Why Coaching Should be a Mandate for Today’s Managers

The World of business has never faced multi-challenges as much as today;

• The level of diversity in the workplace has never been this much.
• The level of change through all industries has never been this fast and adverse.
• Technology has never been this complex.
• Global economy has never been this volatile.
• Perception management has never been this challenging.

And all of these challenges have to be managed simultaneously. You can not choose one over another. Today’s manager has to face them all and deal with all simultaneously. How do you do that? There is one answer. You can’t do it on your own! As a manager in order to cope with such pace, in today’s business environment, you need to learn to energise, facilitate, activate and enable others to bring their most effective self to the work every day. All of these skills are captured in one tool: Coaching. Managers become leaders when they start coaching their people. Coaching leaders know how to;

• Create self-awareness in terms of strengths and weaknesses
• Help their people to identify where they are in term of performance and identify where they can be
• Identify motivational barriers and help their people to work around intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
• Facilitate the energy of their teams and individual employees
• Create a collaborative culture by inviting others to co-create the desired atmosphere
• Energize people by coaching them on their values and strengths
• Invite others to create a respectful communication culture where diversity is perceived as a strength not as a threat
• Enable their people to learn and improve themself
• Inspires a growth mindset versus fixed mindset

A coaching leader has the confidence and wisdom that he/she doesn’t have to know it all. They have powerful questions to create a learning atmosphere where people are eager to learn from others and when not knowing, developing the right inquiry skills and growth attitude is the norm. How one does develop coaching skills in order to develop coaching style leadership?

• Learning to actively listen with curiosity on what others are saying and not is the first step.
• Learning to ask and practice powerful questions that are what, how, who questions are the second step. Asking powerful questions allows leaders to accumulate more information about their people, culture and barriers that prevent employees from succeeding.
• Knowing how to help others to set effective goals, plan and identify actions also is part of coaching.
• Having courage to question the motivational habits of people also is an important coaching skill. For example: How do you feel about this project? What about this problem demotivates you most? Once you identify their motivational barriers or triggers then you’ll be able to coach them towards increased energy and motivation.