Why we don't coach (but we should!)

What is coaching?

Coaching (as a leader) is when you work with your employees to help them find solutions to their challenges, to help them uncover new ways of thinking and to help them develop new skills. It's a crucial piece of our leadership style, but it's not something that we're taught how to do - even though it's JUST as important as being able to read a P&L sheet. 

Working with leaders, one common challenge I see is that many leaders don't know how to coach - or don't understand the importance of it. It's so easy for leaders to get wrapped up in trying to solve their teams problems for them, and trying to be the expert at everything. What happens then is that it creates this pressure cooker situation where the team might be doing ok, but the leader feels burnt out, overworked and starting to wonder why they can't stay on top of their own priorities. 

Why don't leaders coach?

Leaders feel rushed or think they don't have the time.

I'll be honest, coaching isn't the easy way nor is it the fastest way to a solution - but it is the most valuable for your employee. For example, say someone in your team comes to you and says "I've just encountered this challenge, what should I do?".

Option A: you tell them what to do, it takes you 2 minutes.

Option B: you coach them for 10 minutes by asking them questions about what information they need in order to solve this issue and where could they get it. You guide them towards the answer with a little help from you where needed.

The next time your employee encounters that challenge, which option do you think will be more helpful as they figure out how to respond to it? 

Option B is OF COURSE the best option, because they had to do all the thinking, they had to solve the problem themselves, which is far more memorable than just being told what to do. You used curiosity and good questions to help them actually learn. What's funny about taking the shortcut (i.e. Option A) is that it ends up taking you WAY longer - because your employee doesn't retain the information and will keep coming back to you time and time again, or you wind up having to jump in and do the work alongside them because they don't feel confident or don't feel responsibility for moving forward. 

Fear and self limiting beliefs get in the way of coaching. 

This is also a common roadblock for many leaders when it comes to coaching their team. If we don't know how to coach, sometimes the unknown freaks us out. We build "coaching" up to be some big "thing" and maybe don't realise that all it takes to start coaching is just a few simple tweaks to our leadership approach.

As leaders, we need to be swapping answers for questions and swapping judgement for curiosity. 

Leaders put too much pressure on themselves.

Leaders often get promoted from an individual contributor role (where they were the expert) up into a leadership role where they don't need to be the expert in one specific area - but instead need to focus their energy more on helping those in their team to be the experts in their functions. An easy trap to fall into is when leaders think they still need to be experts in specific skills and functions. They think they need to have all the answers, they have to be the experts in everything that their people are experts in. This creates an unreasonable expectation for the leader to know everything, so when someone comes with a question, instead of coaching the employee and keeping the ownership of solving the problem with the employee - the leader can take on the responsibility of solving the problem themselves.

Why we should be coaching

It's our job to upskill our team

It's our job to help upskill the people we lead. When we tell our people the answers, instead of coaching them to find the answers themselves - we take away a growth opportunity from them. Coaching is a crucial way of learning, and forms a part of your team and organisations overall learning and development. A general rule of thumb is that the most beneficial way to learn is on the job, the next most important way to learn is in a social setting like coaching or collaborating with someone else, and the third way to learn is in a formal setting like a training course or conference. Coaching impacts learning in such an incredible way, because when you coach someone and help them learn during your discussion - they then go back and apply the insight to their job and further embed the learning with that experience.

We need to constantly invest in ourselves and our relationships to grow our leadership skills.

"When one teaches, two learn" - such a relevant concept especially when it comes to coaching. During the coaching process, you are constantly learning.

• You refine the questions to ask as you learn what questions are more powerful and ignite and inspire your coachee.
• You learn more about your employees and deepen your relationships with them as you build trust and respect. 
• You grow as a leader, as you learn how to step back and empower others to own their jobs, solve their own problems and maintain responsibility for their deliverables. 

We need to manage our time, and focus our energy where we will get the best ROI

Leaders need to protect their time to lead - but if they step in to help their teams and end up losing hours or a whole day solving someones problem, it takes away precious time that could be spent  focusing holistically on your team, your goals and your strategy. Where will your time be better spent - imagine the value you could create by spending two hours thinking about how to improve the way your team operates using the unique perspective you have across your whole team vs. two hours spent doing something that someone in your team could do. 

Try this example too:

Situation: your social media executive is having issues getting the information she needs from other departments to build her content plan. 

Option A >> You could spend 40 minutes chasing up the other departments for her and then probably do the same thing again next month

OR

Option B >> You could spend 10 minutes coaching her on how to go and request the information so she improves her assertiveness and planning style AND then spend 30 minutes talking to the head of the other department about how you could collaboratively improve the process for both of your teams moving forward, saving everyone time next month. 

Coach your team to do their job, to allow you time to invest in the areas where your leadership and skills will be able to get the best return on your time.

As you can see - coaching is your secret weapon that helps you boost your team's performance, focus your time and energy in the most valuable places and grow as a leader.

What are you waiting for? Get out there coach!

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