What if your staff made excellent decisions and you were able to guide them toward peak performance? Coaching makes that possible! On this episode, I tell about the model and questions that I ask to equip my staff for excellence
On This Episode:
I have a staff of awesome people. They are dedicated, hard-working, and they’re fun to be around.
Recently we began intentional coaching with the staff because I saw a need for me as a leader to lead better with the staff.
Here’s what was happening before. They’d have an issue or question and I’d answer it. Case closed. This style of leadership created dependency on me!
Now, I’m taking more of a ‘coach approach’ with staff.
First, let me tell you what coaching is and how staff coaching is different from one on one.
Coaching is a facilitated monolog. If you were to get coaching from me one on one, we’d identify the issue, ask what you want to get out of our time, then we’ll process the problem, what options have you tried and come up with a course of action, normally for a short term. “What are you going to do this week, this month.” This is a model called IGROW.
I met 3x per month with people.
Organizational coaching/leadership coaching does that but because we are in an organizational setting, we are solving problems through the template of vision mission values.
So if you work at a real estate company that specializes in commercial real estate, that template is the first lens through which you answer questions.
If one of the agents said, “I found this great single family house!” As a leader, my gut wants to say, “Nope, because we’re a commercial company.” My coaching says, “If we were to move on it, how does that line up with who we are as a company?”
So Michael Bungay Stainer wrote a book every manager and leader should read called, “The Coaching Habit – how to coach your team in 10 minutes or less.” His team studied neuroscience and found these 7 questions have the best long term impact…
He offers the core seven questions that every leader should use. Here’s what I do,
I use IGROW as a template to help guide the conversation and insert the 7 questions where I can.
Let me give you the three of the 7 I use the most. [For fun, you should try this with your spouse]
- “What’s on your mind?” This get right to the issue
- “And What Else?” Often the question they have isn’t really the question.
Then they lay out all of this issues and problems.
3. “What’s the real challenge here for you?” This question is phrased intentionally. ‘Whats the challenge’ is too impersonal. ‘Whats the real challenge’ is better to help focus, but if you really want to empower your staff person, Stainers team found the phrase, “for you” digs into a deeper part of your brain.
And normally, the person can emotionally connect with the one challenge on which they really need to work next.
So I do this once per month with my staff. I have them fill out a google form before the session so we can keep on track and the form basically says,
WHAT I HAVE ACCOMPLISHED SINCE OUR LAST MEETING:
• WHAT I DIDN’T GET DONE, BUT INTENDED TO:
• THE CHALLENGES AND PROBLEMS I AM FACING NOW:
• THE ‘WIN’ OR ‘OUTCOME’ I WANT AT THE END OF OUR MEETING:
• WHAT I PROMISE TO DO BY THE NEXT MEETING:
And again, I use the template and the Stainer questions to walk through what they are struggling with, not what is on my agenda. This is their time and when they can come up with their own solutions that fit within the context of the organization’s parameters and goals, Peak performance is right around the corner.
Links:
- Audible.com – 180K audio book, right at your fingers
- ChristianLeadersCoaching.com – Click for a Free Life Strategy Session.
Todd Stocker 