In our last post, we looked at the role Managers play as Supervisors. In addition to supervision, excellent Managers also provide coaching to their direct reports. This article looks more closely at what it means to be a Coach.
Coaching is purposeful interaction that grows a person. Coaching is an investment in people of time, energy, and patience. It is for the benefit of the individual who is being coached. The growth they accomplish and achievements they gain from being coached follow them, whether they are on your team, in your company, or not. As a coach, you’re building into a person for their betterment.
Coaching focuses on people; it’s concerned with growing people towards their highest and best.
Coaching is individualized. It takes into account the characteristics and needs of the person being coached.
Coaching is episodic.
The Greek word Kairos helps explain the episodic nature of coaching. Kairos is a critical, opportune time; it is a passing instant, when an opening presents itself and beckons a response—the result of which has the potential to be transformative. Coaching happens in Kairos time. It happens in moments when your staff confides in you, in the times when your team looks to your response in the midst of a crisis, and when you’re faced with a choice of whether to provide honest, constructive feedback in hopes of achieving growth. Recognizing these Kairos moments is one of the most important components of being an effective coach.
A manager who effectively coaches their staff creates employees who are engaged, increasingly effective, and continually growing in their value to the organization. Two principles that can help guide a manager to be a successful coach are the Coaching Session Framework (FUEL) and the concept of “highest and best.”
Coaching Session Framework (FUEL)
Staff that have a manager who coaches them achieve higher levels of productivity, improved self-respect, and better self-esteem; they’re more confident, and are more willing to take risks necessary for career advancement; they are more creative and innovative. While supervising staff gets the work done, coaching is what ensures your team is equipped to enact and support your company’s future growth.
We’ve already said that most coaching doesn’t happen in Cronos time, but rather Kairos time – moments of opportunity to impact your team members that are often unplanned. When presented with a Coaching opportunity, it helps to have a simple structure to maximize the interaction.
There are four parts to the Coaching Session Framework. After introducing them, we’ll dig into each part in more depth.
Frame the conversation.
Understand the current state.
Explore the desired state.
Lay out a success plan.
The acronym FUEL can help you remember this process; this approach fuels an effective Coaching interaction.
Step 1: Frame the conversation.
The purpose of this step is to make sure it’s clear what topic or issue is being discussed. We also recommend proposing a structure for the conversation.
For example, a manager might start a coaching session by saying, “I’d like to talk about your reaction to the situation this morning. It’s clear to me that you were upset by it, and I’d like to understand your perspective on the matter. I value your opinion, but it’s important that sharing your thoughts doesn’t undermine the chain of command in our team. With that in mind, let’s have you start with you sharing your thoughts, then I’d like us to work on a path forward, together.”
With this statement, the manager and the staff member are on the same page about the focus of the session, and the basic structure in which the conversation will occur. The manager has effectively framed the conversation.
Step 2: Understand the current state.
In this step, you are trying to understand the employee’s point of view. What is their perspective on the matter? How are they feeling? How is this topic/issue impacting them? It’s all too easy to assume you know what is going on. Don’t make that mistake—instead, listen. Listening is the most important thing you can do in this step of the session, and maybe as a coach in general. Listen to not only what they are saying, but how they are saying it; notice what they are saying with their body language.
Use questions to further your understanding about where they are coming from. You can ask things like:
I’m curious why you felt that way. Can you explain?
Can you help me better understand what led you to that conclusion?
Were there outside factors that impacted your reaction?
Help them question key assumptions they’ve made in forming their point of view. An important part of coaching is helping them expand their awareness. You can ask things like:
Do you think your reaction could have been different had the news been delivered in an alternative way?
Have you considered the possibility that your co-worker may not have intended to make you feel that way?
Is there anything else going on—work related or otherwise—that might be contributing to how you’re feeling right now?
At the conclusion of this step of the session, you both should have a clear understanding of the current state of the situation.
Step 3: Explore what the desired state looks like.
What does success, or a resolution, look like within the topic or issue being discussed? While this is something you can contribute to, it’s important to rely heavily on your listening skills—asking questions to further your understanding and expand their awareness.
You might ask things like:
What outcome would resolve this issue for you?
What would it look like for you to have the level of responsibility you desire?
What do you envision things would look like once the goal is achieved?
While you’re figuring out the vision for success, it’s also important to have your team member identify what barriers or challenges might stand in the way of achieving that success. This, again, is all part of growing them in their ability to make better decisions and expanding their awareness.
Allowing the employee to work through the issue in their own mind helps them engage their capabilities, practicing important critical thinking skills.
Step 4: Laying out a success plan.
In this final step, you help your team members engage their critical thinking skills to define the goals and expectations that will lead to the vision for success—the desired state—you defined in the prior step. This is likely an area you’ll contribute to, but you should try to let them do the heavy lifting here. In general, people are much more likely to meet goals they’ve set for themselves as opposed to ones imposed on them. Your role is to offer refinement and clarification to these goals and expectations as needed.
As part of this final step, it’s good to identify what support will be needed, by whom, as well as any milestones for follow-up and accountability. This plan may require your support to be enacted, so be sure to follow through on anything you commit to doing.
This is where the coaching session ends, and, arguably, the real work begins. You’ve helped your team members work through where they are now in the specific topic or issue, where they want to be, and how they are going to get there. Now it’s time to start getting there.
Remember, coaching is often not planned; it happens in Kairos time. In Greek, Kairos literally means “opportunity.” Coaching is about seizing these Kairos moments. They do not wait, they come without warning, and they are fleeting. Coaching your staff takes purposeful effort to recognize these moments.
The Importance of Listening
Throughout each step in the FUEL framework, you likely noticed that listening is emphasized as a critical part of effective coaching, and it’s important to understand why. It’s not because a coach isn’t supposed to offer their thoughts and insights, or act as a guide through this process. We emphasize the need to listen because serving in a listening role is counter-intuitive to most managers. After all, as a manager, you’re asked to solve problems all day long. In fact, if you had to boil your job down to just one description, it would probably be “problem solver.”
Coaching requires you to set aside that natural urge to fix things and give the answers. When you’re a coach, it’s not your job to solve the problem; it’s not even your job to necessarily identify the problem. You’re trying to encourage your people to solve problems on their own, to make better decisions, and increase their awareness. You simply cannot achieve that by giving them the answers.
So, instead of your traditional role of “Problem Solver,” being a coach means being a “Listener.” Listening involves taking in what is being said in an attempt to truly understand. When you are listening, you’re not thinking about the advice you want to give, or inaudibly taking a stance with what is being said. Your role as a coach is to listen so that you can understand, then respond in a way that helps the person you are coaching reach their potential over time.
The concepts from this article were taken from Strong Management Team: Leading with a shared vision and common language. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores this and other concepts in-depth while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to start benefiting from a Strong Management Team in your company.