4 Habits of Effective Coaches Who Want to Lead Successfully
Do you think of yourself as a coach, or more as a leader? The truth is, the two roles go hand-in-hand. A successful leader is also a great coach, guiding their employees to greater heights of their own. Leaders have the all-important job of investing in their workers, encouraging and motivating them to new levels of success, and supporting them to achieve their full potential.
Coaching is vitally important to the overall success of organizations. In fact, 67 percent say that leadership coaching increased employee satisfaction and engagement. The same study revealed that half of all respondents agreed that coaching improved productivity as well.
If you want to be a great coach who leads your people well, you will need to adopt a few daily habits that reinforce success for you and those you lead.
1. Lead and Coach People to Their Own Solutions
When someone comes to you for advice, are you in the habit of offering them the solution to the problem? When asked for support, it’s easy to jump in and offer advice, in order to fix the problem. But this eliminates an important aspect of growth for your team members: helping them develop the skills they need to solve problems on their own.
Instead of advising, try asking questions that lead them to their own conclusions of what should be done next. This reduces their reliance on you and fosters a sense of independence. It may take more time to ask questions and coach them through the discovery process, but the long-term benefits are worth it.
Stay connected to your values, but support people in their personal and professional development by helping them to solve problems on their own.
2. Listen More Than You Speak
Successful coaches and leaders listen closely to what their employees are telling them – and the meaning behind their words. Listen closely to determine what’s really going on. When they are finished relating their dilemma to you, ask follow-up questions to gain clarity.
Once you master the skill of active listening, you will find that you rarely have to offer advice at all. Simply by listening and asking more questions, you can get to the heart of the matter and guide and support people as they reach a meaningful conclusion.
The best thing you can do as a coach is to learn how to ask the right questions at the right times. Focus on others, rather than on your own ideas. Allow them to have the floor so that they learn to become more confident in their own ideas and solutions. Listening this way can have a powerful effect on the company as a whole, as the team members feel more empowered to navigate through challenges, and provide solutions.
3. Clarify Roles
It’s very difficult to lead someone in the right direction as a coach if you lack clarity on the issue. Make sure that you’re clear about your role as a coach and the responsibilities that you have in this position. From here, you can make it easier for the people you coach to know what you expect from them. One approach you might take is to establish the who, what, when, and why of every problem.
This might mean that you need to come up with a specific framework for how you address issues in the workplace. It also helps you establish accountability and set expectations for those who come to you in search of guidance.
4. Invest in Your Team
If you’re like most leaders, time is a scarce resource, given your many responsibilities. Because of this, the natural tendency is for coaching to be low on your priority list. Make sure you prioritize investing in key people within the organization. An ongoing effort to coach your workers enables you to support them, and also to see and help them achieve their full potential.
Coaching within this type of framework allows coaching subjects to receive the benefit of your undivided attention at regular intervals, shaping them into the employees you always knew they could be.
Coaching is an important aspect of every company that wants to grow. If you want to lead with any measure of success, you will need to learn how to listen, ask the right questions, and support those in your organization. It isn’t enough to simply do this when the need arises. Instead, you should be making regular investments in the people around you.
As you think about the importance of coaching, write down what you can do, starting today, to implement these key strategies into your organization. You’ll be glad you did, and your team members will be, too!
