And Why so Many Get it Wrong…
Nowadays, it is widely accepted that good leadership requires us to employ coaching skills. In fact, many have been told that coaching is now required of them as a key responsibility. This is a wonderful thing in theory, however in practice, there are many misconceptions and gaps in the understanding of what this means and how to do it.
Countless times I have had a client express frustration about how their “coaching” is not giving the promised results, only to have them describe methods that are not coaching at all.
Gil Davidson
Now, don’t get me wrong, it is usually not their fault, most of these leaders are genuinely trying to employ coaching skills, but they really have no idea what it is they’re meant to be doing so, instead they default to being more intentional with the leadership skills they already have rather than truly shifting gears into a coach mindset. The result is that leaders often attempt to coach by telling, problem solving or giving advice, all of which have their place but none of which is coaching.
Coaching is more than a new set of skills, technique, or strategy, it’s a way of being. To coach others, we must start with ourselves…
Coaching requires us to shift the way we bring value to those we lead and how we perceive the value that they bring.
In order to assess if you are ready to begin coaching you need to do these 3 things:
- Believe in your people
- Trust your people
- See their value and how it relates to the task you need done
Until you can honestly do these 3 things, you are not ready to add coaching skills to your toolbelt.
Leaders serious about developing strong coaching skill first need to shift perspective from traditional leadership views where it is our responsibility to solve problems and have the answers to where your role is to trust those you lead to figure out their own solutions, where your role is more Socratic* than explicit, where you add value by asking the right questions rather than giving advice.
The tools of a Coach-like leader include:
- listening intently with curiosity for where others are ‘stuck’
- replacing “advice giving” with asking questions that facilitate them ‘discovering for themselves’
- being a catalyst for discovery instead of asking leading questions
- trusting that the solution they figure out will be just as (if not more) effective than the ones you may have thought of and will be easier for them to own and execute.
Coaching is a behavioural skill and therefore it cannot be learned solely in a classroom – it needs to be learned through doing.
Is Coaching a Fad?
This is a fair question. Leadership Development is guilty of jumping onto every new fad that comes along. However, coaching is definitively not one of those cases. It is definitely NOT just a fad. How can I be so sure?
The concept behind coaching has been around since at least 400 years BC. Our earliest sense of it starts with Socrates who figured out that our actions, conviction, and commitment are driven more by what we believe to be true rather than by what we are told is true.
Practically this means that when, as a leader, you’re allocating tasks to your team, your role includes being a catalyst for them to uncover how they connect with and believe in the value of the task as well as their understanding of how it contributes to a bigger outcome/purpose. Doing so ensures that they are committed and can be held accountable.
Let’s apply the principle to your own dilemma with coaching skills…
Imagine the difference it would make to your commitment to developing and applying coaching skills if you had undergone a process that encouraged you to question the concepts that are hard to trust. To test out the concepts and to draw your own conclusions? Would do so have increased your commitment to applying them? If they made sense, would it be easier to be accountable and committed?
The secret Socrates discovered is that questioning to facilitate a person’s sense-making leads to clarity, and it is also one of the secret pillars of coaching.
Fast forward to the 17th century and we find another classic example in Blaise Pascal. You may have heard of him as a mathematician. He was also a philosopher and theologian. He lived in the early to mid 17th century and, like Socrates, he understood that “We are more convinced by that which we discover for ourselves than by that which we are told”. The impact of this on our ownership and accountability is another secret behind the power of coaching.
So, is coaching a fad? I am convinced that coaching is here to stay, both because it has been around for thousands of years, and because the principles underlying it are timeless tools that tap into our human nature, unlocking commitment like nothing else I’ve encountered in my 30+ years in business!
So, if it has been around for centuries, and is such an impactful tool, why is it only being recognised as a core leadership skill now?
My personal experience taken with anecdotal experience of my colleagues as well as industry literature and research makes a compelling case for why coaching has emerged as a core skill in ‘future-proofing’ your leadership team bench strength.
Here are a few reasons:
Corporate Shifts
Requiring a new leadership skill set
Coaching Skills
Answering the new need
- Our societies are become increasingly egalitarian and our teams expect more than “because I’m the boss” as a reason to do something.
- Routine work is mostly automated and, as described in Daniel Pink’s work, ‘carrot and stick’ forms of motivation only work in routine work environments. Productivity in creative (Knowledge) work environments requires a new form of motivation – one that is intrinsic, not external. Leaders still need to motivate employees, but they need a new tool kit
- Clear, hierarchical structures are less common, with flatter or matrix type organizational structures becoming more common. Practically, this means that leaders often don’t have direct authority over those they lead or may have too many direct reports to oversee their work directly, meaning that leading well requires a different delegation and accountability structure
- Leaders need to equip their teams to navigate VUCA – Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous – work environments. I know we’re almost as sick of hearing about VUCA, as we are of Covid, but it best describes our new reality – and is one of the reasons Coaching Skills are now emerging as a critical core Leadership competency.
- Coaching facilitates direct reports identifying and connecting personalised purpose and motivation with assigned goals/responsibilities, resulting in increased commitment and accountability
- Coaching skills are that tool kit. Coaching wasn’t as important when external forms of motivation still worked in most situations. Coaching provides a motivational alternative to the “carrot and stick”
- Coaching skills establish personal accountability to self and the project/end goal without the need to rely on positional authority
- Coaching skills enable leaders to delegate with confidence that direct reports understand and are committed to the end goal, that they are equipped to resolve issues that come their way and have the safety and trust in the relationship to ask for help early on should they need it. This frees up the leader’s mental energy and time, as they do not need to follow-up as often to ensure things are moving forward.
- Leaders skilled at coaching equip their teams to be agile and respond to shifts as they happen, both because they’re clear on the connection between what they’re doing and why/how it adds value and because their leaders’ trust in them increases their self-trust in their ability to deal with VUCA situations.
What makes coaching so elusive?
Too often we try and teach a new skill simply by adding the new knowledge onto what we already know. That works, only when the new knowledge builds on the existing framework. Some new skills first require a dismantling of old learnings and entrenched beliefs before we can build a new scaffolding on which to hang our new learning. Coaching is one of those skills.
Part of what makes it elusive is that we must experience it before we can trust it.
We must first discover it for ourselves.
Read our previous blog post on The Evolution of Coaching
So where do we start?
We must start by looking at our beliefs. Our beliefs about ourselves about others and about leadership. As long as we don’t believe that others are as capable as ourselves, we cannot coach.
Coaching is so counter to our conditioning. Why? Because what we have been taught is that only a few will excel and only if you have the answers, and so we don’t see the capacity of those around us. We see ourselves as the exception. As the leader who has the answers.
Human nature is that we only see what we’re looking for and we only trust what we see. Ironically, we only look for what we believe. So what we believe, limits what we see.
When doesn’t coaching work?
It doesn’t work if we haven’t changed our base level beliefs of ourselves and those around us. As a leader, you will only develop your coaching skills once you’ve experienced proof of concept.
What does that mean?
Because coaching is so completely different from what we typically look for. Your training needs to provide you with opportunity to experience the impact of the coaching way of being. Our existing beliefs stop us from trusting coaching principles until we’ve experienced the impact they have. And until we trust it, we will not use it.
After all, you’re a logical, Intelligent leader so why would you do something that you didn’t trust?
Only once we understand that leadership is not about us holding all the answers, not about us being the problem solvers or the go-to person. But it’s rather about helping others uncover and discover their own problem-solving abilities, helping them discover for themselves the best way to accomplish the desired outcomes. This is what it means to lead as a coach.
How to select a good coaching program?
So, if equipping leaders to truly trust and adopt coaching skills is so tricky, how do you ensure that you select an effective coaching skills program for your organization?
Here is a list of questions to ask:
How is it structured?
- Does it prioritize the opportunity for experiential learning – both in the classroom and structured in the workplace for at least 4 to 6 months afterwards?
- Ask what support is provided offer before and after the training?
- Does the training follow a ‘wrote’ learning model with memorising, or does it introduce a principled framework that can flex with shifting environments?
What experience and skill do the facilitators bring?
- Are the ‘trainers’ skilled facilitators who model the coaching principles in how they teach the program?
- Are the trainers certified coaches with a good track record?
- Have they worked in environments similar to yours?
- Can they clearly communicate the difference between being a coach and developing coaching skills (or a coach approach)?
Is the content designed with managers in mind, or for coaches?
- How is the content adapted with Managers in mind?
- Does it demonstrate how coaching skills are integrated with other leadership styles or does it see coaching as a panacea to replace other skills/styles?
What impact can you expect?
As per the insight of Socrates and Blaise Pascal, using a coaching approach increases ownership and accountability because we require people to think through their understanding and alignment of responsibilities. It results in work being connected to overall outcomes and to personal purpose – increasing a sense of personal fulfillment, commitment, and ownership.
It also provides the opportunity for people to realise what they’re unsure of and to ask clarifying questions when needed. Because coaching requires us to believe in those we coach, they know we’re in their corner and it creates safety for better communication, healthy conflict, and invites more ideas – accessing the creativity and insight of the whole team so the burden isn’t all on the leader.
Working with leaders who believe in us and where we have a greater sense of purpose and personal fulfillment naturally translates to increased loyalty and retention, which is a huge gift to any organization. All the above reasons also result in improved delegation – leaving your leaders to focus on their job, instead of fighting as many fires!
*Socratic Method: refers to question driven learning, where rather than having one person impart their knowledge upon the rest, it is more discussion based, collaborative, and question centered learning