With great roles come big responsibilities. Among them, the biggest we have as managers is to enable and sustain the growth of our resources and this is perfectly matching with the use of a coaching program.
Let’s have a look at the main point first: defining coaching. If you are going to ask to your employees, most probably all of them will answer that coaching is a fantastic idea but then when comes to reality you will experience a sense of “gap” because most managers often, while they are convinced that they are “coaching” their resources, in reality they are just telling employees what to do.
In reality our role as leaders is to enable a person’s potential to maximise performance. This means combining a learning dynamic with an inclusion program – if done right, coaching can also help with employee engagement – and becomes more effective if you bring your experience into a situation to foster reflections rather than to tell what to do.
Getting to be able to recommend to resources and educate them is the arrival of a long and complex path, where we have to invest firsthand in learning how to support our people.
The initial attitude for the manager in the support phase may be to have a tendency to behave more like a consultant but this is not what they need. Essentially, it results in simply providing the other person with advice or a solution. You are moving from suggesting or coaching to micromanaging and to a an impeding situation rather than an enabling one: solves the problem of the moment but does not provide the key to solving similar problems in the future.
From experience it is important that the manager who must provide correct coaching acquires the following skill over time:
- Ability to listen
- Ability to ask questions in the appropriate manner
- Knowing how to give feedback
- Knowing how to support the employee in management of objectives
- Let the employee come to its own solution by encouraging a solution-focused approach
- Recognise and emphasise strengths
- Provide structure to reasoning
