Managers, do you want to learn how to coach? If you’re interested in having a direct, positive impact on both your team members and organization, coaching is a vital skill to learn.

First, what exactly is a coach? A coach is someone who helps another person reach higher levels of effectiveness by creating a dialogue that leads to awareness and action.

Let’s look at this definition in detail:

-To help another person, you need to have concern for another person and want to see them grow.

–Reaching higher levels of effectiveness means that they’re better in all areas of their work.

–Create a dialogue with the person by asking questions and fully listening.

-All of this leads to awareness, which helps the person discover the ways in which her attitude is hindering her level of success.

-Then that person can take action and do something differently to change behavior and be more effective in all areas of her work and life.

How do you know when to coach?

In order to know when to coach, use the Success Equation. This strategy was constructed to help managers and leaders:

a) pinpoint what’s going on that may be causing a problem for that employee (clarity); and

b) analyze how successful a team member is going to be before he even begins the work (certainty).

Here is the Success Equation:

Aptitude + Attitude + Available Resources = Success

In this equation Aptitude is defined as the skills and competence to complete the task. Attitude is defined as the drive, focus and motivation to complete the task, and Available Resources are the physical tools needed to complete the task. All three components must be present, in equal parts, to achieve success.

A very simple example is a child learning to ride a bike (the Success Equation applies universally, not just at work).

At first, the child has the Available Resources – the bike, perhaps even training wheels, and a safe place to ride. The child also has the Attitude – the motivation, energy, focus and desire to ride. However, in the beginning, the child lacks the Aptitude – the skill sets or competence. So in the beginning, he will be at most 66% successful because he’s missing one of the critical components to the Equation.

Once the child practices and gains the Aptitude through experience, all three components are present and he’s off to the races, successfully riding his bike.

Business is no different. Let’s look at the Success Equation for an analyst. She needs Aptitude – the required skills to analyze and interpret data. She needs the right Attitude – the motivation and energy to work with others, as well as the focus and determination to stay positive and maintain a challenging schedule. And she must have the Available Resources – a phone, a computer, a software program. If any one of these components is missing, she will be 33% less successful.

How Does the Success Equation Work for Managers?

How does the Success Equation work? It can be leveraged when someone comes to you with a problem, or at the beginning of a project. If Rebekka comes to you with a problem, ask her if the problem is about Aptitude, Attitude, Available Resources or a combination of the three. And if one of your employees is about to embark on a new project, ask him if he has the Aptitude, Attitude and Available Resources to do the job.

If the problem is an Aptitude issue, you give your employee skill training to build their competence. If it is an Available Resource issue, you get the resources they need, within your budget. And if it’s an Attitude challenge, you coach them to success.

But how exactly do you coach?

The Coaching Process

Let’s look at the coaching process. As a reminder, when it’s an Aptitude issue, you train. When it’s an Attitude issue, you coach. And when it’s a lack of Available Resources, you reduce, reuse or reallocate resources.

The difference in communication styles between manager and coach is profound. The former is often one-way, enabling and potentially disempowering. The latter is two-way and engaging, and as a result, precipitates two things: awareness and action.

If you want thoughtful, empowered people on your team, it is critical that they are self aware of how they can get in their own way with old patterns and beliefs. They also proactively think for themselves and take action.

Effective Coaching Requires the Right Questions

By asking coaching questions, you grow your team members into thoughtful, empowered people. Here are the five key components, in order of importance, to asking an effective coaching question:

1. Open-ended. Questions that can be answered in one word preclude anyone from having to think. If you want to turn your team into thoughtful, aware people, ask open-ended questions that open up a conversation and begin with “what” or “how”. Examples might be: “How can you move forward on your idea?” or “What’s the impact of that on the team?”
2. Keep it short. Most people ask long questions or worse, ask 3 questions in one sentence. This results in skipped questions and critical data being missed. Ask one short question at a time, preferably 8 words or less. “What resources do you need?” is more effective than “What possible resources will help you achieve this exciting goal, how will you get those resources and when will you do it?”
3. Advice-free. Part of the reason you made it into management is because you know the answers already. Most managers tend to think for their team members and consequently, the employees never learn to think for themselves. They become robots with a tie. Advice-free questions with team members may take a bit longer in the short run yet will make your life a lot easier and more leveraged in the long run when you have team members who can think for themselves and make good decisions on their own. So avoid questions such as, “Have you tried this?” or “Why don’t you do that?”
4. Forward focused. Get out of the story and into the action. Translated, this means get out of the past and into the future. The story only creates drama. Drama is a productivity-killer. Forget what happened in the past. Move on and focus on what action to take in the future to fix, improve, or exceed. Instead of saying, “What happened when Josh did that?” ask “How do you want to behave with Josh in the future?”
5. Thought provoking. As you get well-practiced and eventually master asking coaching questions, you’ll get to this “ninja” level of asking thought provoking questions that literally cause people to stop in their tracks. Your question is so powerful that it pushes people beyond the limits of their current thinking capacity, and forces them to take some time on their own and report back to you. These types of questions can be simple: “What is your role in that situation?” or “Where can you take responsibility?” If you want maximum thinking people on your team, ask these types of questions often.

Coaching Goal: To Move Someone from Awareness to Action

Now that you understand how to ask effective coaching questions, let’s look at moving someone from awareness to action. This means moving someone from understanding the impact they are having on the team to having them commit to small steps that will change their behavior.

Key to Awareness: Understanding Impact

Most managers are good at the action part—setting goals, building a plan and ensuring accountability. The awareness part is often more challenging. For this, coaching for managers is also provided by many organizations. How do you help someone see the impact they’re having on an organization and team? First, start with the five effective questions tip detailed above. Then ask questions that focus on impact, such as: What’s the impact of that on X? You could never ask this question enough. For example: What’s the impact on the person? Team? Organization? Stakeholders? Clients? Donors? Community? Employees? Once they start to understand the impact of their behavior, then they will move to action on their own, instead of being told what to do.

The next crucial element of coaching is listening. Next week we will explore why listening is so important for leaders, and outline ways to improve listening skills. In the meantime, if you are a supervisor, manager or leader committed to being an excellent coach, check out our two-day course: Coaching to WIN BIG.