KMART Leaders as Coach Digital Magazine

Leader as Coach

Welcome

Coaching is one of the most beneficial skills a leader can develop. It can be immensely satisfying for you and generate significant personal and performance improvements in your team. Most people think coaching involves two people only. Peer and group coaching are equally as effective and a great way for teams to help each other through challenging situations, find solutions and encourage learning and growth. This magazine will share coaching hints and tips which can be used in one to one conversation, peer to peer and group coaching.

Coaching conversations help your team members:

Set goals

Contribute more effectively to the team and the organisation

Take action to achieve goals

Take greater responsibility and accountability for actions and commitments

Become more self-reliant

Gain more job and life satisfaction

Communicate more effectively

Source: Ken Blanchard Companies

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Coaching starts with building trust.

2:05

Coaching draws on the following capabilities from our Capability Framework:

Accountability using the Grow model to move from setting goals to taking action Curiosity

actively listening, asking powerful questions and allowing the conversation to be guided by the team member Awareness of Self and Others demonstrating emotional intelligence and helping the team member to understand their own strengths and development opportunities.

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What is coaching?

Helping others to find solutions for themselves

A confidential conversation that helps people move

forward on work and personal performance

Understanding people and what drives them

Different to teaching, giving advice, life coaching or mentoring

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What are some tips you can give me?

1. Ask guiding questions, sometimes called powerful questions 2. Recognise what’s going well 3. Listen, observe and empower 4. Understand their perspective 5. Talk about next steps and taking action 6. Coach in the moment 7. Commit to continuous learning

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The GROW coaching model is a simple and effective guide for when you first start to develop your coaching skills. Coaching model

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R

G oal G

R eality

• What do you want to achieve over the next quarter? • How will you know when you’ve achieved/solved it?

• What’s happening now? • What are you doing now? • How effective is that? • Why/why not?

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W ill O ptions O W

• What could you be doing that you’re not? • Have you tried …? • What if … was no longer an issue? • How do you decide on your actions? • What else?

• What will you do now and by when? • What could stop you moving forward and how will you overcome it? • How does this action get you closer to your goal/ solution?

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Why is being curious and asking questions better than providing the answers? Questions rule!

Good leaders as coaches offer observations, feedback, guidance, advice, and suggestions. Great coaches are also curious and ask powerful questions so others can tap into their own knowledge and expertise.

Your job is to help your team member to think, rather than think for your team member.

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There are everyday questions and then there are powerful questions.

Powerful questions provoke us to think deeply and to engage intensely in conversation with others that leads to a deeper or broader understanding of a subject and new insights. It potentially changes the direction in which we are moving. If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.

Albert Einstein

Want to learn more?

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To be a great leader as coach, practice building your skills in the three capability areas of Accountability, Curiosity and Awareness of Self and Others. Great capabilities

Awareness of self and others

Curiosity

Emotional Intelligence (EI) 10:00

Active listening

3:09

EI includes the ability to recognise our feelings and those of other people, to manage our emotions and actions, and to skilfully interact with those around us. People with strengths in EI maintain emotional balance, even amid difficult situations. They understand unspoken emotions and dynamics among individuals or groups. And they cultivate positive relationships personally and professionally. All that makes an effective leader, team member—or parent and spouse for that matter.

When was the last time your leader put everything else aside and gave you their full attention – it’s a powerful experience.

Asking questions to create insight

At the heart of coaching is a willingness to put aside one’s own ideas about the ‘best/right/ obvious way’ to do something, and to ask a question to elicit someone else’s ideas about how to approach it.

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This video shows a coaching session that: • uncovers the real issues Can I see it in action?

• defines the current state of play • defines a desired future state • creates a plan to get there.

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Accountability

Setting Goals

Coaching is a goal-focused approach to finding solutions. It can be formal or informal. On the formal side, a coach will usually help the team member to set SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attractive, Realistic and Timed). On the informal side, a coach will typically ask questions from a goal-focused mindset. For example, “How does doing this help you reach your goal?” This type of question helps the team member to evaluate whether what they are doing will help or hinder them.

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Three steps to success

Remember this? Ready your mindset

Nothing changes until you believe it can change. High performing teams embrace a growth mindset. With a growth mindset you will view obstacles as a challenge, take risks and continuously improve.

Ready

Set your goals

High performing teams set stretch goals and work together to achieve them. Use SMART goals, test that your actions will achieve the correct result, and hold each other accountable.

Set

Go! Test and learn

Even if you don’t hit every goal, the learning from striving to reach higher sets you up for success. Test out new ideas and new ways of working as you strive for more challenging goals.

Go

During the week try out coaching team members using the techniques you’re learning.

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A good habit to create for yourself is to keep a learning journal. Each week record just a few brief notes on what you’ve learnt about coaching, what worked well, what didn’t go as well as you hoped and your reflections. It doesn’t have to be much but writing notes and reflecting will speed up your progress and help you become an amazing leader and coach.

5-minute read Exploring a learning journal

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A quick PDF 7 Tips for Managers

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Try it out

Ask don’t tell

Meet Dave who wants to become a better leader and coach.

I use a lot of leading questions, this way I can help and lead my team members towards what I know is a good answer. I know I do this a lot. I’ve always assumed it saves time by helping the team member get to the solution quicker. But if I’m honest, it’s really telling them what I want them to do and I know they don’t always agree with my approach. So, this week my goal is to eliminate ‘leading’ questions. I’ve even got my team involved, so every time I ask a leading question, I’ve asked them to let me know. Dave

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Why great leaders don’t ask “leading” questions and what to do instead

Coaching tip

3:00

When you are coaching, there are some questions that are better than others. For example, open questions are often better than closed questions. Asking What and How are better than Why questions. These questions keep the conversation focused on the actions, not the person. Your team members will have more buy-in to the solution or idea when they come up with it themselves. Most people know the answers if you ask the right questions to help them get to the solution. It takes a little longer, but it will be a better solution in the end.

Learn more about questions to avoid

This week during your team member 1:1’s, practise using curiosity and asking good

coaching questions to uncover insights.

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Try it out

Give instant feedback

Meet Brenda

I overheard a team member being abrupt to another team member on the phone yesterday. Once they got off the phone, I checked in to make sure they were OK and what the situation was. Then we explored what they said and how the team member may have felt. Lastly, we brainstormed ways to release stress. It was a surprisingly good discussion. The team member even thanked me for being supportive! Brenda

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How to give constructive feedback

Coaching tip

4:00

Feedback and exploring how others may be feeling have a much greater impact on behaviour change if we give it immediately after the behaviour occurs. That’s because our brains more strongly associate emotions with whatever action has just occurred. It also works much better if we talk about the actions, not the person and give a specific and unbiased example of what we’re talking about.

This week do your 1:1 sessions using coaching skills as usual, but also look for opportunities throughout the week to give feedback or create opportunities for greater awareness of self and others.

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Try it out

Hear with heart

Meet Rosa

During a leader as coach session, a team member was explaining how process complexity was preventing him from hitting his Goals. He sounded upset and looked tense, so I asked about feelings that came up while he was doing the process. This opened up a conversation about the workload and frustration with a promotion he didn’t get. He realised the process wasn’t the issue and that he was stressing and self-doubting his performance because he didn’t feel appreciated. This led to a great conversation about doing more interesting work. Rosa

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How to listen like a coach

Coaching tip

2:33

The key skill shown in this conversation is listening. People can sense when you’re thinking rather than fully listening to them. People can also sense when someone is actively listening not just to their words, but to their emotions and underlying needs.

This week during your team member 1:1 coaching sessions, practise deep and active listening , with your mind, heart and body.

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New skills Coaching gives us the opportunity to learn and practice a range of new skills. We’ve covered only a few in this magazine.

As you try out new skills and approaches to build your coaching mastery, it’s important to look both back to what worked and forward to how to embed your new skills.

After you’ve practiced these skills for a number of weeks, take the time to look at what worked, what didn’t go as well as you hoped and your own observations and thoughts. What had the most impact? Take this opportunity to reflect and make notes in your coaching journal. It’s also a great idea to discuss your overall coaching progress, strengths and areas you want to continue to develop with your manager so they can also support and coach you. Also do this with your team. Add a standing agenda item to your regular meetings to review and improve your coaching habits and the team’s coaching culture. Close the meeting by thanking your team and sharing some key moments and stories from your journey together.

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Building Coaching Habits

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Coaching diverse teams Coaching team members across divisions, locations and cultures comes with unique challenges. But in a global world, it’s something we all need to do. 3:00 Coaching across demographics

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There are numerous ways to apply the skills you learn through coaching to help and support each other. Let’s look at two opportunities you can try out today. What about coaching each other?

Peer Coaching Peer coaching is a 1:1 coaching relationship with someone you trust.

10 tips to get started with peer coaching

Coaching Circles Build a support system by encouraging team members to collaboratively solve challenges, build skills, and create networks with peers. Coaching circles are a trusting and confidential environment where peers work together to explore the challenges and complexities of their roles. Members of the coaching circle support and help each other find solutions using the same tools as leaders as coach. By asking powerful questions, members of the coaching circle help their peers find solutions and explore new possibilities

Coaching circles often start with an experienced facilitator to help guide the process. The skills learnt through coaching circles can be taken back and applied on the job.

Coaching circles and how they work

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Why not setup your own coaching circle? Coaching Circles can become a very powerful community of practice driven by a practical curiosity, a love of inquiry and a deep care for the success of others.

More great reading Have you had a chance to learn about High Performance Teams?

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