Situational Coaching: How to access the situation to adapt your coaching style.

Sir John Whitmore, a leading figure in the field of coaching, defined it as “unlocking people’s potential to maximize their performance.”

Leaders have access to so many different styles of coaching that they sometimes are confused about which approach to adopt and when.

Here are a few tips that can help

Directive Coaching

Directive Coaching which takes place primarily through “telling.” Everybody knows what to expect here: A manager with years of accumulated knowledge willingly shares it with a junior team member, and that person listens carefully, hoping to absorb as much knowledge as possible.

Here are 4 possible ways to practice directive coaching

SBI model of feedback:

When a team member's behavior in a particular situation falls short of expectations.

e.g Interrupting others during a team meeting

• Situation: Describe the specific situation in which the occurrence that you’re referring to happened.
• Behavior: Explain the specific behavior that you observed and would like to comment on.
• Impact: Describe the impact of this behavior on you, the team, a client, etc.

The SBI model highlights the gaps/blind spots of the team members. It may not result in immediate behavior change but helps in behaving with awareness when the same situation arises again.

S.T.A.R Model

When the leader wants to share feedback about a specific task or a specific instance of performance.

e.g after presenting a dashboard to senior leaders/stakeholders, responding to an ad-hoc customer request

• Situation: Describe the situation (or context) in which something happened.
• Task: Zoom in on the specific task in question that you would like to provide feedback on.
• Action: Explain what action the recipient took in the specified situation.
• Result: What was the outcome of the actions of the recipient, and how did it affect others?

The S.T.A.R models can be applied to give developmental feedback and also when you want to appreciate good work done.

Start, Stop, Continue

When the leader wants a team/individual to improve their general performance.

Start: What is the one thing that we missed last time and that we should focus on going forward?

Stop: What is the one thing that is not adding value that we should stop doing?

Continue: What is the one thing that we are doing well that we should continue?

The leader can use this method to ask for feedback about himself/herself or facilitate the team to give feedback to each other.

What went well? What didn't?

When the Leader wants to give feedback about their performance over a period of time.

e.g mid-year, and year-end reviews

Ask what went well,

Tell me what went well,

Ask what can be improved

Tell me what can be improved

Inquiry-based approach

Inquiry-based coaching is built on listening, questioning, and withholding judgment. Managers here work to draw wisdom, insight, and creativity out of the people they’re coaching, to help them learn to resolve problems and cope with challenging situations on their own. Yes/no questions shut down thinking. Open-ended ones expand it. But the questions don’t have to be complex or clever. Sometimes the simplest—such as “What else?”—are the best. What’s vital is that they demonstrate your authentic interest and belief in the person you are coaching.

Michael Bungay Stainer in his book: The Coaching Habit outlines the following 7 powerful questions.

• What is on your mind?
• And what else?
• What is the real challenge here for you?
• What do you want?
• If you're saying yes to this, what must you say No to?
• How can I help? (I prefer 'How can coaching help? ')
• What is most useful or valuable here for you?

Leave them the **** alone

There may be times when all team members are productively getting on with their work, and the right approach to coaching them is to leave them alone.

In such situations, the best way to coach them is to shut up and listen. Absorb what people tell you. Occasionally repeat back what you hear, to make sure you have it right, but avoid jumping in. Leave room for silence, especially at the end of your conversation. The most important things often emerge from that silence.

Leaving them alone doesn't mean that you ignore them. They just need a sounding board where they can offload their confusions, ideas, aspirations, feelings about others, and fears and then get on with their work.

In summary:

Many leaders are accustomed to tackling performance problems by telling people what to do. So it is no surprise that in Daniel Goleman’s research of leadership styles, published in HBR in 2000, leaders ranked coaching as their least-favorite style, saying they simply didn’t have time for the slow and tedious work of teaching people and helping them grow.

They are not wrong it's just that they have been using the same approach in all the different situations!