Published: November 4, 2014
How effective is your coaching practice?
Coaching is a vital leadership tool for liberating the potential of others. Teams and organisations that have a regular coaching practice significantly outperform their counterparts, because their people are active, agile and committed learners.
So how effective is your coaching practice? What new insight could you unlock to help you improve your leadership coaching skills?
Five questions to explore coaching in the workplace
- Is your coaching relationship built on strong foundations? Have you got an effective working relationship with your coachee, and are you able to openly have a conversation about what’s really going on? If not, you may need to do some more groundwork to establish enough trust between you.
- How good are you at making the shift in mindset from 'everyday action' to 'calm and focused'? If you’re not as effective as you’d like to be, consider trying to find a symbol or trigger to help you make the switch. Try stepping away from your desk, looking out of the window briefly, or turning off your laptop and phone. This gives you a few moments to calm your mind, so you can focus properly on the coachee.
- How effective are you at ending a coaching conversation and protecting your time? Those who struggle with this can soon find themselves swamped. Make sure you manage time and keep conversations productive. Be clear up front how much time you can offer, and if it's not enough, be honest about this and schedule the conversation for a better time.
- Are you able to suspend judgment when you listen? If you find that people frequently seek you out and confide in you about everyday problems then this is a good indicator that you are getting this right! However, if you find yourself getting judgemental, remind yourself that the person is a capable human being, fully able to solve problems for themselves. If you don't believe this is true, you probably shouldn't be trying to coach them – switch to directing, teaching or another appropriate leadership style.
- Are you making a difference? This is the ultimate question! Do people do anything different as a result of your conversations? Help your coachee track both their successes and failures, and make time to try and determine the causes of both. Stay resolutely curious about why they might be getting stuck and help them identify the root causes.
Coaching in the workplace: Continuous improvement
Whether you're engaged in leadership coaching, coaching for employee engagement, career coaching or something else, your coaching practice should continuously evolve as you learn and grow. How did these questions make you think differently about your coaching practice?
Learn more about executive leadership coaching.