Helping vs Coaching
Lisa Martin
Improving engagement and retention through COACHING SKILLS for leaders | Speaker | Bestselling Author | Coach-Like Leader
When I work with clients, I tell them there are 2 general approaches to attempting to fix any workplace problem: 1. The helpful approach and, 2.The coach approach.
‘The helpful approach’ sounds like a good concept, but too often it falls towards advising, telling, and micromanagement.?
It’s when the leader wants to get down in the details of what happened — “Well, why did you lose the Wells Fargo contact, Mark?” — and change/redirect the behaviours with influence and, sometimes, force.
The ‘coach approach’ is where you work with the individual to bring out self-awareness and help them understand what happened. In the above example, the leader could have said, “OK, walk me through the Wells Fargo deal and what happened step-by-step. I want to understand it a little better.”?
Here's your leadership behaviour, action, and coaching question ...?
Leadership Behaviour
To what extent do I: Use the helpful approach> 1 --- 2 --- 3 --- 4 --- 5 < Great
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Taking Action
Clients of mine often ask me what the percentage breakdown of these 2 behaviors should be, and I’d argue that leaders need to default to 80% (coaching) vs. 20% (helping).
There are some situations where everything is a total mess, hair is on fire …. or through consistent coaching, you’ve discovered that your team member has neither the capacity nor capability to rectify the situation on their own … and you need to dive in and fix it. That would be ‘helping’ and that’s valid, sure — but only about 1 in every 5 times.
Otherwise, it’s best to coach others.
Coaching Question
What gets in the way of me using the coach approach?
p.s. To learn more about how to coach to lead, check out my blog post here. https://www.lisamartininternational.com/post/how-to-coach-to-lead
p.s.s. If you or others in your organization want to benefit from becoming more coach-like, check out my asynchronous video course The Coach-Like Leader Experience?.
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