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Leadership Coaching: A Path Toward Trusting, High-Performance Teams

Forbes Human Resources Council

Dr. Bill Howatt, Founder and CEO Howatt HR.

What is the difference between leading and managing teams?

The act of managing refers to things like process, metrics, goals and results. Managing encompasses the elements a people leader is scored on by their employers, who often use the primary metrics of success (e.g., revenue). Leading, on the other hand, refers to how the leader facilitates success. Leadership means engaging with people to build a culture of trust and respect. The higher the degree of trust, the more the leader will be able to influence their teams to want to do their best work.

The purpose of this article is to introduce what I refer to as the key performance behavior (KPB) micro-skill called leadership coaching.

Balancing Managing And Leading

When I coach senior leaders who struggle to lead their teams, one common gap I notice is that most lack the awareness of when to ask questions versus give direction. The result is that many leaders adopt a "command and control" leadership style, especially when under pressure. They tend to talk "at" their teams and give directions, leaving little to no space to listen to challenges or answer questions.

On the surface, this approach can get compliance and results. Under the surface, however, it often creates fear, suppresses creativity and trains many team members to adopt the habit of silence rather than speaking up or challenging. Silence is protective; a silent employee does not believe their leader is psychologically safe.

I will often mention to leaders I coach that around 70% of the variance of the employee experience can be attributed to the leader-employee relationship. Now add the fact that around 80% of decisions are made based on subjective feelings (e.g., fear versus safety). Clearly, how a leader shows up and behaves daily matters. This is why I promote psychologically safe leadership training: so leaders can develop the knowledge and skills to create safe workplaces where teams can be held accountable and learn to how to achieve their potential.

One micro-skill that can help leaders balance the demands of managing and leading is leadership coaching. The good news is that this is not a complex leadership skill to develop; it only takes a willingness to slow down and invest energy in helping employees learn and grow. The payoff will be increased opportunity for trust and having a team that is more knowledgeable and skilled, which only makes the leader's role less stressful.

Leadership Coaching Tips

Any people leader can start to move toward leveraging leadership coaching by adopting and intentionally practicing the below:

1. Trust is the gold standard for creating high-performance teams.

The most important KPI that is not measured nearly enough is the degree employees trust their leaders and the degree employees feel trusted by their leader. Noticing what employees do (and don't do) is a great way for a leader to gauge how much their team trusts them. For example: Do all your employees come to you first when they make a mistake? Do all your employees challenge and disagree with you? Do all your employees demonstrate appreciation by saying thank you, or let you know when you're doing well?

Leadership coaching begins with creating space for employees to feel psychologically safe to speak their truth without fear of judgement or negative consequences.

2. Curiosity creates the opportunity to build trust, accountability and learning.

Curiosity means resisting the urge to tell employees what to do in challenging moments because it is more convenient and takes less energy. Curiosity means noticing the opportunity to adopt a leadership coaching mindset, then asking open questions (e.g., "What else could this mean?") and delivering safe directive statements (e.g., "Tell me more"). The goal is to encourage the employee to explore their thoughts in a thoughtful way rather than rushing to respond.

As Daniel Kahneman taught us, fast thinking (i.e., system 1) is filled with cognitive errors. By slowing down, asking a few more questions, resisting the urge to tell, listening and empowering the employee to provide answers, you can help them develop the confidence to problem solve and make good decisions. Once you're at the options stage, continue to use questions to explore the risks, benefits and unintended consequences, which can help the employee feel empowered, capable, valued and trusted.

3. Be present and authentic when you begin leadership coaching.

Regardless of the complexity of the problem, one factor that remains consistent is the need for the leader to be fully present, not rush to a solution. An example: You have ten minutes before a big meeting and you wanted to get settled five minutes early. On the way to your office, you discover that a team member has a problem. You try to fix the issue in three minutes using your coaching skills, but all the while you're thinking about the upcoming meeting.

Make a rule that you will only engage in leadership coaching when you can be present and can listen, which means not thinking about what you want to say or what is coming up next in your day. Trust is not something we teach people; they develop their perceptions based on their experiences. Being present and authentic will increase a leadership opportunity to build trust.

In the above example, the right thing to do is to be transparent and say, “It seems like X is a challenge. I have a meeting right now; can we pick this conversation back up in a couple of hours? Is that OK with you?” By setting boundaries and expectations, you protect yourself from rushing and taking the easy path of just telling the employee what to do.

Final Thoughts

Practicing trust, curiosity and authenticity is a good place to start on your coaching journey. This provides you with better insight into the overall experience of your team and can allow for safer exchanges between employees and leadership.


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