Unleashing the Power of Coaching: Empowering Your Team for Success

Join Lancaster Leadership as we discuss Coaching Your Team

Coaching: What it is
The International Coaching Federation (ICF) says coaching is about “partnering in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires coachees to maximize their personal and professional potential.”
• So, you can see it’s not corrective feedback.
• It’s not mentorship, which is advice and expertise based.
• And it certainly isn’t discipline.

Now that we’re clear, we’ll also say that coaching is question-centric, which allows coaches to solve the problem instead of you. It’s helping people to grow. If we aspire to be a workplace of choice, we know that one of the top desired qualities of the modern employee is to have the opportunity to grow, so putting some real effort into coaching is a great retention move.
The 2022 ICF Global Consumer Awareness Study including 31,000 participants across 30 countries, found the top 3 outcomes of coaching. Tying for second place are work/life balance and self-esteem/self-confidence. And coming in at number one is communication skills.
From a 2021 Gallup survey, we learn that 1/3 of employees (34%) consider themselves engaged. Healthcare workers and managers experienced the sharpest decline of engagement.

Coaching: When & how to do it (02:00):
If you would like a culture that promotes support and development and nurtures an environment of self-awareness and strategizing forward, let’s get coaching. There are 2 ways to do this.

1. Have scheduled “coaching time.” (02:02):
This can be during your 1-on-1s, where one of the agenda items is coaching for anywhere from 15 minutes - 1 hour. In the first session, have the employee self-identify strengths and growth areas, and you can get to work from there asking what they’d like to focus on first.

At each meeting, you can start off by asking “What’s on your mind?” “What’s a challenge for you these days?” Or “What would you like coaching on?”
Every session, you can follow the progression outlined in the GROW model that has been utilized since the 1980s:
• Goal (What do you want?)
• Reality (Where are you now?)
• Options (What are the options? What are your obstacles?)
• Will (What are you willing to do?)
Coined by Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard in the 1960s, “coaching” in the workplace is for competence at all levels. Even Olympic athletes, people at the top of their game, get coaching.
We especially recommend coaching from an internal or external coach at these 5 stages:
1. New role
2. New manager
3. The magnificent middle
4. Promotion
5. Retirement/legacy

It’s helpful to assess which quadrant of the situational leadership model your coachee is in, as this will help you determine if they need a heavier focus on coaching or mentoring.

2. Make a practice of coaching instead of advising (03:28):
Take a coach approach. This can be done anytime someone wants guidance or to figure out a path forward. In the book The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier encourages us to ask questions like, “What's the real challenge here for you?” “How can I help?” And “If you're saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?” The Co-Active Training Institute suggests 100 different powerful questions like: “What are possible solutions?” “What will you think about this five years from now?” And “What is the part that is not yet clear?”

Regardless of when or how you are coaching, Co-Active’s 4 cornerstones to embrace are:
1. People are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole (and don’t need fixing).
2. Dance in this moment (stay present).
3. Focus on the whole person.
4. Evoke transformation.

Want some tips for being an effective coach? (04:27):
1. Remember to talk 50% of the time or less & paraphrase and validate.
2. Don't be afraid to share what you see or notice, and especially to shine light on positive qualities they are demonstrating (courage, critical thinking, tenacity, enthusiasm, care, etc.).
3. Collect & use coaching tools. We in the coaching industry love “tools” which help support transformation. These often come in the form of assessments or frameworks. For example, a strengths & growth areas self-assessment or a framework for scripting an accountability conversation or a template for mapping out your priorities.
4. Co-Active’s 5 Contexts for every coach to embrace are curiosity, listening, intuition (inner wisdom), capacity to forward action, and self-management (no judgment/opinions). If you would like to evaluate your coaching ability, use these metrics.

The Bottom Line (05:32):
Coaching supports and grows your people. Being an effective coach takes practice over time. An added benefit is that you will have a “deeper bench” of skilled leaders to move up when the opportunity arises.