Raising an employee’s awareness: a type of coaching conversation for leaders of people.

If you are a leader, you may be one of the lucky ones who can be straight with your colleagues and they feel they can be straight with you. If so….bravo!  

The more common scenario is that emotions and egos, mixed up with emotions and personalities create a communication nightmare. Whatever the specifics of your work scenario, learning how to conduct conversations that raise awareness is a key skill that can help you to surface ideas and concerns whilst motivating people and driving performance. 

When leaders train as coaches, they learn how to have “awareness raising conversations”.  These invite the colleagues to feel safe in expressing their tangled thoughts, and then as a result of being asked a series of strategic questions, they are able to untangle them. The offshoot of this is clarity and an increase in self-awareness.   

How can a simple conversation be so powerful?  

The answer is deep and complex. To put it very simply: thoughts are fast.  Without a processing space, a space for contemplation, thoughts can interact, override and compete for focus at the cost of self awareness. Our minds are filled with thousands if not millions of thoughts, all competing for our attention and our emotions all day long. Within a work-based setting, this competition for attention in the mind can interfere with our ability to receive feedback, be self aware, think about our impact on others, manage time, connect with colleagues, or clients…the list is endless.   

An awareness raising conversation is a conversational model in which the coach or leader interacts with the coachee in a way that enables them to assess their own thoughts and behaviours, and figure out what it is they are doing and why, and what impact this is having on the working environment and on shared goals. 

Talking is much slower than thinking. Talking puts the speaker in the position of having to slow down their thought process and assess their thoughts, providing a space for the person to organise their thoughts and resolve and untangle complications and interactions of those thoughts. Within a workplace, an awareness raising conversation gives a person that space and time to process without taking aware time, energy or effort from the workplace goal.  

Talking, particularly to a leader or coach, allows the person an opportunity to thoughtfully and consciously select words, and offer a definition of those words to effectively describe what they are thinking or feeling in regard to a situation or scenario – such as time for example. As a part of that slowing down, reflective and communicative process, the speaker is able to experience a sense of raised self awareness and clarity which is described often by coachees as a feeling of being lighter, or clearer, or more able to focus. For leaders, there is often a tremendous relief that their employee is able to identify for themselves what they need to do and why, and they do not have to get into what can feel like an uncomfortable conversational space.  

The employee receives a valuable insight into their behaviours and decision making process and more often than not, they do the work of becoming aware of the behaviour that could be destabilising the team they work with, or sabotaging their own effort to fulfil objectives and goals. That increase in self awareness then translates into better functioning, better emotional stability, and better bonding. 

If you are a leader then you know raising awareness can be a complicated and sometimes sensitive process. Train to coach. We’ll teach you how to do it without breaking a sweat.  

www.executivecoachstudio.com