Everyday Habits to Empower Your Team and Propel Your Business to Success

Don’t instruct your people, inspire them.

Coaching, a top desired skill for managers, is also a critical skill for a leader to master.
An effective coach illuminates mistakes, aids in self-discovery & focuses on collaborative empowering.

Why is it an essential tool for achieving business goals?
Coaching instills intrinsic motivation, which increases both: Employee commitment to work & job satisfaction.

With constant change becoming the new norm, further accelerated by remote-working, 21st-century companies are moving away from the traditional “command-and-control” to a more collaborative & empowering approach.

The role of the manager is now becoming also that of a coach, focused on support, guidance & development.

What makes an effective coach?
How can you build & improve your coaching skills and advance your career in the process?

Transformation Plan to Turn Every Manager Into an Effective Coach formulates an easy checklist to help you understand & put into practice, the tools of effective coaching.

Here are some key takeaways from the Program to get you started:

1. Coaching others helps you break the unproductive circles:
   a. You have created an overdependent team: Disempowering for them and frustrating for you.
   b. You are overwhelmed by work. You lose focus in the midst of all the hustle.
   c. You are getting disconnected from priorities.
2. Develop a coaching habit to elevate the way you work:
   Assign 10 mins a day for active coaching instead of rigid weekly sessions.
   So, the next time Jack asks you for feedback: Be available, enable autonomy & actively listen.
3. Coaching for Performance vs. Coaching for Development:
   Focus on calling the person forward to learn, improve, and grow, rather than a quick fix. Instead of spouting advice, listen actively to identify needs & wants. Empower your teams to be self-sufficient thereby improving long-term performance.
4. Don’t interrogate, converse:
   Make your people comfortable by pacing out your questions. Make sure you listen to them.
   For your next convo, try to opt for “What” questions instead of “Why”.
   Reply not to give your opinion, but to truly understand & identify possible needs/wants.
5. Identifying someone’s needs & wants is key to effective management:
   Untangle priorities by asking the Foundation Question: “What do you want?” Recognizing the need will equip you to best address the want.
6. Always acknowledge the answers you get:
   The key is to assert that you have listened & understood. Without any judgement.
   Stay engaged with questions like: “Could you tell me a bit more?”
   When you agree, instead of just a nod, tell them: “Yes, that’s good.”
7. Use every channel for communication:
   Questions work just as well typed, as they do spoken.
   Next time you get an email that triggers the “Advice Monster”, ask:
   “Before I jump into a longer reply, let me ask you: What’s the real challenge here for you?”

Initially, you may find yourself becoming impatient with this approach.
It does require more involvement & could be more taxing.
If you do your job well, however, it would also turn out to be much more rewarding.

Give it time.
Coaching is a skill that needs to be learned and developed over time.
The best part?
With the right tools & support, anyone can become a better coach. 

This article is inspired by the Program: Transformation Plan to Turn Every Manager Into an Effective Coach, actionable tips based on the book: The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier.

Find the complete free plan on the ShamanX app, subscribe to it & practice Coaching on a daily basis.