Do you know when to coach or mentor? Do you know how to use coaching skills to improve leadership skills? Let’s find out how.
We all work with leaders. We all have problems and as subordinates end up going to our leader for a resolution. Here are five typical responses from leaders:
Good leaders spend more time coaching and teaching/mentoring.
Now that we have a fair idea on what is coaching let us understand the relationship between coaching and leadership.
What is Leadership?
Leadership is the ability to inspire others. In a coaching world, the below equation from ‘The Inner Game of Tennis’ is popular and interesting:
Performance of an individual or a team
Potential is the capability of individual or a team
Interference is mental block (“I can’t do it”)
A good coach focuses on removing your interference rather than improving potential. Decreasing the interferences automatically improves performance. For e.g., the CEO can improve company performance by believing in the potential of his employees and coaching when needed to remove interferences.
Since removing interference is key, let’s look at how to reduce it and improve coaching:
Leadership style may require changes. As your team becomes more capable, you as a leader need to move towards coaching. As you move from doing to coaching, you lose management control because you aren’t giving instructions. Coaching helps your teams decision making capacity to increase. When you direct and advice, ask yourself “is it blocking my subordinate from growing.”
Finally as you move towards your coaching journey, here are some resources to help you improve coaching:
You may also like to explore recording of webinar done on this topic
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