In today’s volatile business landscape, sometimes managers have to go beyond technical communication with employees. They have to incorporate some sort of coaching skills to uphold their team firmly. Predominantly, it helps the employees to identify the power of their potential. It can accelerate employee engagement and establish trust in employees as well.
Manager as a coach doesn’t mean that you have to give step-by-step instructions for exact roads to take. Instead, coaching as a manager is like handing your employees a map and a compass and letting them find their way to reach the destination. They would not necessarily take the same road as you would, but your coaching will guide them to grow and develop with the sense of achieving goals. It will help them to walk on their own rather than completely dependent on you. Through coaching, employees learn to solve problems on their own.
However, there’s a line between when you have to act like a manager and when as a coach. Moreover, how you can become an effective coach for your employees.
Here we have a few tips you can use to become a coach while being a manager.
Listen carefully before you respond: Before you deliver guidance, it is better to gather as much information as possible. It will make you understand the situation and decide whether you should act as a manager or as a coach. You must know the extent of the employee’s concerns, else you might misinterpret whether it is an opportunity for a coaching conversation or not.
Be a sounding board: As a coach, you have to help your employees to solve problems on their own. Don’t tell them exactly what to do, instead offer them a workaround. Take your mindset away from providing answers or suggestions. Better amend it toward making your employees independently come up with a solution.
Put questions, don’t lay answers: Some managers often become the problem-solver for their subordinates. But remember, as a coach, you have to ask questions instead of providing answers to the problems. Put questions leading the employee brainstorming to find answers to the problems on their own. Make sure questions are open-ended, soliciting ideas, drawbacks, potential opportunities, and options for the employee getting coached.
Inspire employees to establish alternatives for potential barriers: The manager as coach needs to be realistic about possible factors that might overturn a plan of action. After devising a solution, employees generally settle back. It is your responsibility as a coach to guide them about potential barriers and help them to create alternatives for something that unexpectedly goes differently than planned.
For managers, coaching employees can surface with many situations like a yearly review or a hard-hitting conversation about performance. But not every situation demands coaches. There are some ideal time and place that asks the manager to act as a coach in the workplace.
But it is true that when managers become a better coaches to employees, the benefits are incredible. You can join hands with Coach Master Academy to inherit the skills of a great coach while being a Manager.
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