2 skills that will make you Coaching Leader when you are not a licensed Coach

Do you sometimes wish that developing and retaining your talent was easier???

Even the most effective and so-called "charismatic" leaders, who make leadership look so easy, will admit that it can be hard.?

Leading people and developing your precious talent becomes increasingly challenging and requires continued development even from very experienced leaders. There are plenty of books and research reports providing advice about successful leadership but today I am going to focus on what seems to be new and particularly challenging.?

"Talent wants to be coached, not managed" - I wrote a lot about it in my last article "How to Retain Talent ahead of Recession".? Coaching may sound easy but if you try it, you will realise that becoming a coaching leader is a matter of sharp skills and mental hacks at work. If all your professional training? to date was always focused on managing? - managing? people, teams, projects, processes, change… etc. , you may now wonder How do I? become a coaching leader? Attending a proper Coaching course that will give you a licence is of course the best way to get there, but not everybody has enough time and space to do it. Meanwhile talent doesn't wait - if high potential members of your team don't get what they want they will go looking for it somewhere else.?

So,? with no time to waste you better start working on your coaching skills right away.

First of all, what is the big deal about coaching??

How different is it from training people and telling them what to learn to be successful?

I could write a few pages on that topic alone, but in a nutshell, the difference is in the long term effect.?Coaching develops people as a whole, not just their skillset.?

The goal of every coaching process is to lead your Coachee to a CHANGE that s/he will define and accomplish with your support.

Changes happen in their way of thinking, attitudes, behaviours, working style and ways of dealing with others. As a result, the Coachees develop strong self-awareness, identify their own development areas, make their own decisions and, most importantly, generate a huge amount of energy to channel their effort in learning new skills useful for their careers.

I spent a big chunk of my career in Leadership Training and I used to swear by the effectiveness of some training methods and results, but since I started coaching I am continuously amazed by the results and the difference it makes for the people who are coached. Seldom ever any training program could deliver remotely close results to those I have seen with coaching.

So, if you want to lead by coaching you can start now with sharpening two key skills that you are probably very familiar with, but still - my advice is to take a deeper dive in them: Listening for Potential? and Asking? the Thinking Questions?

Develop Listening?for Potential technique?

What is Listening for Potential ? It means listening with your empathy and a focus on finding your Coachee's strengths, goals and possibilities,? NOT on solutions to their problem.

Here is the challenge. While you are looking for the potential clues and opportunities that your Coachee needs to discover, there will be 4 typical disturbing trains of thoughts going through your head and it's your job to make them silent to create the necessary distance:??

FILTERS OR BIASES?

We all have deep beliefs and biases, no matter how hard we try not to. So for example, if you believe that "a person who does not hold an engineering degree can not be structured and detail oriented enough to succeed in a Technical Department" - you will allow this belief to dominate your listening and you may miss many clues or opportunities to discuss this person's achievements or potential for future accomplishments? because s/he is a biologist. Your brain will likely be looking for evidence that will support your bias and it will not help you to listen for the potential of the Coachee.??

HOT SPOTS

The areas of your personal difficulty that currently feel uncomfortable and can cause some emotional charge. For example if your son is currently struggling to finish his high school, it may be difficult for you to discuss your Coachee's? dilemma about the choice of University scholarships her son is having at the moment.

We as leaders are still human and we can not be in the good place in life all the time. So when the hard times touch us on the personal level and we still want to be effective coaches at work, it is critical that our Hot Spots are identified and kept at a healthy distance. So in case the coaching conversation inevitably leads to your hotspot, feel free to take a pause or even share with her/him the reason why this conversation is becoming uncomfortable or painful. It will be perceived as genuine and authentic. Do not be afraid to be vulnerable - it is a virtue to be authentic and honest during the coaching conversation.?

Another way of "parking" your hotspots away, is to spend a minute or two at the very beginning of the coaching conversation to "clear the space" - you share what is currently going on in your head and ask your Coachee to do the same. This way both of your brains will stop processing these currently burning issues for a while, allowing you to focus on the coaching dialog.?

DETAIL

Have you heard of "not seeing forest for the trees"? What often gets in the way of clarity is being too close to the situation to see the patterns or opportunities. A big part of unsuccessful listening is allowing ourselves to? pay too much attention to a detail and letting the conversation take too many D-tours away from coaching targets. Very analytical and detail oriented people may struggle with this part at first, but it's possible to train your mind to always keep a broader perspective while coaching.??

AGENDA

Coach with an agenda? does not see or hear things clearly for what they are, and is not able to help the Coachee reach the targets.?

For example if the coach wants the Coachee to come to a certain conclusion and make certain decisions - it is an agenda.

If the Coach tries to impress the Coachee as a coaching expert it is an agenda , and it will work like a filter or a bias .

If the Coach target is to keep the coaching conversation at a certain pace it will distract the thinking process of your Coachee.

?When? you manage to put these thinking patterns in a distance while talking to your Coachee your listening will be? focused on the potential? opportunities and strengths of your Coachee, and it will stimulate the right coaching questions to follow.

Ask Thinking Questions

First of all, what are Coaching questions?? They usually are open ended questions formed in a way that stimulates deep thinking, self discovery and generate energy towards further learning and improvements.?

Thinking Questions are specific - they help the Cachee realise what their own thinking patterns are, where the gaps are, how these patterns and gaps affect them short and long term. This way of thinking makes people identify the change they need to achieve the desired goal.

In short - Thinking Questions raise the Coachees self awareness and make them take responsibility for their change and lead to breakthrough.?

Here are some examples:

• How long have you been thinking about this?
• What is the ratio of the thinking? you do about a problem versus the solution?
• What are you noticing about your thinking?
• How important is finding a solution to this problem for you on the 1-10 scale?
• Do you have a thought that resonates as we talk?What is it?

There are seldom any WHY questions.? That is? because they may lead to focus on detail and give the Coachee a sense of being judged.?

Summary

Retaining Talent depends on how well we are able to develop their potential.?

Developing the potential of the talent is no longer about sending them for training programs.

If you care about the development of High Potential people in your organisation you need leaders to coach skilfully on a daily basis. If you are not a trained Coach the Listening for Potential? and Thinking Questions are the first skills every leader should sharpen towards becoming a Coaching Leader.?

To learn more about the practical coaching techniques for every day use please contact me directly or place your questions and comments under this article.