It doesn’t matter how senior you are in an organisation, there’s always someone else more senior again. Even CEO’s report to the board. Having worked as a leader at every level, one thing has held true and that’s simply that the fastest way to disengage high performing talent or self-motivated team members is to tell them what to do.

Of course, some people love being told what to do. Often because they’ve never experienced what it is to be coached and come up with their own mental maps. Help those people discover the joy of being self-led and the confidence that comes from knowing the next step. And, at the same time, free yourself from the need to provide every answer.

Most leaders these days have heard about the benefits of coaching or the expression “leader as coach”. Coaching can play a crucial role in team development by unlocking the potential of individuals and building confidence and competence in teams at every level.

In fact, coaching has been found to provide employees with greater intrinsic motivation and according to McKinsey, when employees find greater intrinsic motivation, they are 32% more committed to their work and 46% more satisfied with their jobs.

So let’s jump into 5 quick ways to start moving towards a more coaching style in your leadership that will empower your team and boost their motivation!

1.  Coaching starts with curiosity

At the heart of coaching is curiosity. It’s the ability to suspend your own opinion for long enough to open the door for the other person to access their own knowledge and wisdom. With that in mind, here’s the easiest and best way to start coaching.

Answer a question with a question.

If someone asks you what they should do, take a breath, and ask what they think they should do. This simple first step enables that person to stop and think and build confidence in their own decision-making ability.

Don’t let the curiosity end there. Keep asking questions and genuinely seeking to understand. Especially when you disagree with someone’s course of action. By staying curious in the conversation, you stay open to learning and the other person will unlock their own insights and learning along the way.

In the end one of two things will happen:

1. 1. 1. You’ll understand more about the situation and may even get some new ideas and unique perspectives; or
      2. The other person will realise their initial course of action needed refinement and will land on an improved way of getting the outcome.

2.  Ask ‘what’ questions to focus on the issue, not the person

When you’re asking questions, starting the question with the word ‘what’ keeps the dialogue open and forces you to ask better questions. It also makes it easier to focus on the issue rather than the person when you ask a what question.

It’s easy for a person to get defensive with questions that start with ‘why’, less so when the question starts with ‘what’ in conjunction with genuine curiosity. This is at least in part because rephrasing to start a question with what often forces you to remove the judgement from the question.

Here’s some examples:

Why did you do that? versus What was the rationale for this approach?

Why were your results down last month? versus What happened to cause last months results to be lower?

Why are you so angry? versus What’s causing the emotion you’re currently expressing?

Yes, the difference is subtle and try it before you decide it’s not worth the effort. Ask a ‘why’ question and observe closely the response from the other party. Then ask a ‘what’ question and observe again.

3.  Offer Observations without Judgement

As a leader, one of your key accountabilities is to provide feedback to support the growth of a team member. The trouble with feedback that comes in the form of advice, is that it’s just your opinion.

Instead of telling someone what they did wrong and what they should do next time, offer them an observation of what you saw and give them the opportunity to consider next steps for themselves. Equally important, offer it without judgement of your opinion or what you think you saw.

This is harder than it sounds because we’re hardwired to judge situations. The first step here is to notice the judgement and then step it back to ‘just the facts’.

For example, one of your team members gave a presentation, they stumbled over their words, mumbled, didn’t have the IT ready to go and the audience members were yawning and rolling their eyes.

It would be easy to judge this and offer traditional feedback by saying something like:

“In your presentation today, you appeared really underprepared and the audience ended up looking up really bored. Taking the time to better prepare next time will help you get better audience engagement”

If you received this feedback, it could feel overwhelming in its negativity and judgement. To reframe this in a coaching style you want to simply offer the observation and frame a ‘what’ question. So it might look something like this:

“Today in your presentation I noticed that you stumbled over your words, mumbled, and didn’t have the IT ready to go. I also noticed the audience members were yawning and rolling their eyes. What do you think you’d do differently next time?”

This style of coaching and feedback opens the opportunity for the person to come up with their own ideas of how to improve. They probably already know it didn’t go as well as they’d like and there may well be a myriad of reasons why that they’re already thinking about improving.

4.  Never take the first answer

The first answer to a coaching question is usually a knee jerk response.

Once you’ve asked a question, it’s then about being patient and opening up the space for true insight to occur. If you take the first answer and then jump in with your own opinion, you’re missing the opportunity to make the most of the coaching opportunity. Instead use these two little words:

• • • What Else?