Are You **Actually** Coaching Your Team?
It's Time for a Reality Check
Most leaders believe they’re already coaching their team. They’re mostly wrong.
These leaders are not lying…they just don’t know exactly what coaching is, or they haven’t gotten an honest assessment of their approach.
Let’s fix that. When you’ve read my breakdown below, I’d love to know three things:
What you already knew
What was new information
AND…because leadership is about mastery, and mastery is an asymptote
3. Which area you need to work on next
What coaching is:
Deep listening to understand how the coachee sees the situation
Enabling the coachee to solve problems
Questioning answers
Helping the coachee to “think about their thinking” (credit: David Rock)
Asking genuinely curious questions
Assuming that the coachee has the best answer
What coaching isn’t:
Listening just enough to respond with advice
Solving problems for others
Answering questions
Telling people what you think
Asking questions that you think you already know the answer to
Assuming that you have the best answer
Two Mindset Roadblocks
You can form a tidy checklist with these items, and keep it in front of you when talking with a team member. If that appeals to you, please do! Regular reminders can keep you on track when practicing certain behaviors.
But no checklist will enable you to coach effectively until you can make two mindset shifts:
1. Stop seeing yourself as an expert problem solver
2. Trust the other person to develop a workable solution
These two mindsets seem easy and straightforward, but they can be a stretch. You’ve likely been recognized for your problem-solving, countering mindset #1. You’ve also probably been burned by a team member’s subpar performance, making mindset #2 REALLY hard!
It’s worthwhile to work through that.
The Action-Reflection-Action Plan
Here’s what to do next. Make two columns:
In the left-hand column, list the types of problems that are uniquely yours to solve
In the right-hand column, list the types of areas where you like to weigh in, BUT where you could reasonably trust others on your team to develop and act on solutions themselves
Now, reflect on these questions—be sure to write down your answers so you get out of any mental loops that are keeping you stuck:
If you were to stop solving the problems in the right-hand column, what would yoube afraid of happening?
Write down the hidden assumption. It will go something like this: “If I stop solving problems like (X), then (fear) will happen.”
Put the reflection to work by taking the next step:
Experiment! Set up a low-risk trial where you test the assumption above and try to prove it false. You WANT to find a chink in the armor of that assumption so that youcan break out of Expert Problem Solver mode and trust the other person to solve the problem.