A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be.
Tom Landry
In this post, I’m going to talk about my approach to coaching leaders. In future posts I’ll include some tips and strategies you can use to coach people who report to you.
The coaching I provide is a process that builds expertise and performance and helps leaders solve difficult challenges. It starts simply by having a leader talk about their challenges in a confidential discussion with someone outside the organization. As we talk, people find new perspectives, leading to new strategies.
Here’s a quote from a recent client:
Coaching enabled me to look at things differently. I felt stuck and desperate, trying to solve my problem over and over again from the same approach. The coaching discussion clarified things in my mind and got me on track to positive strategies that will come to fruition much more quickly.
Leadership is a complex role with many challenges. No one comes into the job being able to do everything well. Leaders learn on the job and a coach can often speed up that process. A coach is not an expert in everything either. But a coach asks questions that often help leaders find solutions to their problems. Coaches work with many leaders from many different organizations and therefor can bring ideas and solutions from other experiences they’ve had. Most reassuring, is that most of the problems you face are faced by other leaders who also struggled with them.
For most leaders, it is often lonely at the top – you can’t confide in the people who work for you and you often don’t want to confide in your boss or your board. Some are fortunate to have a supervisor who is willing and able to coach them. That’s the ideal arrangement. They really know your context and you have access to them on a regular basis. For other leaders, an outside executive coach can provide that service. An outside coach can also serve as a valuable sounding board to help think through specific issues. Since coaches don’t have any horses in the race, they are more able to approach situations with a very open mind and can help leaders rethink the scenario and see new ways of approaching it.
In addition, managers and supervisors have strong skills in some areas and weaknesses in others. They often don’t want to explore their weaknesses with their boss. Training is helpful in building a base of skills and knowledge. Coaching helps sharpen this and helps leaders apply the training in more challenging situations. This individualized support to helps sharpen they key skills needed to effectively lead.
There are many styles of coaching. Ours is action and outcome oriented. We help you analyze a situation, make decisions and move quickly to implementation. The process is fast paced results oriented, and based on careful analysis.
Good coaching should lead to:
- clarity of purpose / balanced perspective
- increased skills / more effective strategies
- more productive teams / less stress
- realistic and detailed action plans
Here’s a quote that brings a laugh, but only partially guides my coaching:
Never teach a pig to sing, it’s a waste of time and it annoys the pig.
Unknown
Our approach is to focus on the skills you need and the strategies that fit you and your context. These are easier for you to absorb and implement. But sometimes you may have to learn a strategy that may feel annoying. That’s one of the keys to successful leadership – learning to work effectively with people you find annoying and to do that, you sometimes have to stretch out of your comfort zone. Coaching is a totally customized and client focused strategy.
If you have thoughts to share about coaching or would like to explore coaching as an option for you, email me at alan@KriegerSolutions.com . In future issues we’ll give you tips and pointers about how to coach people who report to you.