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I talk a lot about the benefits of using a coaching approach, but I also hear a lot about employees who are resistant to the idea of coaching because of how that label has been used in the past. Coaching is a skill that you need to develop through a combination of passive learning, active practice, and constructive feedback, just like teaching or doing effective reference interviews. You can learn a lot about any of those skills from reading on your own, but to really get good at using these skills, you need to practice with other people and get constructive feedback on what you’ve done well and how you can improve. One of the ways that coaching can go wrong is when you lean into asking questions, but jump too quickly to solving the first problem that you see. This came up recently in the class that I teach for Library Juice Academy on coaching skills. Someone shared that when a supervisor jumps too quickly to action steps, it makes them feel unheard. It makes them feel like the manager only values their work output, not them as an individual. And that’s the opposite of what [I assume] you’re trying to use a coaching approach to accomplish! From a purely pragmatic perspective, if you jump to solving the problem too soon, the solution you come up with might not really be that helpful, because you fixed the wrong problem. One of the key parts of using a coaching approach to leadership is having the coaching conversation. Who would have guessed that, right? 😂 But this isn’t just any regular conversation that includes some open ended, curious questions. Being curious and asking questions is a place to start, but a full coaching conversation follows a framework that generally looks like:
That sounds so simple! The challenge and the magic are both in the actual practice of using this framework. Just like in a reference interview, the first thing that a person mentions as the topic they want to discuss may not be what they really need help with. There’s no objectively right answer that fits every time for how long to spend asking more about this need, but it’s important to spend however long it takes on this part, so that you don’t waste time on the wrong answer. And that’s true in coaching, as well. So you spend time digging into the topic to identify what’s really going on. Clarifying the goals for the conversation can often flow pretty clearly from that early discussion, and then that shapes where we go from there. Do they need help prioritizing which part is most important, or coming to a decision, or figuring out what questions they want to ask someone, or any number of other possible outcomes? And then we spend more time exploring the issue with that focus in mind. We’re not really problem-solving yet. We’re just getting all of the cards out on the table so that we can look at them from a range of different perspectives, so that we can see all of the possibilities open to us. As their manager, you may need to share some institutional knowledge along the way. But as much as possible, your role is to ask questions that help them think through the challenge to get to what really matters about this issue, and then think about that deeper challenge from as many angles as you need to, before you even get to a discussion of action steps. And that’s REALLY hard! Many of us are problem-solvers, so we want to help them solve a problem efficiently! You’re upset about this thing? Well what outcome do you want to get to, and how can you get there? This was one of the things that every new coach I know has struggled with – slowing down to really get to what matters about the problem before trying to solve it. As problem-solvers, we think that coming up with a solution is the best way to help. But we actually get better results from helping someone slow down to think about those other angles. I often hear that the most valuable part of a session is just the help with taking a big giant knot of factors and untangling the threads. The person you’re working with is fully capable of coming up with a great solution once they untangle all of those threads and get the red herrings out of the way. They’ve just been stuck staring at that messy knot with no idea of where to even start untangling. When you take the time to coach them through that messy process of untangling the threads and identifying what’s really important and what’s a distraction, you help them get to a better solution AND help them learn how to at least start untangling the next messy knot that they come across. And spending that time listening to what really matters to them demonstrates that you genuinely care about them as an individual and about their development as a professional – which builds a healthier relationship, leading to all of those benefits I like to talk about, like better employee morale, more confidence in taking initiative, reduced turnover, and so on! I love talking about coaching here and teaching an overview of Coaching as a Leadership Skill at LJA, but as I mentioned before, the best way to really build your skills is to participate in a supportive learning environment that includes practice and constructive feedback. That’s why I created a longer, more intensive program, Developing a Coaching Approach to Leadership. Participants get to practice actually coaching one another in a safe, supportive environment and get feedback on ways to improve – which sometimes includes encouraging you to stay in the discovery and exploration phase longer! Let’s talk about how joining could benefit you, questions you have about the program, or what’s been holding you back from enrolling. |