Every leader needs coaching skills to succeed
Every leader needs coaching skills to succeed
Every leader needs to develop basic coaching skills in order to draw out the best in their team.
In this fast-moving industry, leaders are often tapped for their performance skills, not their leadership skills. Is this a misguided order of priorities? Not necessarily, but it leaves a large skill gap to be addressed, especially for those stepping into their first leadership role.
After coaching hundreds of leaders, I’ve noticed the same repeating pattern: Produce leaders don’t set out to self-sabotage, but many are limiting their teams without even realizing it. In most cases, it’s because they don’t have the coaching skills they need to nurture a team so they resort to a more controlling leadership style.
I made this same mistake during my tenure at the National Mango Board. As a newer leader, I mistakenly believed that I needed to have my fingerprint on every decision to ensure the results I wanted. Instead of fulfilling my potential as a leader, I hit a wall of frustration. I knew my team had great potential, but I didn’t know how to draw it out.
That was true until I finally realized I had a very narrow view of leadership. By trying to manage everything instead of creating a space for teammates to pursue their own amazing ideas, I was actually limiting my team.
Working with a coach helped me identify that gap in my leadership approach and develop coaching skills of my own. I began to release control, allowing my teammates’ creativity to flourish. During my final years at the National Mango Board, my team produced the strongest results we had ever seen.
Many years and many client conversations later, I am just as convinced today as I was back then — coaching skills are necessary for leaders to foster team success instead of stifling it.
Coach approach: Ask more, tell less
A coach approach is the difference between pushing a team to perform versus coming alongside a team to foster their success.
At its core, taking a coach approach means working with someone in conversation to help them find their own best answers. It requires letting go of some aspects of control — which can be scary, but leadership is far more than just assigning tasks and taking reports. It is also coaching a teammate through a difficult challenge, inspiring creativity and initiative, and empowering team members to grow as individuals.
For example, if a team member brings a new idea to the table, most leaders default to either offering advice or building upon the idea. But even the most well-meaning advice can kill enthusiasm and make the employee feel like they no longer have ownership over the idea.
Marshall Goldsmith, one of the most well-known executive coaches in the world, put it this way when speaking about how leaders can’t seem to resist offering advice: “While the quality of the idea may go up 5 percent, their commitment to execute it may go down 50 percent. That’s because it’s no longer their idea; it’s now your idea.”
Instead, a coach approach uses questions to help the team member develop and take ownership of their own idea.
These questions can be extremely simple:
- “What have you tried so far?”
- “What ideas have you come up with?”
- “What might be the impact of [trying that idea]?”
- “What do you think we should do next?”
- “What might get in our way?”
I often challenge leaders to stay in this mode of asking simple, powerful questions for as long as possible. Always do more asking than telling, and more listening than speaking.
Ultimately, give team members a chance to be the hero of the story. And remember that when they shine, that light reflects back on the entire team.
Thriving leaders circle: Coach approach in action
The coach approach is the central philosophy driving Thriving Leaders Circle, my group coaching and training program for new or upskilling people managers.
I am now leading my fourth group through Thriving Leaders Circle, and I have yet to find a leader who has not benefited from learning coaching skills.
“Through Thriving Leaders, I have been able to shift my leadership style from advising to coaching,” shared Amanda Keefer from the Healthy Family Project. “It has made a world of difference in a short period of time.”
The switch from advising to coaching requires giving up an element of control, and that doesn’t come naturally. But what I appreciate most about the coach approach is that anyone can learn it with intention and practice. All it takes is a willingness to learn and implement, even if that means being vulnerable sometimes.
The best leaders aren’t the ones who have all the answers — they’re the ones who know how to ask the right questions.
Wendy McManus, PCC, CPCC, is a leadership coach, speaker and facilitator working primarily with produce industry professionals. Thriving Leaders Circle, her leadership coaching and training program is accepting applications for the spring cohort now.
