Too busy to coach employees?

Are you feeling overwhelmed with all the deliverables that you need to achieve by the end of today, this week, this month? Do you ever feel like you are drowning in to-do lists? Have you ever thought it was easier to just do the job yourself instead of taking the time to delegate it to someone else?

You’re not alone. Over the last decade coaching leaders from the front-line all the way to executive level, one of their biggest challenges is carving out time for activities that they would agree are important, but they aren’t immediately critical for hitting this week’s or this month’s key performance indicators; activities like coaching, mentoring and developing their people. 

The three most common problems that get in the way for my clients are:

1. “My job as the leader is to be the expert. I need to have all the answers and come up with the best ideas.” This often grows into perfectionism, where they develop a belief, “no one can do it as good as me; it’ll be quicker if I just do it myself; it takes too long to show, coach, mentor someone.”
2. We all have a need to feel important, like we are adding value. The easiest way to get this feeling is to achieve quick wins, through micro-managing those assigned the task, or by doing tasks yourself. Both these behaviours make you feel like you’re contributing value, and give you a feeling of importance.
3. Because many leaders fall into the behaviour of doing and not delegating, they don’t have any time to coach. As a consequence, people don’t build their skills, they keep coming to the leader for all the answers, instead of finding their own solutions, and they create dependence.

What’s the impact you, your team, and your business in the long run?

These behaviours burn up more time, create greater competency issues, more mistakes, more rework, and more stress. People don’t feel valued, they have no autonomy, no sense of purpose, and no growth. The best people ultimately end up leaving to feel more valued.

Coaching is essential to being an effective leader

When you learn that you don’t need to have all the answers, but instead to ask the right questions, you realise that effective leadership is a lot like coaching.

What is coaching?

Coaching helps you to take action in the direction of your desired outcomes. A coach facilitates you having a conversation with yourself by asking questions that you typically are not asking yourself, and that help you discover the answers to take the most effective steps towards your desired outcome. This may be for an immediate task or for a longer term goal to advance your development as professionals over time.

What are the benefits of coaching?

• You get a return on the time you invest in coaching. A coaching style of leadership accelerates your employee’s learning and growth. This means that as they become more competent, you can confidently delegate more tasks to them, knowing that they will be completed in an accurate and timely way.

• By empowering others to do more, and motivating them to be their best, it becomes a multiplier effect for productivity, and it frees you up to work on more transformational activities instead of transactional activities.

• Having more time to focus on what’s important will give you an even higher level of satisfaction, significance, and fulfillment.

  

How do you become an effective coach?

1. Believe that people have unlimited potential, that everyone can learn, grow, and get better – have a growth mindset
2. Cultivate the art of active listening – being fully present and listening to understand their perspective
3. Build trust and rapport with your employee before coaching them – create a safe space for them to be open and vulnerable
4. Ask quality questions before offering the answer or advice. Questions direct people’s focus and attention. What are some powerful questions you can ask your employees to focus on the desired outcome and how to get them there? Allow for silence as they come up with their own answers.
5. Give them space to wrestle with problems and discover solutions
6. Articulate goals clearly so you are both aligned on what your employee is trying to achieve and why it’s important
7. Reframe challenges – is it possible they are not seeing all the perspectives? Invite them to look at the situation from another perspective and notice if they observe something new
8. Agree on action steps that will move them towards their desired outcome and agree a time to check-in and hold them accountable to their commitments
9. Give feedback on how they performed. Reinforce positive new behaviour and hold the mirror up to repeated behaviour that isn’t serving them

One of the most powerful coaching conversations I’ve ever observed lasted around 20 seconds. I was in a meeting with a leader and his direct report. Here’s how the conversation went:

Leader: “How high is your partner on your list of priorities?”

Direct report: “She’s really high…she’s up there.”

Leader: “If I asked your partner where she is on your priority list, where would she say she is?”

I watched as the direct report’s eyes welled up and the tears ran down his face.

Direct report: “I knew that was the case, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself. I just need someone else to ask me that question.”

Because the direct report was asked a powerful question that shifted his perspective, he took immediate action to improve his relationship. He left the room and called his partner!

If you are telling yourself you don’t have time to coach, do not under-estimate the impact of one powerful question!

If you would like to learn more about how you can use a more coaching style in your leadership to bring out the best in your people, free up your time to focus on what’s most important, consistently achieve results, all while creating stress freedom, time freedom, a sense of satisfaction, and a work-life balance, check out my services here.

On my Services page, go ahead and request a callback to discuss how I can help you and your employees master the skill of coaching.

Until next time, do the basics with consistency and discipline, and you will be world-class.