So, what is a coaching approach to management?

Today, employees look for managers that empower and enable them to generate their own solutions.  Someone who is genuinely interested, wanting to see them develop and grow.  With a coaching approach to management this becomes the reality rather than simply an ideal.  Coaching approaches empower staff to take more responsibility for decision making and ownership over their workload. Employees feel more valued and are provided with greater scope to find their own solutions in a more timely way.

For the manager themselves, there are also significant benefits including improved staff morale, less sick leave and reduced staff turnover. Better relationships, greater efficiencies and ultimately a better experience for those using the services. The coaching approach frees managers from being entrenched in day to day issues and instead allows them to work on the system as opposed to being stuck in it all of the time. Here is a brief outline of what it involves.

Asking Powerful Questions!

Managers that adopt a coaching approach typically ask more questions and suspend the traditional temptation to jump in automatically with solutions (which are often a poor offering!).  They demonstrate curiosity, encouraging employees to challenge themselves and generate more effective solutions as a result.

Using your intuition

Effective coaching requires the ability to use intuition and this is something that managers can learn with training and practice. Employees words communicate to us what it going on but only in part. Gestures, body language, tone of voice and energy levels for example convey important messages also which shouldn’t be ignored.

Better Understanding & Clarity

Because managers that adopt a coaching approach ask more effective powerful questions and listen intuitively to employees they automatically gain a better understanding of the real issues that individuals and teams face on a day to day basis. This then allows those managers to develop more effective strategies, systems and synergies to improve medium to long term performance.

Feedback & Observations

Managers that adopt a coaching approach provide more effective feedback and observations.  They may of course provide an employee with a potential solution however often not before asking the individual if they would like to hear it.  They also challenge employees to build upon the potential solution that has been offered in order to make it even more effective!

Creating a Coaching Culture

Of course, managers that use the coaching approach not only positively change the performance of themselves, individual employees and teams but so too do they positively influence the overall organisational culture to one of individual and collective self-discovery and motivation.

But where is the time?

Coaching approaches to management will ultimately save you time and lots of it!  Time that you have been wasting through ineffective meetings and email, dealing with crisis after crisis, unsuccessfully trying to implement ineffective strategies, replacing good staff again and again as well as dealing with stress and burnout.

If you would like to improve your own ability to coach employees; to create new and motivating approaches to team performance or improve the coaching culture within your own workplace then contact create10 today.

Joe McDonald, Founder of create10 is a professional coach and trainer.  If you would like to avail of one to one confidential coaching, team workshops or online courses please email info@create10.ie or see www.create10.ie for further information