Coaching is a hot topic these days. The question on everyone’s mind? What does it mean to coach at work, and how can coaching create high-performing teams?

Let’s start with why you may want to use coaching as a leadership style. To begin with, it builds and fosters relationships with employees, staff, and stakeholders that can be difficult to establish through other means.

Coaches are able to manage conflict in the workplace more effectively than bosses who rely on power structures like hierarchy or bureaucracy for their control. The coaching approach is a win-win situation because it allows leaders to grow into their roles while empowering followers to take ownership of their success.

Effectively executing a coaching leadership style increases team member engagement, trust and performance while also decreasing turnover, reoccurring mistakes and safety incidents.

What are business coaching fundamentals?

Coaching is a leadership skill that creates self-awareness, growth, and development for team members. One of the main fundamentals of business coaching is the one on one coaching conversation. The focus of these one-on-one coaching conversations is on current solutions and future performance rather than past mistakes and punishment. Not only do coaching conversations build trust between managers and team members, but they also drive sustainable, high performance.

All relationships are unique and require a slightly customized approach, but here are three core fundamentals of business coaching that can help you drive these discussions with your team:

Business Coaching Fundamental #1 – Ask creative questions and listen

Creative questions should target the unique situation for each team member and help team members create specific solutions to their own challenges. Creative questioning opens the door for:

• Deeper conversations that build a sense of understanding and trust
• New information to come to light
• Holding the mirror up and challenging maladaptive beliefs or conclusions
• Motivating the team member for some type of new/tailored action plans
• Tactfully nudging a team member towards a higher-performing mindset or solution

Keep in mind – none of this works if you, as the coach, are not actively listening, reading non-verbals, and digging into the “real” content of the conversations. It’s important to ask creative questions that reveal the core issue and mirror statements/repeat words back to the coachee so they know they are being heard.

Business Coaching Fundamental #2 – Each Coachee is Special

Every single human being has something unique to offer; they have specific strengths, nuanced concerns about their relationships, and specific goals.

Coaching needs to be customized and individualized. When you practice the above Coaching Fundamental #1, you’re already a step ahead of most managers – the next step is to make each team member believe in themselves and see value in their own unique contributions within this world.

The best coaches do this by:

• Active listening and expressing authentic interest in each coachee’s passions
• Empowering the coachee to explore their own strengths and passions in an intentional manner
• Checking for alignment by asking coachees whether the key strengths themes you’re hearing are accurate and drive the coaching conversation in that direction
• Uncovering the core motivators for each coachee – what inspires them and engages them?

Business Coaching Fundamental #3 – Always end with an Action Plan

The best managers and coaches never end a coaching conversation without being explicitly clear about the action plan. Empowering coachees to change their behavior and take at least one action to help exercise their strengths and become unstuck is key. Here’s what that can look like:

• Asking what about today’s conversation was inspiring
• Exploring any/all possible gaps that were revealed throughout the coaching conversation
• Identifying the root causes for any gaps or challenges and brainstorming solutions
• Pushing the SMART goal criteria for each action and applying positive pressure to ensure the details of each action plan are thought through. No half-baked actions/goals can come from this!
• Agreeing on all accountability items like action plan timeline, next meeting expectations, deliverables, etc.
• Ending by asking the coachee to visualize their life when the action/goal is complete and how positive they will feel when it is complete.

Strategies for using a coaching leadership style

Effectively executing a coaching first leadership style will improve team performance and will pay sustainable dividends for your business. Coaching as a leadership style involves using coaching strategies to foster the engagement, innovation, and productivity that are the hallmark of high-performing teams.

Here are some strategies that leaders can use:

Communication Coaching Strategies

Great coaches clearly communicate expectations to all team members as soon as possible. Your communication should cover the areas of:

• Technical skill expectations
• Behavioral expectations
• Culture/tribal knowledge expectations
• Workstyle and communication expectations
• Your coaching style expectations
• Anything else your business deems critical for performance

Feedback Coaching Strategies

Once you have clearly communicated your expectations, it’s time to offer feedback and coaching when the team member is doing well against these expectations (and also when they’re not doing well against these expectations!). Provide feedback and coaching based on your team member’s strengths and build positive rapport with each team member. Coach your team members based on their personality traits and preferences.

Accountability Coaching Strategies

A leader who uses coaching as a leadership style will hold their team members accountable for the clearly communicated expectations. It’s important to follow company performance management timelines or create your own review period where you can increase salary, delegate high-level projects, assign promotions, etc. to reward team members for any/all successes.

You may also need to formalize a performance improvement plan, demote or terminate an under-performing team member. None of this should be a surprise to you or the employee if you’ve been providing clear communication and feedback throughout the process.

Conclusion

Coaching as a leadership style fundamental skills come naturally to some leaders and others need to spend more time practicing and prioritizing the skillset. Either way, most leaders fall victim to fast-paced environments and fail to prioritize these coaching conversations with team members at some point.

The best coaching is done in a timely fashion, so don’t let these touch-points pass by.

Ultimately, business coaching is a skill set that anyone can learn and perfect through practice. Leaders and managers who already use executive coaching in their organizations understand the benefits of business coaching. It’s all about a growth mindset and continuous improvement, so start intentionally practicing now.

Looking for help in establishing a coaching culture within your organization? Get in touch here and let’s begin a conversation of our own!

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