If you are a manager, you are also a coach. You just can’t avoid that. You will need to evaluate your employees’ performance, and offer them guidance and support for making necessary improvements. Otherwise, they won’t reach their full potential.
Gaining the confidence to coach your employees is a big challenge for first-time supervisors. However, just like the alphabet is the building block of all reading and language, you can build on three basic ABC’s of coaching success. These concepts alone can help you be a better coach, but more than that, they can become a foundation on which to build all your leadership skills.
A – Accountability
Great coaches care and think about their team’s performances and skills all the time. However, the best coaches know that in the end, those performances don’t belong to them. They belong to the performers.
As a coach, you may feel responsible if someone doesn’t perform well. You may think about what else you could have taught them, another way to have inspired them or any number of other things. While it is important to think about what else you could have done, ultimately, your employees must take accountability for their actions, work and results.
Do your job to build employees’ confidence, skills and proficiency. Then, establish clear expectations and goals, and hold your employees accountable for reaching them.
B – Belief
When someone believes in you and your abilities, you know it. And when people believe in you, you tend to work harder and perform better. Now, let’s flip that around for a second. If you believe in someone’s ability or potential to succeed, it’s likely that you will you work harder to ensure that they do.
Let me give you the bottom line. If you don’t believe people can succeed, don’t coach them. You are doing both them and yourself a disservice if you do. Way before your skills, knowledge and experience, your innate belief in the potential of those you coach is the most important factor in their success.
C – Conversation
Good coaches communicate well. Great coaches, however, create conversations. They ask more questions, work to learn more about employees, and ask for their ideas, thoughts and opinions. While there will always be situations where a coach might provide direct advice, when you create conversations with employees you build powerful connections that foster relationships.
The ABC’s of coaching are putting accountability in the right place, having an innate belief in those you coach, and creating conversations to teach and inspire. I encourage you to apply one or more of these in your next coaching opportunity. You will quickly recognize the power in these building blocks.
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