In this coaching series, we’re co-creating leader-led coaching content to bring tips and strategies that have worked on the ground and that align with the evidence base.
At Reejig, we know how essential it is for larger organizations to use workforce intelligence, in order to bring two-way visibility between people with skills and work that requires those skills. We also appreciate the importance of supporting human to human moments to reduce barriers and enable potential to be unlocked in people, once two-way visibility is in place. Both technology and human interaction are vital to create a world of Zero Wasted Potential.
So, first — a call-out to you. Leaders often adopt coaching duties (informal or formal) at work. As we begin our dive into the role of coaching, our question for you is simple. Reflect on how you formally or informally coach others at work. What is something you do that has proved helpful? Will you share it with us, so that others can gain from your insights, in service of Zero Wasted Potential?
Demystifying the coaching process
To begin, we’re focusing on the importance of demystifying the coaching process. We’re learning that there are a whole heap of people who care, and who say “but I’m not qualified!” or who worry that coaches will overshare, or that they will enter types of conversations where they’re out of their depth, or counterproductive.
At its heart, the coaching style appropriate for manager and colleague coaching consists of three parts; listening, questioning, and reflecting.
We believe it is possible to safely and responsibly harness our own inner coach at work, without retreating with a hasty “but I’m not qualified!”. It is important to state that coaching is not therapy. It is not advice giving, either, and therefore it’s not telling someone what to do or how to do it. A colleague-coach or a manager-coach does not get into deep dark areas of a colleague’s (or “coachee’s”) life or history. These areas are the domain of a professional therapist.
What colleague coaching offers is a space that is nonjudgmental and safe, exploratory and not wedded to KPIs. It is a space in which the coachee can bring questions and reflections about what they might like to develop through their career journey forward. For the manager coach, this is especially important as it brings further clarity to visibility around career pathing for team members, and where and how a team member might benefit from upskilling, having their role reejigged within the team, or via internal mobility. This can provide even more context to how the personalized career pathing from Reejig can activate meaningful careers at scale.
What is the impact of effective coaching?
Alright, that said - let’s get started with some background intel. We know that manager coaching can be golden for developing and supporting employees at all levels unlock their potential. As Herminia Ibarra and Anne Scoular put it in their HBR article The Leader as Coach;
“coaching ..is ongoing and executed by those inside the organization. It’s work that all managers should engage in with all their people all the time, in ways that help define the organization’s culture and advance its mission”.
Effective manager coaching predicts employee engagement, career growth, team productivity, and business performance and culture. Indeed the effectiveness of a manager’s coaching with team members may help explain why 70% of the variance in team engagement is determined by the manager. As a psychologist and coach myself, I would suggest we go one step further, and seek to embed certain cornerstone coaching activities into the culture of the organization, so that everyone from burgeoning leaders to frontline workers experience a coaching culture, to amplify their sense of inclusion, belonging, and potential.
“By addressing what matters to their frontline workforce, employers can harness the untapped potential of a large and motivated talent pol - an urgent priority amid labor shortages and challenges in attracting and retaining talent. And when employers do more and do better to support the advancement of frontline employees, they create opportunities for their employees to meaningfully improve their lives and livelihoods.”
McKinsey, July 2022 Bridging the Advancement Gap
Opening up coaching to every level of leadership
Everyone has something to offer in the coaching space. Coaching is everyone’s business. Everyone, in the right context, has something they can give and something they can receive.
Coaching is about listening, questioning, reflecting, and fundamentally being there to unlock ‘aha!’ moments and the potential of a coachee. Coaching is not mentoring (although it can happen within the mentoring context) and is not advice giving. It can be as much about offering a thoughtful and well-timed, “what is it that makes you feel that way?”, or reflecting back what you’ve heard, as it is about having experience with what the coachee is talking about. It is about enabling someone to be seen, heard, and valued through current focus and future follow-up.
Irrespective of your ‘level’ within an organization, your frame of reference is like your fingerprint - it’s different to someone else’s. There is value in that. Because you can ask questions with a ‘curious, nonjudgmental mindset’ from your own unique vantage point, which may prompt further thoughts, or remove blockers, on the part of the coachee.
The core traits of a coach
As a coach you are not there to give someone answers. You are not there to advise them based on your opinion of what they ‘should’ or ‘need’ to do. As an experienced leader, career coaching may incorporate your experiences and insights. However, even in that context, it is important to offer personal experience from an open, not a dictatorial, perspective, where you intentionally give credence and balance to pros and cons, irrespective of your personal opinion about what someone should do.
A coach is patient, and gives space to the coachee. This can necessitate leaning into allowing space, as some people depending on their character and background may need more time to reply, and if you jump in you may never enable their personal, “aha” gold to come to the fore. As the coach, it may feel uncomfortable to sit with silence, and one technique is to count your breaths, and think - “I’ll allow another five breaths and then I’ll jump in”, for instance. The expression, “silence is golden”, could have been written about the coaching experience!
The power of listening as a coach
Perhaps the most important element of coaching is learning how to listen; nonjudgmentally, empathically, with a focus on valuing the long term relationship over short term gains from the coachee (employee). A great employee is far more valuable to the organization in the long term than in the short term, both financially and culturally, no matter what the perceived cost to the team’s KPIs right now. Yet a trap for some newer manager-coaches is the use of coaching essentially as a cattle prodder for the sake of short term gains, or prioritizing short term gains over longer-term value. Conversations around burnout and enabling time to recover is the ultimate example of a moment where short-versus long-term trade-offs can come to the fore (especially when the coach is experiencing symptoms of burnout too - we’ll get into this in more depth in a later article). Whilst cattle-prodding may enable short term gain, it is almost always at the expense of compounding, longer-term benefits.
There is so much to come around coaching, including getting into the nitty gritty of active listening and socratic dialogue. For now, the nutshell is that amongst the myriad of skills that a leader should seek to develop for their ZWP backpack, coaching represents an important cluster for reducing wasted potential in people, keeping people more engaged in the process, and optimizing financial and cultural return for the business. Because after all, fundamentally, coaching at work is about contributing to a world of Zero Wasted Potential!
Take-away:
Working on your listening skills is an especially important component of seeing, hearing, and valuing what someone brings to work. It contributes greatly to unlocking potential in people at work. Active listening - to really seek to hear what someone has to say as well as giving the space to say it - is one particularly important element of coaching colleagues.
Have some insights to share with ZWPers on what has worked for you in coaching colleagues? Please get in touch. We’d love to hear from you!
