Effective Workplace Coaching: The Key to a Stronger Team. Providing great answers can help your team address their challenges. But asking the right questions can have an even greater impact – if you take the time to do it right.
As leaders, we often feel like we need to have all the answers. In fact, we’re often rewarded throughout our careers for knowing ‘stuff’. This can stop us from having important conversations with our team members. Especially when we want to help, but we don’t feel like we have the solution.
Coaching in the workplace focuses on equipping people with the tools, knowledge, and opportunities they need to fully develop themselves. Coaching is a tangible way to develop teams.
A coaching style of leadership assumes that:
- the leader helps their people to learn through guidance, advice, questions and conversations, rather than simply ‘telling’ people what to do
- the leader creates and promotes a learning environment
- time is taken to understand individual circumstances and context
- individual team members and teams are active participants in the learning process
Formal coaching programs usually set up a time-limited, structured, goal-oriented program for specific skills, knowledge and abilities. In contrast, coaching in the workplace is something that leaders can incorporate into how they lead, on a day-to-day basis.
Together with more formal programs and processes (such as performance and development plans, talent development and succession planning), coaching gives each individual, team and line of business the opportunity to reach their full potential.
Workplace coaching can be a highly effective tool for supporting high performance, motivating team members, and supporting their growth and development. And in a world where hybrid and remote working is becoming the norm, helping our teams learn to solve problems themselves, increasing self-awareness and tapping into their intrinsic motivation (that is, their internal personal motivation), is a big plus.
So, what things can you do as a leader, to help adopt more of a coaching-based approach?
1. Recognise that you don’t need to be the expert to be a good coach
If you’ve seen the TV series Ted Lasso, then you’ll know the story focuses on an American gridiron football coach who moves to the UK to manage a football (soccer) team, in a game he knows very little about.
Despite his lack of knowledge of the rules of football, Ted Lasso makes huge strides with the team. Instead of being the expert, he focuses on some of the key skills of a good coach: he takes the time to gain the trust and respect of the team; he communicates openly with the team; he helps unlock their potential; encourages them to take risks; and offers opportunities for growth. Importantly, he finds out what’s important to them and what motivates them, and he gives positive feedback and encouragement.
Not having all the answers doesn’t make you a bad coach. It could in fact, help you be a better workplace coach, because you’ll be less likely to ‘provide the solution’, and more likely to ask good questions that will help your team to find the solutions themselves.
2. Adopt a coaching mindset
As a workplace coach, it’s important that you are present, and that you are genuinely interested in the person you’re coaching.
Having a coaching mindset is one of the core competencies of an effective coach, according to the International Coaching Federation. They describe it as developing and maintaining a mindset that is ‘open, curious, flexible and client-centred’.
Before you have a coaching conversation with someone, check that you’re in the right mindset to have a conversation. When you’re in the conversation, don’t come in ‘knowing the answers’. Instead, create a mindset for yourself where you are genuinely interested in and open to the person’s response.
3. Practice asking open-ended questions
Question framing is an essential workplace coaching skill. A powerful open-ended question can help your team member think through an issue, gain deeper awareness on a subject, engage in reflection, and ultimately, help them take responsibility for their own development. As a coach, practice asking open versus closed questions.
Closed questions are questions that can be answered by a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or in a limited number of ways. They tend to direct a conversation a certain way, rather than open it up. If you have a solution in mind for your team member, be aware that you might be tempted to ask a closed question. For example, ‘Have you thought of trying x?’
In contrast, open questions allow the person you are coaching to explore their own options and generate their own solutions. For example, ‘How have you solved similar problems in the past?’ or ‘What do you think the key challenges might be, and how might you tackle them?’
As Forbes points out, ‘The power of open-ended questions lies in their ability to withhold judgment and invite curiosity. Open-ended questions allow responders to take the conversation in one of many directions and allow them to choose the direction that is most meaningful to them.’
What Next?
Research shows that it takes leaders around 6 months to feel comfortable using on-the-job coaching skills and really appreciate the benefits. Now pair this thought with this quote from Ted Lasso: ‘… taking on a challenge is a lot like riding a horse, isn’t it? If you’re comfortable while you’re doing it, you’re probably doing it wrong.’
If you want to move towards a coaching style of leadership but you haven’t tried it before, just remember, it might feel challenging at first, and it might take some practice before you feel comfortable using your coaching skills, but that’s okay. That’s part of the learning process.