A great leader is a great coach, and in today’s episode on the Joy to Lead® Podcast we’re diving into how to coach your team for better performance.
We dive into coaching foundations and principles and how to use the GROW model to guide coaching communication and increase team performance.
Listen to the episode now!
What is coaching, anyway?
What is coaching? Coaching focuses on learning, not teaching, in alignment with Socrates belief that instruction actually impedes self-actualization.
No one teaches a child to walk, run or talk – yet they naturally grow through desire, trial and error, and practice.
A coach is the facilitator of the learning – clearing the path, providing encouragement, and helping the individual try and try again to reach their fullest potential.
Coaching believes you are an acorn – that you have your blueprint inside of you – rather than an empty vessel to be filled. The coach helps create the environment needed for optimal growth (safety, vulnerability, resources, communication, feedback and resistance)
What are your goals as your coach your team?
Awareness
Your job is to cultivate awareness and responsibility. You can only control what you are aware of. What you are aware, you control. Of what you’re unaware controls you. How do you become aware? Measure, visualize, define
A coach does this by asking questions. If I wasn’t here, what would you do? If you knew the answer, what might it be?
Responsibility
A coach does this by asking for permission before giving advice. They listen, not just hear and wait to respond; and, they ask for accountability and commitment to action from the coachee.
Objectivity
There is no true objectivity for us as humans, so it’s important that we always face the underlying values, prejudices, beliefs and limiting beliefs we hold as a human. We should never ask a question of a coachee that we haven’t yet asked ourselves.
As a coach we should always work toward fostering self-awareness, self-responsibility, and self-coaching within ourselves as well as our team members.
Resources for further learning:
The Educational Theories of Socrates
Coaching for Performance by John Whitmore
The Leader as a Coach – the Harvard Business Review
Self-Coaching Q’s for GROW Model
More Example Coaching Questions for GROW Model
Taking action:
Step into your leadership as a coach for your team members and learn how to hire, lead and inspire your dream team by joining the Joy to Lead® Leadership Academy!