Why it pays to coach

When we think of a coach, we think of the job in relation to sports, perhaps a football coach or tennis coach.

However, coaching your team as a manager is a skill that is becoming more in demand. Managers who have coaching experience, and qualifications, are more likely to be successful, or even employed, in today’s business world.

Management by coaching has the advantage of encouraging staff to respond to leadership by taking ownership of tasks or new ideas to be used in the workplace. Consider the difference in the response of staff when the manager has a dictatorial attitude which, rather than encouraging ‘ownership’ of an idea, repels employees and discourages team working, to a motivating attitude that encourages staff to feel part of the decision-making process.

The well researched way of coaching is by asking the right questions. These questions will focus attention and provide a feedback loop which can be used in follow-up coaching sessions. An instructional attitude from the manager will not give the coachee the option to feedback their own ideas or suggestions and will certainly not allow them to think through their own ideas.

The art of being a manager has changed so much over the past couple of decades. Having the knowledge of, or even a qualification in neuro linguistic programming (NLP), is an advantage for all managers. This will help them understand individuals in many ways, including how others see the world. NLP offers five options of how people see the world and subsequently react to situations. They are visual (seeing), auditory (hearing), kinesthetic (feeling), olfactory (smelling) and gustatory (tasting).

It is possible to work out which of these applies to you by remembering situations and how you use your senses to keep memories alive. It may be that to keep a memory of a very special event you can actually visualise it, or the smell of a place, room or person may be the trigger for your special memory.

The art of coaching is an addition to NLP. Good coaches need to be patient, good listeners, empathetic, supportive, detached, perceptive and interested. They need to know how to ask the right questions and when not to speak.

Coaching can be used proactively during a performance review or when a team has a new task and needs motivation to promote team-building.

This is especially popular with sales teams and in call centres when a ‘buy in’ is required by the whole team to make sure they are all aiming for the same target. The GROW model is the sequence of questions commonly used and regularly recommended by all good coaching books. It is also the method used when studying and gaining a qualification as a coach in a business sense. A sports coach could use different ways of motivation; however, if this sequence of questioning was adapted, it could even be successful in a sporting context.

The model is made up as follows: Goal is the aim of setting goals for the session as well as in the short and long term. Reality is the aim of exploring the current situation.

Options and alternative strategies or different courses of action would be explored and finally, What is to be done, when, by whom and the will to do it. In fact, the W is really the motivator for the whole coaching session.

To observe how some of these questions would be utilised in a coaching session, here is a case study of a coaching session with the managing director of a business. It was a new company, only one year old, but had become successful in the first year of trading.

The MD, Jane, needed mentoring and coaching to be able to brainstorm her ideas and also to clear her head regarding how she wanted her second year of trading to develop. Due to space constraints I have taken only one of the questions from each section of GROW to give an example of this session.

Goal – Jane was asked, “What are you trying to achieve?” She replied: “More profitable clients and to extend her client base”.

Reality – “What, if anything, have you done to address this situation?” Jane replied she had identified two partners in her line of business whom she could work together with and subsequently exchange clients of a high quality. However, she had not arranged meetings or taken her idea further at that point in time.

Options – “If you had a really wise friend, what would they do in your position?” Jane replied, “Make more appointments to discuss possible partnerships, spend more time networking and getting her message to business people and probably doing more PR”.

What/When/Whom – Examples of the motivational and action questions in this section of the session are: “What deadlines will you set for yourself?”, “What is the first step you will take?”, and “If there was a barrier you are not telling me about, what would it be?”

From these questions Jane was able to set down her plans and actions to be carried out before our next session. In addition, the last question made her think even more deeply about what was stopping her from achieving what she needed to do to develop her business.

This has been a snapshot of the importance of coaching, using the right questions for staff and mentoring for senior managers. With the right approach and attitude coaching can develop staff to their advantage and the benefit of the business.

kathryn@maltanet.net