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How do you coach employees in areas that are beyond your area of technical expertise? I’ve had this question come up in a couple of different contexts. It reflects some of the challenges of stepping out of your comfort zone as a leader. As an employee at any level, I don’t enjoy being told how to do my job by someone who doesn’t have expertise in my area, whether that sounds like a Provost telling the library as a whole how to manage a collection or like an Associate Dean with no teaching experience telling me how to teach information literacy. Assuming you’re like me and make a conscious effort to treat your team the way you would want to be treated, it can feel really awkward when you need to provide leadership in areas where you don’t have much or any background. So how do you navigate that? This is one of the best parts of using a coaching approach! And this situation highlights the distinction between coaching and mentoring. As a coach, my expertise is in structuring conversations to get to what the real underlying challenge is, and then exploring what might work to resolve that challenge, and making sure that we get to the outcome they want to get from this session. My role is to ask questions that challenge the other person to think about the issue in a new way or dig below the surface of the issue they originally mentioned. And my role is to keep us on track, focused on moving toward the outcome they’re looking for from our conversation, instead of going off on some tangent or shifting into venting or whatever. That outcome often involves identifying some next steps to address the challenge or achieve a larger goal, though it could also be coming to a decision between a set of options or just getting clarity on why they’re reacting to a situation in a particular way. I don’t actually have to have any expertise in their topic to maintain this conversational structure, because the client is the one doing most of the talking! As a manager using a coaching approach, you’ll need to stay flexible and shift from coach to mentor to trainer as needed, sometimes all in a single conversation. Sometimes while coaching someone, you may identify a gap in their knowledge that you could easily fill because of your expertise in library work or in navigating your institution – whether that’s knowing the best person to contact in your organization to get help with a particular procedure, or knowing a great resource for training to fill a skill gap, or whatever. But sometimes, knowing too much can make it more difficult to be fully openly curious and avoid making assumptions. As an instruction and liaison librarian, I had a lot of strong opinions about the work that I specialized in. I’ve had to really struggle with myself sometimes to stay focused on actively listening instead of letting my Advice Monster take over the conversation. It can be easier for me to stay fully in coaching mode when working with an electronic resources librarian than with someone in my area of expertise, because I have to ask so many questions just to feel like I understand the challenge the electronic resources librarian is dealing with. This highlights the distinction between mentoring and coaching because there is an expectation that a mentor has expertise to hand down to a less experienced mentee. The mentor provides guidance and support to help the mentee develop the skills they need to be successful in their role. Mentoring is a valuable way to support colleagues moving into new roles, but it’s distinct from using a coaching approach. Thinking of coaching someone in an area that I don’t have expertise, my questions might look something like:
Depending on how the conversation flows, I’ll usually have some more questions somewhere. For example, I might add some more specific questions as they explain what I need to know to understand what they’re dealing with. Or, if the most useful thing for them to accomplish is to decide between two courses of action, then I’ll ask some more specific questions about the obstacles and outcomes they expect with each option. But for the majority of the conversation, I’m assuming that they are the expert on this topic, and that they just need a sounding board to help them work through the issue or, in some cases, just need validation that their manager believes that they know what they’re doing and supports their decisions. You may be surprised at how often that’s really what your team members actually need from you, as well! You’re receiving this free newsletter because you subscribed yourself or you enrolled in a program with me. I hope you’ll find these letters valuable, but if you’d like to unsubscribe you can do that at the bottom of this message. And if you have any questions or comments, I love to get responses! |