Coaching

Morning guys, this is Val Campbell. Welcome to Saturday Morning Leadership. Glad to have you here. We're going through Servant Leadership Roadmap by Kara Bramblett, and I'm providing my thoughts and reflections on this chapter. We're looking at the ninth characteristic today: coaching.

This characteristic—or what's also called competencies—isn't on every list of servant leadership, yet I believe coaching is in line with being a servant leader. So, let's dive in.

I like this definition here: "Leaders are those who help those who are doing poorly do better and those who are doing well do great." Do you like that? I do. I think that's great. That exemplifies what a true leader should be.

So, questions come up like: When is it necessary to use coaching? and How do you know when to coach? We're gonna hopefully touch on these a little bit and try to give you some answers on this this morning.

Remember, coaching is really designed for behavioral changes—taking someone from where they are to where they want to be or need to be. There are situations, obviously, in organizations or teams when it becomes necessary to introduce or implement coaching. And our business-type model, coaching fits very well with it.

Typically, performance and skills enhancements are the primary reasons a leader would coach an individual. An individual may also recognize that they need help, and they reach out to their leader or mentor for that help—and that's great when they do.

Recall that servant leaders are just that—they're there to help their team. And this type of coaching, the focus is on core skills that are required to carry out tasks and handle work- or goal-related responsibilities.

So, let's set the scene here today. Coaching is essential to developing a growth mindset, and that's vital to the success of you and your team, right? Coaching is essential to developing the growth mindset, and again, that is critical. We've got to have that.

And any coaching session obviously does require some preparation. You don't just go and do it headfirst. A servant leader should be open-minded and a mindful listener—and this ties in to what we talked about last week in discussing mentorship. Mentorship and coaching are closely related.

You know, good coaches or mentors know their biases. They're self-aware, right? That's part of it. And while you're coaching, be mindful of your presence, and you can keep the helpful acronym STOP in mind:

• S for slow speech
• T for tone of voice (lower the normal speaking voice)
• O for open questions and posture (remember, leaders ask questions)
• P for pause for active listening and eye contact

You want to create a thriving environment that will instill confidence and lead to positive changes in performance—and that's what we're after.

The question of how and what—how do you know when to coach—naturally comes up. So, recall: coaching again is designed to create behavioral change in aspects of the individual that are within their power to change.

Think of the analogy of sports teams and their coaching. They help fine-tune and point out areas where the individual can get better. They provide perspective, and that's what we're here to do.

Obviously, coaching will have both short-term and long-term goals, where the long-term will be the desired behavior to be changed, and short-term goals are the goals for each coaching or mentoring session.

Here's a helpful acronym again for goal-setting: you want to make SMART goals.

• S for specific: What would you like to achieve?
• M for measurable: How will you know when you're successful?
• A for achievable: What steps will you take?
• R for relevant: Can you describe your perfect world?
• T for time-bound: When do you see yourself reaching your goal?

So, let's look at some realities here. Leaders again ask questions—they ask good questions. You'll ask open-ended questions, typically, that lead to describing the situation objectively.

Questions such as:

• What do you mean by _____? (and they're always helpful)
• Tell me more.
• Tell me more—anything else? (and that's key—keep asking open-ended questions)
• Could you tell me more about X?

By leveraging these questions, this will provide an open avenue for conversations, hopefully eliminate your bias, and avoid interjecting self-proposed conclusions of the situation.

You want to leverage your active listening skills to focus on what and how the situation is being described. Then, consider some options. You ask questions in this area like:

• What could have been done differently?
• What if you did nothing?
• What obstacles are in your way?
• What's your next step?

And again, as leaders, you also need to assess the motivation of each team member. I think this is important too. And in this situation, you ask questions like:

• What options work best for you?
• How will you start?
• What obstacles will you encounter?
• How will you overcome them?
• When should we meet again to check your progress?

And this is key—I think it's important after a coaching session to provide, I'll say, follow-up—but follow-up and follow-through support. This is typically, you know, when many people will be new to this process, and that's when they need you most. So, you want to help them through it. Again, you want to be a servant leader.

So, here's a quick recap for today:

• Coaching is used to help individuals discover solutions through leveraging their insights.
• Coaching requires, obviously, some preparation and leveraging tools to do it properly.
• And to be an effective coach or mentor, you've got to develop your personal competency and the characteristic of foresight—which we will cover next week.

So, thanks so much for joining me today. And please, please feel free again to hit the Vote button or share this if this message was helpful to you or impacted you in a significant way. I hope it did.

Also, you can connect with me on social media at the links provided as well. Have an awesome weekend, guys. Bye-bye!