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The Leader As Coach

Written by: Kim Freedman

Article Overview: With the changing demographics of the workforce - retirement of the Boomers and entry of Gen Y - as well as the prevalence of distributed work teams, there is a growing trend for managers to take more of a coach-like approach to leading their teams, especially when those teams are made up of knowledge workers. This article looks at how coaching is different from traditional management and identifies three crucial skills for effective coaching in the workplace.

The Leader As Coach

Take a moment and thing back over your career. Recall the various managers you have worked for in the past. Who stands out in your mind as the best, the leader who had the most significant impact on you? What was different about that person? Did he or she challenge you, invest time in developing you, really listen to you, and encourage you? If so, your manager was acting more like a coach than a boss. As a leader, how would coaching one of your staff be different from what you may be doing now? Before answering that question, let’s look at a more basic question.

What Is Coaching?

Coaching is sometimes confused with training, counseling, or mentoring. While elements of these disciplines may be used in coaching, there are differences.

According to the International Coach Federation (ICF), the process of training is more linear than coaching. In training, learning objectives and curriculum are established by the instructor. In coaching, the goal or objective is set by the individual or team being coached with guidance provided by the coach.

The focus of counseling, especially in the workplace, is on fixing people and their performance problems. Usually, a lot of attention is paid to what the person has done wrong in the past. No one can change the past, so coaching is focused more on the future and emphasizes action, learning, and accountability.

Coaching is most often confused with mentoring. A mentor advises and guides an individual by sharing his experience in a specific area, industry, or company. The mentor is the teacher and the protégé is the student. Unlike a mentoring relationship, the coaching relationship is more like an equal partnership between a coach and an individual for the benefit of that individual.

The ICF explains that “the individual or team chooses the focus of conversation, while the coach listens and contributes observations and questions as well as concepts and principles which can assist in generating possibilities and identifying actions. Through the coaching process, the clarity that is needed to support the most effective actions is achieved. Coaching accelerates the individual's or team’s progress by providing greater focus and awareness of possibilities leading to more effective choices. Coaching concentrates on where individuals are now and what they are willing to do to get where they want to be in the future.”

The Coaching Leader

With the changing demographics of the workforce—retirement of the Boomers and entry of Gen Y—as well as the prevalence of distributed work teams, there is a growing trend for managers to take more of a coach-like approach to leading their teams, especially when those teams are made up of knowledge workers. Why? Most people respond more positively to coaching than they do to the old command-and-control, transactional approach to managing people. While a few managers have always taken a coach-like approach to leading their teams, most have not. The following lists some of the differences between these two approaches.

Transactional Manager
* Talks more than listens
* Gives people the answer when they ask a question
* Tells people the what, when, where, and how of the job or work assignment
* Uses carrots (rewards) and sticks (discipline) to motivate people
* Uses positional power to influence others
* Treats everyone the same, like interchangeable parts

Leader Coach
* Listens more than talks
* Asks open-ended questions, encouraging people to explore possibilities and to discover their own answers
* Communicates vision and organizational objectives. Assesses individual competency level and offers the appropriate level of direction
* Creates environment for self-motivation
* Treats people as individuals with unique talents, challenges and personal goals

You may be using a combination of these management approaches, but you are probably more comfortable using one set of behaviors over the other. If you lean closer to the Transactional Manager than the Leader Coach, you can shift direction by focusing on three skill areas.

Coaching Skills – The Big Three

A Leader Coach has a core set of skills that she draws upon when dealing with people. Think of these skills as “tools for talking.” Everyone has some degree of competence in using these tools. The good news for everyone is that coaching skills can be learned and developed. Three of the most critical skills for Leader Coaches to develop are listening actively, asking powerful questions, and giving feedback.

1. Active Listening:
There are several levels of listening. A Leader Coach needs to be skilled at active listening, which involves hearing what is said, interpreting non-verbal communication, and listening between the words for what is not being said. As an active listener, your objective is to understand what the speaker is trying to communicate.

2. Asking Powerful Questions:
Leader Coaches learn to ask powerful questions in a style that can be compared to the Socratic Method. The difference is that the Leader Coach is not debating an issue or trying to lead the person anywhere except to his or her own answers. In asking powerful, open-ended questions, you’re inviting the person you are speaking with to look inward for insights, lessons learned, and next steps.

3. Giving Feedback:
Giving feedback is not telling someone what he or she is doing wrong. Instead, the Leader Coach holds a mirror up to the team member to help him see with new eyes. Acknowledging, challenging, and sharing intuitive hunches all play a part in giving effective feedback.

Leaders who demonstrate competency in these three coaching skills usually have higher Emotional Intelligence than do people who have not mastered these skills. According to Daniel Goleman, who has written several books on the subject, “emotional intelligence is the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships.”

If you are ready to embark on the journey to becoming a Leader Coach, take an assessment to measure your current Emotional Intelligence level. Next, create an action plan designed to boost your emotional intelligence and to learn the three essential coaching skills. Engage a coach or find an accountability partner to help ensure that you put your plan into action. Remember, a plan without action is like a brand new car without an engine. It looks nice, but it won’t take you where you want to go.

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Article Tags: accountability, benefit, boss, counseling, curriculum, disciplines, elements, guidance, international coach federation, learning objectives, mentor, mentoring, objective, partnership, performance problems, possibilities, relationship, significant impact



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