Don’t Coach the Dead
Everyone has potential. But you don’t run a rescue mission. Forget about coaching the incompetent. Train them.
The more capable the person, the more valuable development.
Elite performers in every sector have coaches.
Coaching won’t compensate for lack of aspiration or talent.
Don’t Coach When
Feedback feels like an attack. Resistance isn’t stubbornness. It’s self-protection.
Aspiration is recapturing the past. Development isn’t about doing things the way they’ve always been. When past wins prove you’ve arrived, you need a funeral, not development.
Defending image means you can’t change. The objective of intervention isn’t having it all together. Defensiveness isn’t stubbornness. It’s self-protection.
Insight without action is celebrated. People who love being told something new don’t seek development. They need a guru to protect them from gritty reality.
Self-development doesn’t help when you want to fix others. Successful growth moves from blaming others to ownership.
The Shift
Coach people who are capable, responsible, and committed to growth.
Intervention works when the need to be right goes quiet. When the desire for growth exceeds the need to self-protect. And when curiosity replaces control.
12 Self-Development Questions
- What’s working that I should pour energy into?
- What’s one thing I could do differently?
- When do I create friction without realizing it?
- What’s it like to interact with me?
- What new behavior might serve others well?
- What am I missing?
- What am I avoiding?
- What worked in the past, but not today?
- What am I learning and how is it changing me?
- How do I want to show up today?
- Who does this well? What do they do differently?
- What new behavior can I test this week?
Who is ready for development opportunities?
Resources:
The Simple Path to Your Best Self
Coachability: The Leadership Superpower
Teaching, coaching, and mentoring are all different. As a leader, you need to determine what each person needs from you. Someone who lacks the basic skills needs to be taught, someone who lacks understanding of how to apply those skills needs to be coached, and someone who wants to move to the next level needs to be mentored.
And it may change depending on the circumstances. Someone who needed to be coached yesterday may need to be taught today if the skills required for the assignment are different.
Your comment helped me think about coaching, mentoring, and training more clearly.
I would also add – “What didn’t work before, that could now?”
Sometimes people limit themselves by saying “We tried that, it didn’t work.”
Let’s explore why it didn’t work, what have we learned since then that could change the outcome?
It’s a little like learning from your mistakes.
Very useful, SB. When action is closely tied to skill then improving our skills changes what we’re able to do. So clear. A failed technique might work after improving a skill.
someone might say, I tried coaching my team and it didn’t work. After developing the practice of curiosity or humility, give coaching another try.
“When do I create friction without realizing it?” I loved all of these probing questions you asked, but this is the one I kept landing on. When you sense tension with someone, I think it is easy to assume it is the other person: they are having a bad day or they are just difficult to work with. But, how many times do we stop and ask if we are trigging them into an agitated or defensive response? A great self-reflective question.
I find it convenient and comfortable to assume other people have the problem. Learning to lead includes learning to take responsibility for ourselves first. It’s a bit of a kick in the pants.