224: How to Leverage Coaching Competencies if You Aren't a Certified Coach
How to Leverage Coaching Competencies if You Aren't a Certified Coach
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The reason I’m doing this episode today is because of the horror stories I have heard about bosses who are supposed to be “coaching” their employees but are doing something else entirely.
As a Certified Executive and Leadership Development Coach (CELDC), I wanted to talk about a few of the coaching competencies as laid out by the International Coaching Federation or ICF. ICF is considered the premier coaching credential organization in the world.
Many people in leadership positions have gotten a coaching certification, but it may not be appropriate for everyone. So here’s a crash course on eight coaching competencies you can put to use today without a coaching certification.
Cultivates Trust and Safety
The first competency I want to talk about is cultivating trust and safety. As a manager of people, you want to create safe and supportive environments that will facilitate your employees’ opening up and sharing freely. There needs to be mutual respect and trust to develop this trust.
Maintains Presence
It is so important to be present with your employees at all times – and especially when you are coaching them.
Minimize or eliminate the potential for disruption, and make sure you can eliminate mental distractions before you coach an employee.
Here are some of the tools for maintaining presence in the coaching relationship:
-Be flexible with your agenda (but do have an agenda)
-Trust your intuition
-Be open to not knowing and taking risks
-Use humor to lighten the mood when necessary
-Avoid being overwhelmed by your employees’ emotions
Listens Actively
You want to hear what your employee is saying and not saying to fully understand what is going on with your employee. A great coach will do far less talking and far more listening.
Powerful Questioning to Evoke Awareness
This is where many “coaches” go wrong – they tell their employee what to do and how to do it, rather than creating an environment where the employee accesses her own wisdom and knowledge.
Powerful questions are ones that encourage your employee to investigate new insights about themselves. These questions also focus on the future rather than the past.
Tools you can use to evoke awareness include silence (allowing for quiet as the employee processes their thoughts or questions) and metaphor or analogy (utilizing different ways of communicating concepts).
Facilitates Growth
The purpose of coaching should be to promote your employees’ autonomy and ability to transform their book knowledge, experience, and insights into actions.
Goal-Setting
It is important to enter into a coaching relationship with specific goals, which should be revisited and revised periodically throughout coaching.
The goals set should:
-Be SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-specific)
-Address the employee’s specific concerns and desired areas for learning and development
Designing Actions
The employee should drive the actions she takes as a result of the coaching. While you can suggest actions, the employee has to buy in.
The employee’s actions should:
-Enable the employee to demonstrate, practice, and deepen new learning
-Help the employee to further explore concerns and goals that they outlined themselves
-Encourage the employee to further explore ideas, solutions, and actions that will lead them towards their goals
-Promote active experimentation and self-discovery
-Allow the employee to apply what has been discussed and learned during coaching sessions
-Encourage the employee to challenge the existing beliefs and assumptions about the world around them
-Help the employee to notice and celebrate successes and capabilities for future growth
-Encourage the employee to stretch and challenge themselves, albeit at a comfortable pace
In a nutshell:
There should be visible, positive change and growth as a result of the coaching experience.
Managing progress and accountability
As the coach, you want to encourage your employees to define their own methods of holding themselves accountable, with you playing a supporting role in this accountability. You should never chastise the employee for not staying accountable, but rather approach them directly from a place of support and concern.
To hold an employee accountable:
-Clarify the agreed-upon actions with the employee
-Ask the employee about their progress with the actions they committed to during previous sessions
-Acknowledge the employee’s progress – or lack of progress – since the previous coaching sessions
-Keep the employee on track with the coaching plan, intended outcomes, agreed-upon courses of action, and topics for future sessions
-Remain open to adjusting the coaching plan based on shifts in direction during coaching sessions
-Allow the employee to develop their own ability to make decisions, address key concerns, and improve themselves – while lending a helping hand if needed
-Positively confront the employee if he does not take agreed-upon actions
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