Coaching is about exploring the gap between current reality and performances, and the desired state. The reality is that almost everyone needs coaching in their career and their life, but only a small fraction of our society avails themselves of this amazing art and science.
Those are the lucky ones. Businesses who have invested in ‘Business and Executive Coaching’ report an average Return on Investment of six to eight times their investment.
Listed below are a few tips on coaching your employees to success:
- God gave you one mouth and two ears in proportion, on purpose. Use them accordingly. Listen 80% of the time and speak about 20% of the time for best results!
- Be the leader you always wanted to be whenever you are coaching your team. Lead by example and demonstrate patience, integrity, honesty, punctuality and excellent organizational skills. Demonstrate excellence and inspire your team!
- Never leave a coaching session without gaining commitment for action items driven by the associate and derived from the concepts you’ve been discussing and developing together.
- Don’t coach associates to achieve your worldview of success. Understand how the coaching is going to help THEM Understand their win at a profound level and focus on making it happen.
- Approach your associates as if they are a peer, and a successful one with a bright future. Nothing is more disrespectful than treating your associate like they’re broken, and you need to fix them. Coach positively and focus on their strengths and progress, not on problem solving and what’s wrong.
- Your relationship must be centered on the person you’re coaching and their goals.The associate sets the direction of the coaching and sets the pace of forward progress. As the coach, you show respect; listen attentively and create an environment for safe self-reflection and self-guided action.
- As a coach, you are a facilitator and a guide. You slow down the distractions barraging your associates and provide them with the time for “slow-motion” self-reflection and introspective inquiry. Once your associate has caught up to the speed of the game, you help them move forward to gains.
- Use tools and techniques as a coach to help the associate raise self-awareness, self-decisiveness and then ultimately take self-guided action that propels the associate forward. Use Strengths Finder 2.0, Extended DISC, and Business Effectiveness Evaluation assessments and invest time to learn how to use them to your associate’s best advantage.
- It’s crucial that you have a strong sense of your role with the person you’re coaching. Are you the trusted peer and advisor, are you the manager, or are you the person who helps them to put their new self-awareness into a new context?
- Read constantly about coaching and utilize new techniques and frameworks to help your associates as the new methodologies become available.
Michael is an Executive Development Coach and a Business Advisor to award-winning mid-sized companies around the United States, primarily from the high technology industry and primarily fast-growth companies. Michael provides business advisory services and one on one coaching to C-Suite Executives and their Leadership Teams. Michael has taken a special interest in helping fast-growth companies to develop their emerging leaders into the leaders who will help them to achieve their next generation of outstanding results. If you’d like more information about helping your company become the next Fast-Growth award-winning company, send Michael an email atinfo@michaelbeachcoach.com.
