Use Coaching Conversations as a Tool to Overcome Obstacles and Empower Your Team
“Being a good coach is essential to being a good manager and leader. Coaching is no longer a specialty; you cannot be a good manager without being a good coach.
The path to success in a fast-moving, highly competitive, technology-driven business world is to form high-performing teams and give them the resources and freedom to do great things, and an essential component of high-performing teams is a leader who is both a savvy manager and a caring coach.”
Eric Schmidt
🧭 Coaching Essentials
Through coaching, you can be an effective leader without knowing all the answers and without telling employees what to do. Coaching is paramount if you want to grow, develop, and empower your team.
Ask Questions ❓
Effective coaching conversations are characterized by asking and not telling or directing. Your role as a coach is not to provide answers or come up with solutions. Park your own subject expertise and ask open-ended questions to help the individual to develop his/ her own solutions and develop their problem solving and decision-making skills. Open-ended questions, not answers, are the tools of coaching.
🧠 Keep An Open Mind
When coaching an employee who you’ve identified as problematic or challenging don’t be “stuck” on preconceived ideas or opinions about that employee’s willingness and ability to change and develop. Always assume that change is possible.
Find some examples of times when the employee did the opposite of what you expected.
Think of the positive interactions the employee might have with other team members who don’t share your view and genuinely enjoys their interactions?
Good leaders understand that there is always room for improvement and that it’s their duty to allow their team members an opportunity to grow and to help them achieve both personal goals and team objectives. If you go into any coaching situation with a negative mindset about the employee you are coaching, you are setting yourself, as well as the employee up for failure.
Follow Up ⏰
Follow-up is crucial to build trust and to make your coaching more effective. The more you follow through on supporting your employees’ learning and development, the more effective your coaching becomes, and the more engaged the employee feels.
🗓️ Provide Regular, Timely, and Constructive Feedback
Regular communication around development helps with ongoing learning and development. Make use of the “sandwich” method to help you organize your feedback so it’s balanced and easier to deliver. By focusing on the positive and discussing “keep behaviours,” and giving praise at the same time you’re delivering constructive feedback you show that you see performance strengths as well as areas for development and that you’re not just focussing on the negative.
Be Solutions Focussed 🎯
It is not uncommon for the person you’re coaching to use the opportunity to vent frustrations. While it can provide temporary relief to vent, it doesn’t generate solutions. Show empathy and acknowledge your employee’s frustrations, but then ask questions which help steer the conversation towards finding workable solutions.
Examples:
- “Which of the activities you mention offer the greatest potential for building your knowledge and adding value to the company?”
- “What additional skills you need to increase your ability to meet your primary objectives?”
- “How could we work more efficiently within the team to free up your time for development?”
- “What are your development needs for the next month?” What do you propose you can achieve those? What support do you need from me?”
Common Coaching Blunders to Avoid
“A leader is someone who puts their people in a position to succeed, not just to follow.”
Mike Krzyzewski
📧 Delivering Bad News by Email
Using e-mails to deliver difficult or sensitive messages eliminates the opportunity to soften difficult messages with nonverbal cues (such as body language or tone of voice) or deal immediately with intense emotions. Whenever possible deliver feedback for development or constructive criticism in person. If you see that someone has misunderstood key parts of your message, you can clarify your message, and have a conversation about how to move forward in a positive way.
Avoiding Difficult Conversations🫢
It’s tempting to try to avoid these conversations, especially if you are a person who naturally wants to avoid conflict and confrontation, but small problems snowball into bigger issues if they are left to perpetuate.
🧨 Reacting, Not Responding
Besides the damage it can do to your professional reputation by giving the impression that you lack self-control and emotional intelligence, emotional reactions and outbursts can severely damage relationships with those who need your coaching. Inappropriate responses discourage employees from raising concerns with you or asking for your opinion. Reacting negatively to employees creates a barrier to empowering your team.
Keep your emotions in check. Be aware of and work through your own emotions BEFORE a coaching session. Going into a coaching session with a bad mood results in the session being too analytical and critical. Employees are more open to reflection and personal growth if you go into the session with a positive disposition.
Not Preparing Thoroughly 🗺️
It is essential to take the time to carefully plan and prepare for coaching sessions so that you can structure feedback in a positive way.
👣 Using a “One-Size-Fits-All” Approach to Coaching and Feedback
Adapt your coaching according to different personalities, levels of competence and cultural backgrounds as much as possible. To hone your skills in this regard, ask for feedback so that you can develop your coaching skills.
Careless with Intention and Meaning🧯
When coaching, be cognisant of the way you say things. The wording you use can make or break the success of your coaching efforts.
📱 Multitasking
Coaching requires your full attention. Close the laptop and switch off your phone. Actively listen to create a high-quality connection that invites the employee to speak freely and think creatively to solve problems. Don’t become fixated on taking minutes, rather jot down some basic notes to refer to at subsequent meetings or coaching sessions. Meaningful engagement makes employees feel valued and more committed.
🗣️ Telling not Asking
Resist the urge to provide solutions and give instructions. Sharing your expertise in a directive manner is fine when you’re clarifying action steps or organisational and team objectives, but it’s not appropriate in the coaching context.
Use of Social Styles when Coaching
The Social Styles model is an effective tool to use to ensure that you don’t slip into a “one size fits all” approach when coaching. Bearing in mind this isn’t cast in stone but more of a shortcut, here are some tips to coaching employees with different social styles:
Drivers 🏎️
- Get straight to the point, be brief stick to the facts
- Focus on the results (what the goal is)
- Focus on the present (what we can do / achieve here and now)
- Allow a large degree of decision making, and empower them to do so
- Discuss options without directive
- Use facts, provide timelines
- Organise and plan interactions e.g. agendas, action points, follow up dates. etc.)
Expressives 💡
- Ask question, get input. Let them think that the solution was their own
- Allow opportunities to change opinion, offer different solutions
- Get them to talk about their feelings (how do you feel about) and pay attention
- Use facts and figures to give feedback and show what is possible but be brief
- Take extra time to discuss everything, expect them to lose focus
- Focus on the positive to reinforce behaviour that will elicit further praise, don’t be critical
- Be positive, focus on the bright side, big picture, the future
- Allow some spontaneity
- Praise openly during team events
Amiables 💙
- Allow time for conversation, establishing personal relationship
- Provide or focus on opportunities for team work
- Constantly reassure
- Confirm your support and deliver what you promise.
- Provide stable routine environment (e.g. specific set dates for feedback, monthly or daily routine)
- Give adequate warning of changes to be implemented
- Allow time to weigh up various options, give your opinion, what has worked in the past, allow time for consultation and consideration
- Give personal one on one praise, use opportunity to build relationship
Analyticals ⚙️
- Set aside time to answer questions and discuss options
- Allow time to “investigate” and analyse
- Provide the facts when giving feedback (good and bad), be specific with actual examples
- A reason is not an excuse, listen to logical arguments (Help me understand?) and challenge with facts and logic
- Facilitate and agree on tangible, logical solutions
- Use SMART objectives, follow up and measure according to what was agreed up front
Coaching to Elevate Performance 🚀
Coaching is also ideal for facilitating the movement of the team out of the storming phase to performing as quickly as possible:
During the storming phase, the team is past the “getting to know you” phase. They’re feeling more comfortable sharing their opinions and challenging the opinions of other team members. You will know that the team has reached the storming phase when you see increasing levels of frustration, increasing complaints from team members, a decrease in productivity and interpersonal conflict between team members.
Move out of the storming phase by:
👂 Asking questions and actively listening
Take time to understand the concerns and causes of conflict. Obtain as much information you can about the team issues using your usual channels such as team meetings and one-on-one conversations. Talk to external stakeholders too if necessary to get a bigger picture understanding of the situation. Obtaining in formation in a constructive way may reveal inefficiencies in processes or resources and highlight opportunities for improvements.
Building trust 🧗♂️
Once you have a good understanding of the underlying issues, it’s important to address them straight away.
- Don’t shy away from difficult conversations and unpopular decisions. Maintain transparency by being direct, open and honest about your actions.
- Be a role model display the behaviour you would like to see amongst team members. Show vulnerability by asking questions, owning up to your mistakes and asking for feedback on your leadership. If you’re open, honest, and transparent with your team, it gives them the security they need to do the same with you and each other.
- Get to know the members of the team: Once you get to know them; you will be able to identify personality clashes between team members. To reduce conflict, you can structure the team or delegate tasks in a way that minimizes the need for them to interact. Getting to know individual team members gives you the insights you need to foster trust, and structure your team in a way that empowers them to perform.
- Encourage team members to get to know each other. Knowing each other better helps team members learn how to approach and deal with other members of the team in a constructive way to avoid misunderstandings, mistrust and frustration.
📬 Holding regular check in sessions with individuals and as a team
Meetings set specifically to review progress and obstacles provide a good opportunity for everyone to work together to make improvements. Create opportunities for team members to come together to reflect on what’s working and what’s not working. Support your team and encourage better team collaboration.
“The goal of coaching is the goal of good management: to make the most of an organisation’s valuable resources.”
Harvard Business Review
People Dynamics offers COACHING SERVICES done by experts for YOU and YOUR TEAM. Contact us today to find out more.
Well done! You’ve made it through a long and intense module.
Although not everything may be fitting for the size of your business at the moment, the principles and techniques can be used in any interactions. So give yourself a pat on the back, and then progress to the next module.
↙️ Next
Finish off with one last quiz.