You are the executive CEO of a successful owner operated enterprise in West Virginia, your business generates over $500K EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes), you feel like there is potential for more and you intend to take your company to the next level? If this is you schedule a call with one of our executive coaches to estimate the ROI of executive coaching for your business.
When using coaching as a leadership development tool
Coaching managers should perceive coaching as something broader than just the efforts of exterior coaches who are hired to help executives build their personal and professional skills. That work is important and sometimes vital, but it’s temporary and executed by outsiders. The kind of coaching managers should implement is the one that establishes a real learning organization with ongoing coaching that is executed by people inside the organization. It is an activity that all managers should participate in with all their subordinates on an ongoing basis, in such a manner that helps define the organization’s culture and its mission. An effective coaching manager as a leader asks questions instead of providing answers, supports team members instead of judging them, facilitates their growth and leadership instead of dictating what has to be done, asks for ideas from all team members on how to solve the situation instead of just relying on own attempts to solve it individually. A coaching manager with cooperative leadership style can approach any obstacle with a calm, objective and clear focus. A deeper understanding of issues and solution-focused fact finding creates the blueprints for resolutions.
How to develop strategic leadership skills
The manager's task is to assist his staff more broadly and more deeply. Sometimes it is sufficient to ask something as simple as “If you had a magic wand, what would you do?” to open up the conversation and put everyting on wide-angle. You’d be surprised how freeing many people find that question to be—and how quickly they then start thinking and generating fresh, productive ideas. Once they’ve opened up their perspective and discovered new options looking at things, the manager's job is to prompt them to deepen their thinking, perhaps by making them explore the upside, the downside, and the risks of each approach.
How to keep a sales team motivated when sales are slow and low
You can assist your sales staff enhance their current performance, or in the case of already well performing sales team members, help them excel even more. Performance coaching is a powerful method when leaders deploy it for the benefit of the entire sales team. At times getting the performance coaching right can be challenging for even the most experienced managers. When an employee is not on track to target a manager comes to a point where he / she must decide wheter to fire or hang in there with a direct report. Often an alternation between ignorance and micromanagement by the manager have contributed significantly to the situation and lead up to this point. Before a problem grows, the manager should already touch base along the way and ask staff members about their ideas how to correct the issue, prevent it from becoming bigger and from happening again. In case of a high performing employee the manager should trigger constant and never ending improvement by asking questions in that regard.
Why coaching is an important management skill not only for managers
Great leaders help minimize the “noise” and distractions that are getting in the way of someone’s capability to analyse what is happening and which action to take to solve the issue. Great leaders know how and when to ask the right question at the moment, when to give feedback, when to advise, how to get the person to focus, and how to gain dedication. Managers can do this, but they have to waive of a few limiting beliefs and implement a few mindsets and skills. Effective coaching skills serve every level of employment. Enhanced compassion and empathy in each operation reduces friction points and replaces those with human growth potential. Difficult situations and tough conversations become easier to digest when coaching skills are well implemented and regularly executed. Nowadays employees have and need a lot more autonomy. But just as a coach helped the employee set objectives that gave the employee a purpose and shared timely feedback with him/her and recognition to encourage the employee, so should the manager.
What are the top leadership skills to improve?
One of the best ways to improve a manager's nondirective coaching skill is to try conversing using the GROW model, devised in the 1980s by Sir John Whitmore and others. The GROW model seems easy to conceptualize, but it’s harder to execute than some managers might imagine, because it requires training to think outside the box about what the manager's role and value as a leader are. The foundation of nondirective coaching is listening, questioning, and withholding judgment. Coaching managers contribute to draw wisdom, insight, and trigger creativity out of their subordinates they’re coaching, with the intent and objective of guiding them learn to resolve problems and cope with complicated situations on their own. It is an approach that can be highly inspiring and empowering for those being coached, but it does not feel natural to most managers, who tend to be more comfortable with just their authoritative “telling” leadership style.
How to replace bad leadership qualities with good ones
More professionals sense the need to coach their teams in order to get the best performance of their team members. Like in any relationship, coaching is built on mutual respect and trust. The employee must trust the manager to guide him/her though a strategic mental process. That thinking process becomes more beneficial when information is shared openly. Studies have shown that nine out of 10 executives have the intent to assist their direct report improve performance. On the other hand role-plays simulating a coaching situation demonstrated much room for improvement. Cooperative Coaching leadership style involves listening and asking opposed to authoritative leadership style consisting of just selling and telling. But that coaching approach is contrary to the manager's instincts because deep down the managers have already made up their minds about the solution to a specific issue well before the managers even begin looking at the problem together with the employee. So often those coaching efforts get quickly reduced to just trying to get agreement on what the manager had already in mind and decided. This cannot be construed as real coaching and therefore the outcomes are no better than when authoritative leadership is deployed.
The benefits of coaching sales leaders
When sales coaching triggers the sharing of valuable sales-knowledge this leads to having the entire sales team deploy successful methodology instead of just one top sales person using it. This can be easily accomplished by using tools like Salesforce-Chatter, Slack or any other chat-rooms or forums. When knowledge can be transferred easily within an organization this exchange engages, motivates and energizes the rest of the entire sales team. On top of that this content can become a resource to be repurposed in sales trainings.
Coaching your team to higher performance and responsibility
Great leaders implicitly have internalized the transferability of emotions. This process is also known as emotional contagion (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1993). Great coaching managers are careful with their reactions in times of crisis or emergencies. They wait for better opportunities to generate empowerment, inspiration and excitement when a new momentum is needed within the team and become proactive in avoiding fires they have become used to put out themselves. Ongoing crisis management cannot be an effective leadership style. A better approach to work is to delegate authority using cooperative leadership style and put trust into the team and let the team members learn to handle complicated situations themselves.
When developping leadership skills becomes more important with new responsibilities
Most people begin successful careers by developing expertise in a technical, functional, transactional or professional domain. In most instances coming up with the right answers means everything. For the purpose of rising up the career ladder proving yourself that way has been sufficient in most cases. But once the employee moves into people management the tables turn and at that point the manager has to ensure that his / her subordinates have the same or even better quality in their answers. However, managers differ in their style to leading employees and generating results. At times some managers tend to just oversee employees and the work they fulfill and to solve issues on behalf of their employees. Managers who have implemented coaching leadership strive to empower and inspire employees to take their skills to another level and resolve issues on their own.
How to ensure a new manager transforms into a brilliant leader
Each time a brilliant employee gets promoted to the next level within an organization without the coaching support and leadership training he / she needs, the organization makes a huge mistake by leaving the new manager's performance and success up to chance. They have a 50% chance that not only will the new manager fail, but having missed out on leadership coaching this will cost their organization a little fortune to press play and repeat until a new manager randomly really outperforms with his / her team. Effective coaching skills do not only serve the new manager but also each and every level of employment. Increasing empathy and compassion in every function reduces friction and stress and replaces both with growth potential within the team. Tough decisions in tough situations with normally tough conversations become easier to maneuver when coaching skills are in place and well implemented and performed.
How to motivate a team at workplace
For true leaders it is important to place intention on building individual competencies and responsibilities that arise from collaboration with team members. They lay the foundation for goal achievement with each member of the team. According to Tackx & Verdin, 2014, including team members in decision-making, goal-setting, and strategy development will lead to the sensation of ownership over processes that will motivate even beyond the regular. Leaders that develop effective coaching skills help their team members achieve personal or professional goals. In a managerial or leadership function, effective coaching skills tend to support sustainable change in behaviors and thinking patterns while enhancing skill sets and facilitating personal growth, education and development.
Leadership effectiveness within the team and with clients
Excellent coaching skills can come in handy in times of conflict. Suppose there is a conflict between two team members. The effective coaching skills of active, equal listening and emotional intelligence are deployed to reduce stress, anger, confrontation and ineffective, destructive communication. Allowing space for each side in times of conflict and to also co-create solutions helps to unify the team. Professional coaching involves partnering with team members and clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their real potential. Methods of objective assessment, active listening, asking the right questions in terms of reflective questioning encourage self-discovery of all parties.
The fine line between situational leadership and executive coaching
Situational coaching represents the otimum zone to be in in the context of a manager as a coach. All managers should pursue to become expert at situational coaching. Situational coaching involves balancing between authoritive and cooperative leadership style depending on what the current situation requires. Managers as coaches should first focus on and become really good at non-directive coaching, until it becomes almost an instinct, and only then start to mix that newly strengthened capability with the implementation of management by objectives and directive coaching.
The benefits of mishap coaching in workplace
Successful managers are aware of the importance and significance of careful planning and preparation. Both play a central role in their success. At times however they don’t emphasize it enough at the team level, which means that they don’t set an expectation that the team members who report to them should spend an equal amount of time on planning and preparation as they do for the operations. A side effect that comes in handy of this approach to managing mistakes is that it will build trust between leaders and subordinates. According to Edmondson, 2002 that will create the sense of psychological safety net which is required to admit openly one’s mistakes and ask for help and forgiveness and mitigate the temptation to sweep errors under the rug.
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