6 Core Coaching Skills for Leaders
Coaching is leading powerful conversations that enable others to flourish.
Skilled coaches use coaching skills to bring potential into reality.
7 reasons coaching skills are hard for leaders:
- Loving the sound of your own voice.
- Fixing instead of creating space for others to explore solutions.
- Directing instead of exploring.
- The false belief that coaching is soft.
- Time pressure.
- No training.
- Employee resistance because they feel vulnerability with the boss is dangerous.
6 core coaching skills for leaders:
#1. Noticing energy:
Notice your energy. How are you showing up? Your energy impacts others. Turn your mind toward the person showing up. Distraction is the enemy.
Notice their energy. When an employee’s energy goes up, explore what’s happening. When shoulders droop, say, “I notice your energy seemed to go down when you brought this up. If you described your feelings, what words would you use?”
Noticing energy is often the most powerful coaching skill.
#2 Asking curious questions:
Seek to understand the values, assumptions, and goals of others.
Curiosity never rushes to fix or control.
#3. Listening:
The love of talking ends coaching. Don’t interrupt.
Listen for aspirations, emotions, and motives.
#4. Exploration:
Discover untapped talents, strengths, and capabilities. Explore new options and opportunities. Find ways to connect aspiration to goals.
#5. Giving catalytic feedback:
Say what you see. Don’t judge. Talk about what’s working. What’s getting in the way? Honor progress. Reinforce positive behaviors. Bring up inconsistencies.
#6. Energizing engagement:
Define success together. Agree on next steps. Establish milestones. Review progress.
Focus on relationship and results. Strong relationships produce remarkable results.
Adapted from, Coaching for Engagement.
Begin with self-awareness and end with heightened engagement. Approach the six core coaching skills as a sequential trail to a mountain peak.
Which coaching skill has been most useful to you? How?
Which coaching skill is most challenging? How might leaders develop it?
Dig deeper:
10 Practices for the Leader as Coach
Listening is the Overlooked Tool of Leadership
The 6 Principles of Effective Coaching for Leaders | CCL
Here is what I try to do when coaching.
Start with pre-coaching –make observations of the person performance. Try to identify patterns of behavior. Point #1. notice energy is very important.
In the coaching session–points #2 & #3 asking the right questions and precise listening are critical.
1. Clarify the goal.
2. Investigate what’s driving the current behavior.
3. Discuss more effective behaviors.
4. Get specific. What specific changes will the person commit to trying.
5. Establish a trigger that will prompt the new behavior.
6. Establish one metric to track the change.
7. Follow up.
Just as you should parent the kid you have, not the kid you wish you had; the same applies to coaching. Coaching styles and approaches have to adjust to the person you are working with and what they are working on. Staying humble – chances are they know more about their own job than you do – and asking good questions are the two keys to staying out of their way. My favorite book on coaching is The Tao of Coaching by Max Landsberg.