Accelerating Performance with Coaching
As a leader in your organisation your most important role is creating value through the people that you lead, leveraging their motivation and their skillset to achieve shared goals. So a core focus for you will be to develop and support your team members to achieve their individual and collective potential and coaching is one of the most effective tools you can bring as a leader to achieve this.
More and more, coaching is being recognised as not just a nice to have, but an essential skillset for business and a way to really unlock and realise the potential within employees. However you don’t have to be a qualified coach to develop some of the critical skills of coaching in a way that will bring real value to your team.
So what exactly is coaching?
Sir John Whitmore who was a pioneer of coaching and leadership development, defined coaching as “unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.”
Coaching is about enabling team members to problem solve for themselves. It’s not about giving them the answer, it’s about drawing the answer out of them so that they own their own solutions resulting in a more motivated and empowered individual. Developing a coaching approach also fosters a culture of learning, collaboration, and continuous improvement, which is vital for long-term success. By focusing on developing your employees' potential in this way you are creating a workforce that is empowered and motivated to perform.
So as a leader, how do you develop a coaching mindset?
In the words of another coaching pioneer, Nancy Kline, “It is a way of being with others that enables people to truly think for themselves.” The core skills for this way of being are all skills that everyone can learn and use.
First it’s about building trust and rapport and developing a good relationship. Of course good communication is a critical skill and central to this is the skill of active listening, really listening to understand rather than to respond. Being empathetic and taking time to observe, asking open questions and being curious about the answer rather than making assumptions and providing answers.
By asking clear open questions you draw out their thoughts and their own experience and allow them to space to consider the possibilities. Your experience and your guidance are still important but you are allowing the space for them to develop and, critically, to own their thoughts and their actions.
So if you are really interested in developing and empowering your team, it’s time to leverage the power of coaching. We can help you develop and strengthen the practical skills to enhance your coaching skillset, leading to improved communication, better problem-solving, and enhanced performance across your team.
Find out how developing your own coaching skills can help you achieve and maintain high performance in your teams.
