compelling future that people actually want to work toward.

Step 2: Strategise: Define the strategy

Once the vision is clear, it’s time to turn dreams into direction. In the “Strategise” step, Jo Wright makes the case that a coaching culture doesn’t thrive on enthusiasm alone, it needs an intentional measurable strategy. Without a plan, it’s just another well-intentioned initiative destined to fizzle.

This chapter highlights the common trap: leaders say they value culture, but their plans, metrics, and resources tell a different story. Jo challenges this disconnect head-on. Strategy means asking hard questions: What are we trying to change? How will we measure success? What resources do we need? Who owns this?

Step 3: Engage: Win hearts and minds

With vision clarified and strategy in place, it’s time to activate the people who will bring the coaching culture to life. In Step 3, “Engage,” Jo focuses on communication, influence, and emotional buy-in. Culture can’t be imposed; it must be co-created. That starts by winning hearts and minds.

Too many change programmes fail because they underestimate resistance, or overestimate how much people care. This chapter is all about closing that gap. Jo introduces the idea of a “Yerbut” pandemic, Jo’s tongue-in-cheek name for the common objections: “Yeah, but we don’t have time,” “Yeah, but our people won’t buy in,” and so on. She tackles each one with humour, empathy, and solid advice.

Step 4: Grow: Grow coaching capability

In the fourth step, “Grow,” is where vision and strategy meet day-to-day leadership. Jo argues that a coaching culture will only thrive when managers are equipped not just with knowledge, but with the mindset and confidence to coach, consistently, authentically, and well.

Too often, organisations overlook the “how” when it comes to manager development. Managers are sent on training courses that are too theoretical, not practical, or worse, one-off events with no follow-up. Jo debunks the myth that coaching is reserved for the elite or for formal, hour-long sessions. Coaching can (and should) happen in two-minute conversations in the flow of work.

Step 5: Thrive: Unlock the power of feedback

In step 5, Jo shifts the focus from individual manager growth to broader cultural impact. This step is about embedding the behaviours that define a true coaching culture, open feedback, psychological safety, inclusion, and mutual trust.

A coaching culture isn’t something you do to people. It’s something people start living and thriving in. It’s characterised by honest conversations, continuous feedback, and strong human connections. In this environment, people feel safe to speak up, take risks, make mistakes, and learn from them — which, in turn, drives innovation and performance.

Step 6: Perform: Build trust and drive high performance

In step 6, Jo tackles the thorny issue of performance, specifically, how organisations define, measure, and enable it in a coaching culture. She argues that the traditional model of performance management, annual appraisals, generic objectives, and backward-looking reviews, is outdated, ineffective, and often demotivating.

Coaching cultures don’t ditch performance altogether. Far from it. They redefine it. They move from box-ticking to conversation. From judgement to growth. From “What did you achieve?” to “How did you grow, and how can we support you next?”

Step 7: Embed: Embed a coaching culture

In the final step, Jo addresses the long game: how to prevent your coaching culture from fading into another forgotten initiative. Building momentum is one thing, maintaining it requires commitment, consistency, and ongoing care.

Jo reminds us that real cultural change isn’t a campaign with a start and end date, it’s a living, breathing process. Left alone, even the most vibrant cultures will regress under pressure. To sustain a coaching culture, organisations must embed the behaviours, language, and practices of coaching into their everyday operations, from onboarding to team meetings, from leadership behaviours to recognition schemes.

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What is No More Sh*t Managers about?

No More Sh*t Managers (2023) is an engaging read and a practical guide for transforming workplace culture by helping leaders adopt a coaching mindset. It introduces a seven-step framework designed to enhance communication, build trust, and improve performance through effective conversations and honest feedback. By implementing these strategies, organizations can shift from traditional management styles to a more empowering, growth-oriented approach.

Who should read No More Sh*t Managers?

Ambitious mid-level managers seeking leadership growth
Forward-thinking HR professionals driving cultural change
Anyone exploring better management styles
Anyone frustrated by workplace toxicity who believes things can be better

About the Author

Jo Wright is a professionally accredited coach and co-founder of Coaching Culture Ltd, an organization dedicated to embedding coaching practices within workplaces. With over 30 years of experience leading and coaching teams across various industries, she is recognized as a thought leader in driving cultural change and enhancing leadership through coaching.

Categories with No More Sh*t Managers

Corporate Culture Personal Development Management & Leadership Career & Success

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