It’s Essential to Learn How to Coach Your Employees and Teams
“Learning and using effective coaching skills improves team results.” Jeannette Seibly
Today, more than ever, coaching is an essential skill for bosses and leaders.
Why? The effectiveness of coaching is reflected in employee and customer retention, employee job satisfaction, and team results.
The challenge? Many bosses/leaders don’t understand what coaching is or how to do it. Or, they’ve tried it, and it didn’t work, leaving employees and teams deflated.
The good news is that bosses and leaders can become good coaches. But like any new skill, it takes consistent practice to improve and become effective.
How to Improve Your Ability to Coach Effectively
First, Let’s Define Coaching. Coaching is not telling employees what to do. That is what supervisors or managers do. Coaching involves guiding, empowering, and helping each employee and team grow by listening, making suggestions for improvements, and allowing the employee and team to stretch — which sometimes means they’ll make mistakes and experience failures.
Let’s Get Started
Create a Learning Environment. When learning, employees increase their natural curiosity and innovative spirits. Ensure you invest in each employee and team and work with them to use the new skills effectively.
Be Specific in Your Praise. Celebrate individual achievements, successes, and wins with specific acknowledgment. Learning how to brag appropriately is also important to build confidence.
Build a Win-Win-Win Decision-Making Model. Involve your team in decision-making processes to build trust and ownership. Remember, this involves true brainstorming, resolving team conflict, and encouraging respectful conversations — each person speaks up and feels comfortable doing so.
Learn from Failure. Everyone has an opportunity to learn from their mistakes and failures — in fact, it’s the best way to learn. This is not the time for “I told you so’s” or other disparaging comments. Instead, use the “What Worked/What Didn’t Work?” and review with the employee or team. Focus on lessons learned and what’s next.
Leverage Strengths. Identify and capitalize on each team member’s strengths using an objective job fit assessment. These objective insights help you, your employees, and your team members grow and develop. With the information provided, you will be able to provide laser-like coaching rather than the hated trial-and-error process which leaves employees disempowered.
Practice Emotional Awareness. Understand and manage your own emotions and those of your team. Use compassion, respect, and a sandwich approach when offering feedback to your team members without being critical or condescending.
Listen. Listen actively and ask open-ended questions. Sometimes, all you need to do is listen and facilitate the conversation. By being a sounding board, it allows the team member to work out the solution and have the confidence to implement it. Don’t forget to ask “By When” it will be done and mark it on your calendar. (An important coaching strategy.)
It’s critical to remember that developing practical coaching skills is an ongoing process and not a one-time event. Don’t forget to hire your own executive coach to guide you through those sticky situations and political working relationships. This helps you coach others!
©Jeannette Seibly 2024 All Rights Reserved
Jeannette Seibly is a Talent Advisor/Leadership Results Coach with over 31 years of practical experience guiding leaders and bosses to improve their hiring, coaching, and managing practices and produce amazing results! And yes, achieving business success always starts with having the right people in the right jobs! She has been an Authorized PXT Select® Partner for over 32 years. Contact Jeannette to learn more about these state-of-the-art job-fit assessment tools or how to coach and manage your people to achieve incredible results.
A note from Jeannette: Today’s bosses and leaders must become effective coaches. Coaching is not the same as managing and telling people what to do. Do you need help developing an effective coaching style as a boss/leader without defaulting to the hated trial-and-error approach? Contact me!
Now is the time to get into focused action! Are there days you dread doing what is needed to manage your people, projects, and team’s financial performance? You’re not alone! Everyone has those days! But continuing to hide behind excuses only hurts you and your future promotability. I have extensive experience and wisdom guiding bosses and leaders to hire, coach, and manage their teams successfully — this includes getting you out of the way and working with and through people effectively to achieve the results required. Contact me to learn more about my in-depth, one-on-one, customized coaching programs.
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