How to be a Leader Who Coaches

In “Can Your Managers Also Be Good Coaches?”, an article from Forrester, it’s shared that employees are 8x more likely to be engaged by a manager who takes a coaching approach than a manager who doesn’t.

Managers who are coach-like with their team members would present these traits:

Be curious to understand the other person at a deeper level
Ask open-ended questions they don’t have the answers to
Believe in the ability of the other person to generate creative ideas
Be patient and let the other person do more of the talking
Be comfortable with periods of silence to allow for thinking
Refrain from judging ideas that might surface

These are all aspects of coaching conversations. Managers who are fast paced, assertive and regularly juggling too many priorities may find themselves hard-pressed to have this type of conversation.

But there are clear benefits beyond greatly increased engagement. Imagine what could come of team members feeling more confident to solve their own problems and being given the trust and autonomy to do so.

This could lead to greater loyalty and willingness to take risks and make mistakes if that’s supported within the culture. If someone is told what to do and makes a mistake, that doesn’t feel good. If, instead, someone comes up with their own idea of a way forward and makes a mistake, that’s learning.

Of course, there must be parameters around such experimentation and risk taking.

Looking at this from another angle, leaders want to identify successors. Indeed, they are often held to spotting and grooming successors as part of their goals. This is easier to achieve by a leader who takes a coaching approach. They can see who’s creative, who’s growing, who’s proactive and so forth.

Lastly, increased engagement is often correlated with retention. Every company wants to retain their best people. A coaching approach may support this goal through empowerment, trust and belief in the other person. I want to stay where I’m driven to do my best and given the latitude to show I’m up to the challenge.

The Coaching Approach

Now, it’s one thing to say the coaching approach is an improvement over the typical directive approach, but how is it done?

Here are a few ideas on how to get started.

Ask questions for which you don’t have the answers. This is a classic aspect of coaching conversations. These types of questions – often starting with what and how – show genuine curiosity. Practice doing this for short periods within a conversation where the other person has a challenge or dilemma on their hands. Experience how it feels to do this. Yes, it’s hard. It gets easier with practice, repetition and conscious awareness of what you are doing.
Believe in the other person’s innate capacity to solve the problem. This belief may be supported and made easier by stating your intention before moving towards asking open-ended questions. Otherwise, your direct is likely to get confused by your new approach. Usually, they’re told what to do. This feels very different. This may sound obvious, but start with team members how you hold in highest regard, then work your way down as you develop the ability to hold this belief.
Be patient for the conversation to stretch out and even have periods of silence. If you’re impatient by nature, this will be extremely difficult. It may be difficult for the other person too since this may be a new type of conversation for them. Be willing to be uncomfortable, which just a few seconds of silence will create. Where can you practice patience? Check-out lines? Being put on hold? Teaching a child to do something new? Find opportunities to strengthen your ability to be patient. This is essential to having a coaching style of conversation.
Suspend judgment. Again, this is going to be tough if you’re used to giving out answers and evaluating the ideas you do hear. In fact, discernment may be one of your skills. You’re used to taking something and making it better. In a coaching conversation, this is not your job. You are to suspend judgment and evaluation and favor encouraging exploration and ideation. If you’ve done this well in brainstorming meetings, bring that style to the coaching conversation.

It’s not expected that you’re going to quickly adopt these 4 practices and be a coaching leader. People who attend our coaching training and certification seminars spend 3.5 days with us and practice coaching numerous times, and they’re still expected to continue to practice again and again afterwards.

For leaders, these new conversational approaches will be difficult. The benefits are significant for leaders, teams and organizations when a coaching approach to conversations becomes part of the culture. Be the one who drives that change by starting with these ideas. Check out our executive coaching services or contact us for support in your leadership journey.

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