questions Archives - BrightBird Coaching and Training

Want to be a coaching manager? Here's the magic ingredient...

By Karen Amos

I’m feel fortunate that there are lots of managers who are tuning into in how coaching can help them and their teams.

It’s probably no surprise that I firmly believe coaching can completely transform the behaviour, mindset and performance of teams in the workplace. In fact, I more than believe it, I’ve seen the results for myself.

The thing is in our ever-busy working lives, time is at a premium, so many people are looking for a magic ingredient that will turn them into a coach. The magic ingredient that means they can start to reap the benefits.

As a result, I thought I’d bring in a quick reality check around expectations and what you CAN do, to be a great coaching manager.

Let’s start off with a few of the ‘myths’ I encounter…

Myth 1 – Reading a coaching book will turn me into a great coach

Myth 2 – Getting a coaching qualification will turn me into a great coach

Myth 3 – Going on a coaching course will turn me into a great coach

Actually, all of the above will help. The bad news however, is that reading a book, getting a qualification, or going on a course will never turn you into an amazing coaching manager overnight.

In order to coach, you need to learn the skills and techniques to ask great coaching questions, along with other tools. But here’s the challenge…

If you don’t actually DO anything differently – if you never practice these techniques and skills, nothing will change.

I had an acquaintance who bought every self-help book known to human-kind – or so it seemed! The problem is none of it changed her life in the slightest. Does this mean the books didn’t work? Not at all. The fact is, not only did she rarely get past the first chapter, she never put any of her learning into practice – and if she did, not consistently.

So unfortunately you won’t be able to become a better coach through a process of osmosis, where learning will radiate off your bookshelf, or training course and magically transform you into the coach you’d like to be.

If these don’t work – what does?

This means getting out of your comfort zone. Walking the walk as a manager. Trying at least one approach, or question very consciously even once a day.

If you’re about to think, ‘Yeah, but it’s not that simple…’, then I would ask you to look inwards. I’m guessing you want to start coaching to help people change, to improve their performance. If that’s the case then we need to walk the walk as managers and leaders. Ask yourself, ‘should I be expecting people to change, do things differently and get out of their comfort zone, if I’m not prepared to do so myself?’

Another thing to consider is to build coaching conversations into your daily interactions. Any conversation with another person has the potential to be a coaching conversation. It involves listening and understanding the other person’s point of view, with a healthy dose of curiosity to explore what’s really going on and help them find their own solution to any problems.

Remember that coaching isn't about feeling clever whilst you fire lots of 'challenging' questions at someone. At it's heart, it's about great communication - taking the time to listen, understand and helping the other person work out a solution.

So go on, give it a go!

Coaching Question:

What one step could you put in place today to help you improve your coaching and communication skills?

If you’d like to know more about how our fully-interactive coaching skills courses can help you implement a coaching approach in your workplace, check out our coaching skills for managers mini-programmes. There's NO HOMEWORK and NO ROLEPLAY! Just lots of practical tools, approaches, discussion and practice, so you can put your learning into place straight away.

For schools and education settings

For business and organisations

Or check out our great value in-house training options:

For schools and education settings

For business and organisations

Or call us: 07714 855757

or click HERE to book in a short, no-obligation chat

Karen Amos is an executive coach and founder of BrightBird Coaching & Training. She supports leaders and managers to get the best out of themselves and their teams. She brings a down-to-earth, practical approach to improving working lives through better leadership, communication and working relationships.

by Rachel Priestley

3 reasons your team may be resistant to change – and what you can do about it!

By Karen Amos

I’ve been busy delivering the ‘Managing Change’ session from my Effective People Management programmes these last few weeks. This is definitely one of those subjects that at first glance seems easy, but is a veritable Russian doll when you start to unpack it.

I recall times throughout my career where change has been well implemented and accepted, indeed embraced by teams and many more times when I’ve just emitted an inward (and sometimes outward) groan when informed of yet another new strategy/change/initiative [delete as appropriate]. On that note, isn’t it strange what a word so positive as ‘initiative’ can invoke such an energy dump in a different context?

Whilst the vast majority of change is instigated with positive intentions – i.e. to make things better – it can so quickly invoke a negative response and be the cause of low staff morale and even increase staff turnover if handled badly.

Here are 3 reasons you may be experiencing resistance to change from your team (or even personally) and a coaching perspective on how to address this…

1. Your team doesn’t understand why the change is necessary

This is about supporting your team to understand the reason behind the change. There’s an understandable filter that takes place where information is cascaded down an organisation and people in less senior roles are, often rightly, given less detail than people who are more senior. I do think we need to treat people as the adults they are though. To paraphrase Nietzsche, the person with a ‘why’ can tolerate almost any ‘how’.

Solution:

Consider the perspectives and experience of your team. It’s easy to forget as a leader that we have much more information and control than those we manage. An honest appraisal, including the benefits of the changes and the consequences of not taking this course of action will always be appreciated. Over time, your teams will accept you’re trustworthy and there’s no game playing going on. Remember, if there is sensitive information you can’t share, be honest about that too.

2. People don’t feel involved or listened to

In the midst of all the activity in implementing a new change, time to discuss, consult and more importantly, listen can come a poor second. Remember that as manager and leader, you naturally have much more control and usually knowledge, about the change. It’s easy to forget that your team don’t share this.

Solution:

Hold regular check-ins with your team and allow people to voice their concerns. It’s understandable that you may not want to seek this out, lest it turn into another ‘moan-fest’, but hearing people out and giving information where needed will prevent people from lagging behind, or at worst being so engaged they decide to leave the organisation altogether.

3. Your people have ‘change fatigue’

Have you ever stopped to consider that change just seems to be a permanent fixture of working life? Lots of my clients comment that there’s never a pause to take a breath and reflect and let the changes embed. It’s either one change, then straight into another, or what’s more usual, multiple changes going on at the same time. It can be hard for teams and indeed ourselves as leaders, to truly evaluate what the impact of the change is. With this comes a sense of never quite achieving an end result, leading to frustration and low motivation.

Solution:

Ensure you consult with your team to build in mini-goals and celebrate progress and ‘wins’ throughout the change process. Where possible, give people a project, or part of a project to own and champion, in a way that plays to their strengths and things they enjoy if possible. That way, they can have more autonomy and also see they’ve played a clear part in achieving the overall goal. Whilst it’s not always possible, be conscious of implementing multiple changes and reduce these where possible to allow new ways of working to embed themselves, even for a short time. This will then be assimilated into your organisation’s culture and people will be more enthused for the next change.

I hope that helps with a little food for thought regarding change in your setting or organisation.

If you’d like to know more about how we can support your leaders and teams with 1-to-1 or team coaching, or would like to discuss our in-house live, online leadership programmes, you can:

Email us at: [email protected]

Or call us: 07714 855757

or click HERE to book in a short, no-obligation chat

by Rachel Priestley

Introducing coaching at work when you don't have time

By Karen Amos

‘Coaching’s great, but I don’t have time to coach my teams’. This is a statement I frequently encounter when introducing coaching as a management and leadership approach. I would argue that in the long run, utilising coaching will actually save time, reducing the amount of frequent, small questions to be fielded and building a culture of personal responsibility.

Let’s be clear, we aren’t talking about managers and leaders being coaches in the same way I work as a professional development coach. There are many reasons why managers can’t just sit down for a dedicated 1-to-1 session with someone, time being just one of these. What we are talking about is managers and teams taking a Coaching Approach to their interactions with each other.

Here are a few quick tips to help you begin to develop your coaching approach:

Listen and show understanding – How often do we interrupt someone, or merely wait for them to take a breath, so we can astound everyone with our superior knowledge? I’m sure it’s something we’re all guilty of at some point. The first stage in being an effective coaching leader is to listen – I mean really listen.

Tip - One way of checking you’ve understood correctly and demonstrating this to the other person is to paraphrase at the end of their explanation. Try something like, ‘So what you’re saying is…’ If you get it right, they’ll feel understood. If you get it wrong, they’ll correct you. Win-Win!

Begin with the end in mind – Good old Stephen Covey embedded this concept in his 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, and with good reason. Whilst coaching can be and is reflective, its main focus is on what we want to achieve. Focusing on the solution, rather than the problem.

Tip – Ask, ‘What do I want to achieve here,’ or, ‘What would a good outcome look like,’ to avoid getting caught up in the details of what’s going wrong and indulging in yet another moan-fest.

Ask not tell – This is a key factor in coaching – Asking powerful questions. This is not giving advice – e.g. ‘why don’t you do xyz instead?’, or telling people what to do. This approach is all about asking meaningful, open questions that move the person on to look at the options open to them so they can make a constructive decision.

Tip – There are an endless supply of questions that can be used in coaching. A few examples would be things like:

o What’s really going on for you right now?

o What are the main barriers that are in your way?

o If you could do anything you wanted, what action would you take?

o What would your wisest friend do in this situation?

Foster personal responsibility – Don’t ‘fix’ – Following on from asking powerful questions, an effective coaching manager will ensure they allow their staff space to work out and try their own solutions. This can be scary initially, particularly when someone wants to resolve things in a way you wouldn’t choose. Of course, you’ve got to weigh up the risks here – this certainly doesn’t mean you throw caution to the wind if someone is proposing to embark on some highly risky endeavour. Allowing people to choose their own course of action is extremely motivating though and will result in them taking more autonomy and personal responsibility for finding their own solutions.

Tip – If you find yourself wanting to ‘fix’ someone, stop and consciously ask them what they think they should do. Questions like, ‘What are the main sticking points for you here?’ and ‘What do you think you can do about this?’ are great ways to hand responsibility back to the person.

Hopefully you’ll find these useful on your journey to embedding coaching in your day to day interactions. One final tip is not to try all of these at once. Identify one area you could improve and set out some conscious intentions to work on this in your interactions with a member of your team. That way you’ll start to get into the coaching habit!

Check out the links below to find out more about our latest coaching-based training courses and programmes. We also offer individual and team coaching on leadership, interpersonal, communication and performance matters.

For schools and education settings

For business and organisations

Or call us: 07714 855757

or click HERE to book in a short, no-obligation chat

by karena