If you think what you are doing is coaching and you have not been trained to coach then what you are doing is probably not coaching. In fact, most internal 1 and 2 day coach training programs are designed to help managers and leaders to learn and hopefully use the “skills of coach” and not to coach people for development. A coaching “style” or approach to managing people is effective and useful when applied to the right people in the right situation. However, it is not developmental coaching.
And if that’s the case, you won’t get the results that coaching promises. If you want results then the skills, tools and mindset of a coach must be present. The best coach training will include mentor coaching, competency development, assessment, supportive learning and capability building. It’s harder than you imagine to make the paradigm shifts required to apply coaching skills effectively as a leader or a manager. Here are a few of the key paradigm shifts that we support coaches to make:
- From telling to asking
- From solving problems to co-creating solutions
- From horizontal to vertical development
- From expert to enabler
- From taking ownership to giving it
- From not trusting to trusting
- From distracted listening to actual listening and presence
- From management people as a resource to developing resourceful people
The final shift is the most difficult: to remain focused and aware, in the moment of choice, of how you want to show up, what your direct report wants and needs and what the organisation wants and needs. These are not easily learned, developed and consistently applied. If you want to add life changing coaching skills to your repertoire, then get trained to coach!
Craig Mckenzie
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