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There is much written these days around the benefits, indeed criticality, of leaders being able to coach their people as well as to direct them. There seems an inference that coaching is better, however there are certainly times when a quick answer from the boss to a problem is probably better all round! At SKAI, we have a number of offerings to develop leaders’ operational coaching skills. We thought you’d be interested in the simplest one, which we created in response to one of our financial services clients asking us to develop coaching skills in 200 of their leaders in a 1 hour workshop! We do like a challenge, and so for this assignment we created something that honed in on what we already know is the biggest stopper to leaders (and professional coaches) being able to actually coach, as opposed to tell people the answer.
Our experience has shown that the majority of leaders actually problem-solve (i.e. tell someone the answer) as opposed to coach, even when they are deliberately trying to do the latter. Nothing wrong with problem solving in its place, but it’s nice to know when you are being deliberate about it as opposed to choosing to coach.
We have now expanded that 1 hour “taster” session into a ½ day or 1 day MasterClass (depending on how detailed our clients want to get and how much practice time they want). For the MasterClass, we have created two sets of questions designed to drive out the differences between the two approaches. Why not have a go at using them – it’s hugely enlightening as an exercise when you work with a partner trying out both versions on the same issue, and seeing how different each approach is for both the coach, and the person being coached. Watch out – it can feel MUCH more uncomfortable using the coaching questions, but the person on the other end usually prefers it! We’d be really interested in hearing about your experience of using these two approaches and your preference?
Problem Solving Questions
1. What’s the problem? Describe it to me.
2. Why has this happened?
3. How do you feel about this? Anything else?
4. Have you got any ideas as to what you are going to do? Any more ideas? Any more ideas?
5. Some ideas I have about what you could do are………………….. (provide as many ideas as you can).
6. What do you think about those?
7. What are you going to do?
Coaching Questions
1. What’s your complaint, moan in this matter?
2. What do you want? Anything else? (Coach summarises back what they have just heard).
3. How will you know when you have got what you want?
4. What else will improve in your life when you have got what you want? What else? What else? (Summarise back).
5. Given that your complaint is XYZ, is there anything similar that has happened to you before, where you did succeed, where things worked out OK? (You may need to ask them to think really hard, back in the past).
6. What worked for you when it happened before? (Summarise back) .
7. Is there anyone you know who could help you with this or this approach?
8. Given all that, what is the very next thing you are going to do?
If you are interested, we can send you an information sheet highlighting when to coach and when to problem solve which we also use on the MasterClass.
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