Category: Management Training

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To coach, or not to coach? That is the question!

In fact, many questions!

One key role of a leader is to help those around you to be the best they can be. To empower people, they need the skill and the will to do their jobs. What happens when someone has the will, but the skill level is lacking? They need some learning and development! There are different ways of helping people – let’s focus on coaching.

If we’re going to coach people effectively, we need to understand how it really works – many people don’t! They’re probably training, teaching, explaining, advising, guiding or mentoring (you may want to check out our mentoring training courses London), but these are not the same as coaching.

So what is it then?

If you really are coaching someone, all you do is ask questions. In a training or mentoring relationship, the assumption is that at least one party has knowledge or experience to share with the other – in these cases, it’s the trainer or mentor. However, when we coach someone, the assumption is that the coachee has the knowledge or ideas buried somewhere within them – the coach’s role is to ask thought-provoking questions to bring this information to the surface.

The coach helps the coachee to realise that they know more than they think. In a coaching conversation, who should be doing most of the talking? The coachee! If not, or the coach is both asking and answering the questions, then coaching has ended and a different method is being used (training or mentoring?)!

The GROW coaching model

Person Holding A Green Plant

A popular coaching model for you to try is called the GROW model – it’s all question based:

Goals
  • What do you want to achieve?
  • What is important to you right now?
  • What areas do you want to work on?
  • What do you want to achieve as a result of this meeting?
Reality
  • Where are you now in relation to your goal?
  • On a scale of 1 to 10, where are you?
  • What skills/knowledge/attributes do you have?
  • Describe your current level of knowledge regarding this topic?
Options
  • What are your options?
  • I’d like you to come up with 5 options.
  • How have you tackled a similar situation before?
  • What might you do differently next time?
Will/Way forward
  • Choose your best options.
  • What actions will you take?
  • What will be the first step towards achieving your goal?
  • When are you going to start?

This coaching model is very flexible – at each stage, ask sufficient questions and when you feel you have learnt enough, move on.

 A final thought

The assumption when coaching is that the coachee has ideas and knowledge which the right questions should bring out. But what if the assumption is wrong, and after a few questions the only answers have been ‘dunno, dunno that either, please just tell me!’

Perhaps coaching isn’t the right approach here and it’s time for some training or mentoring? If the individual leaves knowing more than when they arrived, then you’ve helped them to learn and develop. Who cares how you got there?

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Two simple but effective ideas to build morale in your team

One of the most interesting roles of the manager is the opportunity to build an engaged, motivated team.

Too often we rely on successes and wins to energise or revitalise the workplace spirit. The most dangerous attitude in the business world must be apathy, providing a constant threat to efficiency, productivity and ultimately profitability. Though morale needs nurturing and management, often we rely on skill levels rather than personality.

How to build morale in a team?

One such lesson that I learnt was when I was working in a family-run company. The business did well, yet the morale and atmosphere were built around the hub of its sales team, and the office environment was pretty flat. I just felt it could do a whole lot better. So, two things were introduced to bring change. The first was a great receptionist. The company Directors went looking deliberately for ‘sparkle’. It wasn’t the skill of the telephone system, the booking process or the industry knowledge, they went deliberately searching for that one person who everyone loved to talk to on the phone.

Finding the ‘sparkle’

And wow did they find her! She was an ex-holiday rep with a smile that flooded every intonation of tone and powered every greeting. She was loud, boisterous and pure joy. The clients loved her, the salespeople soaked up her enthusiasm, and the business suddenly had a face, a personality. The energy levels just soared – and how much do you think that sparkle was worth to the business? The phone and computer systems were something that over time could be taught, what she had was natural.

Too often resumes and experience, although logically an important component of a professional’s life, can too easily camouflage the depth of a person’s personality and character. Which as has just been demonstrated, can be so important in what a person can truly bring to the workplace.

Two Person Standing in Silhouette Photography

Bring some fun to the working day

The second thing that was introduced was the ‘afternoon sweet run’. Such a simple thing that had a bit of fun and had so many hidden advantages! An injection of fun (and sugar) at 3pm every day did an amazing thing to raise the energy levels.

It gave the Director who was doing the round (and we had a different person each day) a great way of checking the ‘pulse’ of the business. They could visually assess the state of the team, while at the same time offering themselves in an informal situation to help develop rapport. Out of so many areas that I have tried in the past the sweet run held just so much magic. Such a small daily effort which said so much.

In summary…

Often you may hear managers rhetorically thinking aloud that they wished they could find a cure for this or an answer to that, especially when dealing with morale. Sometimes the solution lies beyond the obvious CV skillset. Sometimes the answer lies in finding that one right catalyst.

What small change could you make to boost the morale of your team?

For more inspiration and management tips, take a look at our Motivating Skills or Team Building training courses.