Humans aren’t light switches yet when we treat coaching our team members as an event instead of an ongoing commitment to their development, we fail them.
Even if we’re not attempting to boil the ocean it’s difficult for us to solve any issue in one coaching session.
What happens in the “event coaching” model is we end up in a cycle of solving the same issue over-and-over, which might get our emotional needs met and keep our cape flapping, but that doesn’t grow our direct report or free up our calendar.
To stop failing our team we need to make three shifts.
First, our mindset shifts from event to process. This will shock our team members who are used to having us be their Fire Chief who disappears until the next fire.
Second, our behavior, during a coaching session, shifts from instruction (aka “when I was in your role here’s what I would do…”) to discovery. Discovery of both the real issue our team member wants to solve and discovery by our team member of a solution through conversation.
Third, our technique shifts to creating clear, mutually agreed to expectations at the beginning and end of a coaching session for what will happen during and after this session, when progress will be checked and what happens if progress isn’t made.
Agreeing in advance as to what happens if progress isn’t made is critical because as leaders our most valuable possession is our time, and our team members earn that time by demonstrating a commitment to development through their behavior. A direct report who asks for coaching yet rarely implements solutions discovered during sessions loses the right to be coached until their behavior demonstrates they are willing to use coaching as more than a time for task avoidance.
All of those shifts are simple, but not easy. We will need to ask our team members for support and trap ourselves, especially early on, into putting a next coaching session in the calendar at the end of our current session.
As those shifts become habit our team will become self-sufficient, which will give us more time to focus on leading our team instead of fighting fires.
Until next time… go lead.
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