Want more ROI from coaching? Then shift to coaching for GROWTH!

Effective Leaders coach in 2 ways, consistently!

When you coach team members as a Leader, you typically focus on two areas:

(1) Their immediate PERFORMANCE

(2) Their GROWTH towards FUTURE Performance.

What this means is that in the end, we will often have two types of Coaching Conversations that are quite different in character. One fits quite naturally in our days and the other is less frequent and easily overlooked, when in the hamster wheel!

However, it is especially the second kind of coaching (for Growth) that offers the most long-term rewards for your time spent.

I wrote this article for People Leaders who want to use their available time for coaching team members to maximum effect.

We will put a spotlight on both types of coaching and carve out the differences.

What does it mean to coaching for immediate PERFORMANCE?

• We address and try to help our team member ‘fix’ a specific problem or challenge.
• We want to help put out a fire.
• It’s everyday stuff, and it’s important and necessary.
• We approach our team member with a coaching mindset: We switch on the belief that they are resourceful, and yes, they can figure many things out if we give them a chance.
• We hold our breath first, when someone asks us for help. We switch on our coaching mindset and stay curious longer than we normally would.
• Through our coaching approach, our team member gets a chance to develop a solution to an immediate problem and can bounce if off with us.
• We at least hear them out first on their current thinking, before we might switch into coaching, mentoring or advising. 
• The reward of this kind of coaching is that team members overcome challenges with a high degree of autonomy. The chance is much higher that they make progress without relying too much on their leader subsequently. They build confidence and competence in their own way. As a side effect, they may also develop their own resources for future similar cases.

How might it sound to coach for Performance?

• "What's your recommendation, given the facts that you have?"
• “In your best judgment, what are the options on the table, and which one do you suggest?"
• “What’s the ideal outcome here from your point of view?”
• “What do you think should we address to make immediate progress here?”
• "What makes this a great solution from your point of view?"
• "What's the immediate challenge you need to overcome?"
• "What's the very next step you need to address to make progress on this?"
• "How can I best support you?"

All these statements are delivered in a way that they carry a sense of 'partnership'. They let the team member find ways to own the solution of their immediate challenges, with support from their Leader.

However, this is short-term and only one way to coach. It 'fixes' an immediate problem; growth and learning can happen, but are a side effect.

Let's talk about an even more powerful way that instead puts growth and learning at the center of the coaching effort.

What does it mean to coach for future GROWTH?

• Coaching for development/growth is about turning the focus away from the immediate problem/issue/challenge. Instead, we zoom in to the person dealing with the issue, the person who’s managing the fire, the person right in front of us.
• We intentionally do not talk about functional topics and concrete problems; instead, we talk about how the person deals with them, what challenges they face and what works for them.
• This type of coaching builds awareness and capacity to deal with the future.
• This conversation is typically not as frequent, but significantly more powerful. It is often neglected. It's the exact case of something that we know is highly important to do, yet rarely urgent. This type of conversation is the typical victim of frequent procrastination.
• If I ask you to think back to a time when someone coached YOU in a way that made a long-term difference, I’ll bet that it was a coaching-for-growth conversation.
• The focus in on calling the team member forward to learn, improve and grow, rather than just getting something sorted out. The focus is about how they RELATE to their problem, not about the problem itself.

How might it sound to coach for GROWTH?

• “What have you learned about yourself in this project?”
• "These struggles that you had over the past few weeks, what do they help you notice about yourself?"
• “How would other people recognize that you made progress on this personal development goal?”
• “If you had the chance to do it all over again, what would you do differently?”
• “You looked puzzled during the session. What was on your mind?”
• "You have shown very resourceful in similar challenges before. What makes this problem here particularly challenging for you right now?"
• "How would you need to be different to show up confidently in this negotiation?"
• 'Lastly, what have you taken away from our coaching conversation?"

The focus of the questions is entirely on how the person relates to themselves and to the problem they face. It is not just asking "How do you feel" (a common misconception that leads to people thinking that coaching is 'soft').

We are not actually discussing the problem or challenge itself. By shifting our focus on the person, we give them space to reflect and to learn about themselves. It is a gift that for most people is rare. It creates awareness, a sense of learning that can lead to growth.

At the same time, this is a challenging approach as we draw our attention on the person and not a problem. It takes courage, space, humility and psychological safety to look inwards and reflect with self-awareness what could have gone better.

Again, while we could easily share with our team member what growth or learning we noticed about them, it is significantly more powerful if they recognize and verbalize it for themselves. 

The ideal outcome of a 'coaching-for-growth' conversation is an 'Aha' or learning moment, an insight that the coachee has about themselves. And it is that learning that we then help them apply onto future challenges. It is these learnings that will lead to future, improved performance, as they help break out of existing patterns or build new ones.

How to turn Growth into future Performance?

A Leader Coach might ask, for example

• “That insight that you just had...how will this help you to go forward?"
• "As you mentioned, you discovered something very interesting here in our conversation. How would you apply this in concrete ways in your stakeholder conversations?"
• “What did you learn about this past project and how will you carry that learning forward for yourself?”

Coaching-for-Growth conversations can have a much higher 'upside'. They can be immensely motivating and generate significant, innate momentum for the coachee. We typically hear that they save Leaders plenty of time as a side effect, as there is a reduced need for the coachee to meet and seek guidance on the coaching topic.

Summary

Leaders typically coach their team members in two distinct ways: for current performance and for growth. When we coach for performance, we allow team members to own their immediate challenges. They feel safe to come up and execute solutions, within boundaries. However, coaching for immediate performance offers significantly less ROI in the long run.

When we coach for growth, we turn our attention to the person, instead of the problem/challenge. We help people draw out learnings, see patterns, notice shifts. The learnings gained from this reflective practice is usually the foundation for increased performance in the future. It is an investment that contributes a lot to long-term performance and offers the best ROI of coaching.

Extra TIP: If you are a Leader, make sure you deliberately make space in your busy schedule for both types of coaching conversations regularly; it is quite typical that coaching for performance is the dominant type of coaching that happens. After all, you can often simply 'plug' your coaching skills into regular day-by-day conversations. We observed that successful leaders agree with their team members that certain regular 1-1s are future-focused only and free of functional discussions. This can be a tremendous help to set the tone and make it a safe, different conversation.

Let me stress that last point:growth conversations are just different. They require from us to take a deep breath, step out of day-to-day issues and look at the person and their challenges, rather than focus on problems-solving. These conversations require intention and some planning. The reward? They are distinctly more powerful in the long run. 

They are simply: a great investment!

Best, Maik

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I am on a mission to give world-class coaching skills to every People Leader. I am the CEO and founder of IntelliCoach.com and run the IntelliCoach Leader Academy Program (ILAP), a world-class online professional coach development program, specifically designed for People Leaders and HR Leaders.

If you are (seriously!) curious to peek into the program, let me know. We offer invite-only complimentary Explorer access to our learning platform with 6h of learning content that you can keep forever! www.intellicoach.com/leader-academy