How To Have a Coaching Conversation|3 aspects to Judge if you need to have a coaching conversation|

Coaching conversations are not just for your coachees, it’s also something that can support your leadership and personal goal outcomes. Coaching can help you take a step back and honor every person around you and their perspectives. Very often winning leaders are addicted to their wins and have little appetite for failures, this limits their growth as they want to do everything on their own, rather than believing that there are better ways of doing the same thing. Every time you feel you know everything by the back of your hands and allowing someone else to do the task may compromise the quality…THINK AGAIN! The objective is to get the task done your way or get it done the best way with the scope of innovation -creativity and the person responsible to be more confident while executing the same.

The ability to facilitate and build a coaching culture is not a power-play and is built on the foundation of enabling others to take ownership. Instilling a coaching culture in an organization allows confidence building, employee ownership-productivity -collaboration, and continuous learning. Coaching conversations are not just for coaches and coachees but also the entire workforce whether you are in HR, sales, marketing, or even finance…it essentially allows you to get the best out of your colleagues.

Certain situations merit coaching conversations. 3 important situations for coaching conversations:

1. When someone comes to you for help.
2. When one is feeling stuck and comes for advise
3. When someone seeks your ideas and suggestions

In the above situations, a perfect opportunity for coaching conversation resides. Most often when someone comes for help -suggestion or advice there is a tendency to give our opinions to the person. Thus one needs to make these opportunities into coaching conversations for long-term impact and benefits to the organization.

In our education system, we are always applauded for giving the right answers and not asking the right questions. However, it’s the questions that have given mankind all the progress that we see around us. Thus every human being has the amazing potential that can be tapped through this model of asking the right questions which is nothing but a powerful coaching conversation where you are supporting someone to explore their quantum potential.

Recently when my daughter was discussing her chemistry lectures with me, we discussed graphite and diamond which are both made of carbon, yet they are so different in nature and their benefits. While one supports many chemicals processes the other is a precious stone. This is all because of how the electrons in them, bond with their environment. This is an interesting analogy for how we are all made of the same things, yet we are so different in how we bond with our environment and bring out the best in ourselves and who we bond with…Likewise as a leader how you bond and converse with others has a lot of potential in how your outcomes are accomplished…

Also, three critical aspects to remember while in the tango of coaching…

1. Mindful Listening -This is to read beyond the words and gestures…and understand more of the energy behind every thought and proposition shared. What the person is saying has a lot to do with their energy in the topic and not just what they articulate. This also necessitates that the person is not engrossed in thinking of what the person is going to say or do in the conversation and is more engrossed in the listening process.
2. Allow 80% of airtime to the coachee – Allow the coachee to express in 80% of the airtime and use 20% for navigation -clearing clutter and showing the mirror. A coachee unlike a teaching process involves an intense sharing or catharsis…that gradually gets to the platform of problem-solving that the coachee indulges in. This surely needs a lot of time for the coachee to express effectively and the coach to identify and sharpen the conversation.
3. Involuntarily giving your JUDGEMENT -Most Importantly we all feel that we are in the game of giving the right answers… however life path is not always an exam of writing answers; its more to tune into your inner rhythm and every person’s rhythm is best determined by them through EXPLORATION -DIALOGUE -COURAGE to live it. Thus as a coach, you need to suspend your natural inclination to judge. Your coachee will not benefit from your judgment, however, they would surely benefit if you can uphold the true picture and also support navigation with powerful open-ended questioning. Some of these questions could be …What could you do? How do you feel? Who have you talked to about this? Who could be affected in this situation? etc

Have you tried coaching conversations in the past with your team members? If yes do share with us the outcomes and the challenges. If not, do you think it’s something that you would like to try? To know more about asking powerful questions, do read Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

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