The essentials of great coaching

If you lead a team, one of the most fulfilling parts of your role is to help others grow and reach their highest potential.

When you are intentional and grounded in your role as a coach, you engage with your team members to understand their needs and goals. You ask thoughtful questions, listen, and encourage them.

You don’t jump to advice or try to fix them or give them solutions. You guide them to come up with their own solutions.

Instead, you ask powerful questions to help them get clear about what they want to do and why, what skills and knowledge help them get there, and what gets in the way.

You help them break down what seems an overwhelming project into smaller. doable chunks.

You help them prioritize their projects based on what truly matters, and deprioritize or delegate what doesn’t.

You help them think through their next steps and come up with their own timeline and milestones.

In your one-on-ones, you give them constructive, actionable feedback.

You offer guidance where they need it, and over time you build trust and connection.

In the process, your team members better understand themselves, see their strengths and areas of development, and feel more motivated and confident.

These are all indicators that your coaching skills are strong.

If, on the other hand, you avoid asking questions and jump to offer advice without encouraging self-discovery, or you struggle to help your team get clarity and alignment, you have a lot of room to grow your coaching skills.

And that’s ok. We all start there.

In the first part of your career, your focus was on growing your skills and knowledge.

As you grow your career and become a leader, your success is about your ability to empower others to find their own answers while helping them build self-understanding, confidence, and motivation to follow through.

While there is a lot of support in developing your technical skills, experience, and knowledge, and there isn’t a clear curriculum to learn the latter.

Here is a pathway for what great coaching looks like

There are five elements to being an empowering coach to your team: humility (transcending your ego), non judgmental curiosity (genuinely desiring to understand people’s needs, fears, and aspirations), empathy (connect to their human experience), listening skills (deep listening is fundamental to effective communication), and skilled guidance (helping them get clarity about their goals and what get’s in the way of their innate greatness).

So, how can you develop those five elements?

It stars with developing your emotional intelligence through self understanding and build from there. You can’t give others what you don’t have.

A good practice is consistent self-reflection in a reflective, non-judgmental way. Treat every interaction as an opportunity for growth.

Reflect thoughtfully on your conversations and engagements. Jot down in your journal what feels good, and what doesn’t, what you find inspiring in others’ leadership style, and what you want to model for others.

As you unlock your wisdom, you are more able to help empower others to unlock their own.

Remember, everyone in your team is on their own path, growing at their own pace.

Meet them where they are.