While there are many important leadership and management skills, coaching skills are vital when it comes to areas such as knowledge transfer and skills improvement. Core coaching skills such as empathy, listening and curiosity usually go hand-in-hand with being a good manager or leader. Here are some tips to keep in mind when coaching.
Ask questions
Good coaches ask questions and encourage dialogue. Conversation helps to build relationships. Knowledge transfer occurs much more readily when a relationship exists.
When you start understanding strengths and weaknesses, it gives you the power you need to fill in some of the gaps. You can empower people by helping them to solve problems under your guidance.
Listen carefully and encourage
You need to listen to the feedback you receive and encourage those you’re coaching to share their opinions. Allow them to talk without interjecting or trying to forward your own agenda. Become curious about what they’re saying and about what they’re not saying. If you’re critical of their opinions, they will tend to clam up. You need to offer encouragement and empower them instead.
Guide conversations
Your communication skills and emotional intelligence come into play in guiding conversations. Simply asking the right questions can guide employees to make discoveries.
For example, if you want a career as a life coach, you need to how to ask people the right questions and guide them on a process of self-discovery. Your employees will always grow more when you don’t just supply them with answers but guide them to find their own answers.
Provide frequent feedback and recognition
Annual performance reviews are not enough to give employees the encouragement they need. It helps to have frequent informal feedback sessions showing them where they can improve and giving them recognition for what they’re doing well.
Commit to ongoing learning
Lead by example and make a commitment to continuous learning. If you’re not learning yourself, why should your employees do so? You need to model the behavior you expect to see in others. Your credibility suffers if your actions and what you expect from others don’t match up.
Show your interest in the success of your employees and ask questions about their career goals and how they see their role developing within the company. They will respond if they feel your genuine interest.
Use every opportunity
Learning often happens best in the moment. When an employee comes to you with a specific question, treat it as an opportunity to teach something new. Be patient and take the time to show the employee what to do. Teaching and learning often go together and when an employee finds out what to do in a certain situation, he or she can pass on this knowledge to others.
Hold active meetings
When coaching in a corporate environment, it may be better to plan an activity, such as a walk or a hike where you and the employees are able to move together and have a flow of conversation outside of the normal work environment.
Allow room for personal growth
When employees are worried about office politics and retribution, they may downplay their problems or gaps in knowledge. When they operate out of fear and don’t feel the freedom to be able to make mistakes and learn from them, you can be left in the dark about crucial issues.
In order to grow, they need to have autonomy and you should not try to micromanage them. The only way they will learn is if they know they won’t be judged for making mistakes and understand that making them is a part of learning and growing.