If you are going to evolve your management style, you need effective coaching skills. The reality is, you won’t be successful if your people are not successful. To help them be the best versions of themselves, you need to coach them. Coaching is all about inspiring, encouraging, recognizing, and challenging your team.
Inspiring Your Team
Setting the standard, selling the idea that hard work is required every day. Communicating and defining your vision of what success looks like. Knowing your team members (what motivates them) as everyone buys in for different reasons. Being a role model, demonstrating all the behaviors and work ethic you want your team to be known for. You are demonstrating a positive, optimistic, and solution-oriented attitude and disposition.
Encouraging Your Team
Support team members in specific ways to be effective and provide value each day. Checking in with team members regularly to make sure progress is happening. Establishing an environment where it’s safe to fail and make mistakes (if people learn from them). Give constructive feedback in real-time. Let them know you appreciate a job well done, offering encouragement to people who are sincerely trying to improve.
Recognize Your Team
When you see something great, calling it out. Recognizing the contributions of others, trying never to let great work go unnoticed. Notice great work with:
- Applause (literally sometimes)
- Appreciation (a simple thank you can go a long way)
- Access (information is critical, but visibility and time spent with you and other leaders can mean the world to somebody)
Challenge Your Team
Never letting shoddy work go unnoticed. You should address the bad or expect more of the same. Make constructive feedback private yet positive. Setting realistic yet tight timelines to improve focus. Coaching and leading teams can sometimes be like acting; it’s a performance.
Your attitude can be contagious. If leading is a performance, then you always need to be on top of your game. Your team is watching you, and they will catch their attitude from you in the first few minutes through the door. The greatest sports coaches have a winning attitude in front of both their players and fans. You choose your mood and, your team picks it up, lives, and breathes it daily.
As a leader, make sure to keep in contact with the coaches and mentors in your life. Don’t forget to make time for yourself to get inspired and refreshed. Your people need to catch your positive and inspiring attitude.
Starting Your Day
Before you get out of the car at work, sit there, and reflect. Shift gears. Think, “I am at work. I think of my people. I will help them be successful. We will win.” Once you do that, then you are ready to lead for the day.
During the first few minutes in the office, review your coaches’ journal. I use the Productivity Planner. What are you working on? What are the priorities today? If you can only accomplish one thing today, does it make a difference in helping you and your team? What types of encouragement do they need from you today?
Finishing Your Day
Take a few minutes to review how the day went. Is there anything you need to tackle first thing in the morning? Are you able to leave work at work instead of taking it home? You need balance, too, just like your team.
Write yourself a note, so you can leave it there at the office and not take stuff home with you.
If you follow these tips and tricks, your level of coaching will be improved. You will see better performance from your team. Your culture will evolve as your management skills do, reflecting more of your personality. Everything will flow and connect, creating better alignment.
