Building coaching into Leadership
Posted on August 28, 2020 by Vimal Katiyar, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.
Being a good leader requires us to ace multiple roles within the organization. One such significant role is that of a coach to our employees.
There are many reasons why the term managers and leaders are used interchangeably within a business. They are both critical for the progress of any organization. But every organization is mostly dependant on its employees for its success. Hence more often than not, it becomes imperative for the leaders to don the hat of coaches for their employees for their and the organization’s advancement. If leaders can consistently coach their employees, it helps the business in many aspects, such as employee onboarding and retention, skill development, performance improvement, knowledge transfer, and so on.
Why is coaching crucial for leaders?
A coaching style of leadership has been proven to be a very effective way of managing modern employees for the betterment of the business. Leaders can construct a much more agile and talented workforce when they coach their employees instead of commanding them. This results in a healthy workplace environment and a growing business.
1. Ask questions that can guide them
When we start asking open-ended interactive questions instead of blunt fact stating ones, we automatically provide our employees with a chance to give detailed and thoughtful answers. This would hence lead to more constructive coaching sessions. It is essential to develop a robust leader-employee relationship firsthand. This will allow us to analyze the curiosity level of our employees and their performance and improvement capacity. Also, it would divulge their attitude towards their work.
2. Identify what’s going good
A good coach must maintain the perfect balance of criticism and praise. If our employee conversations are entirely based on what’s going wrong and what must be changed, it will become demoralizing instead of motivating. When we recognize the aspects of our employees going well, it provides them a springboard of how they can capitalize on that and improve. But leaders must be aware of taking part in compliment sandwiching and shallow praising.
3. Understand their views
While coaching employees to improve their engagement and performance, good leaders must look at things from their perspective. This might help us largely by enabling the changes we desire. Different employees have different sets of motivations based on their personalities. Once we understand why’s and how’s, we will be able to tailor our coaching conversations to align with the improvements we are trying to achieve.
4. Commitment towards continuous improvement
Commit to improving our skills and become more competent continuously. That would help in setting up an example for our employees. We need to lead by example so that our team can follow our work ethic. Show interest in their successes as much as the teams. Behave like a coach would for them and monitor how their role inside the organization is evolving. Establish the fact that improving must be considered a continuous habit and not a one-off activity.
Being a good leader requires us to ace multiple roles within the organization. One such significant role is that of a coach to our employees. Once we master that role, then great results are bound to follow.
