Coaching as a Leadership Tool

Being highly skilled and trained in a technical discipline are key attributes of successful analytical scientists. However, they do not automatically make you a strong and effective leader. To achieve that, you must help to create an environment that empowers employees to think independently and creatively. Traditional, proscriptive management styles do not achieve this. One approach that does, and that will help make you an influential leader, is coaching.

What is coaching?

Coaching explores the strengths and goals of your staff, stimulates creative thinking in them, and addresses their behaviors and attitudes. As a coach, you act as a conduit to elicit greatness and empower the staff that you manage.

Coaching as a profession has gained attention in the business world for its impact on workplace satisfaction, goal attainment, and increased productivity. Professional, accredited coaches undergo unique academic and practicum training, engage in continuing education, and follow an established code of conduct. However, you do not need to become an accredited professional coach to use some basic coaching skills to improve your effectiveness as a leader.

The first thing to remember is that coaching is distinct from mentoring. As a mentor, you might engage in some of the following activities:

• Offer advice about career activities and advancement
• Share stories about your own experiences or knowledge
• Provide networking opportunities
• Make introductions to key leaders
• Suggest professional development programs

 All of these activities can be vitally important to a more junior employee’s success and advancement. There are times, however, when a coaching approach is needed. When acting in a coaching capacity, you must:

• Refrain from offering advice
• Assume your employee can find the answer 
• Keep your focus on the employee; don’t talk about yourself
• Remain curious and suspend judgment
• Focus on possibilities instead of problems
• Stay focused on the person, rather than on the issue
• Stay positive and take time to celebrate successes

When to coach?

Before delving into specific coaching behaviors in more detail, it’s important to point out that not all situations at work are coaching moments; for example, when an employee does not have the skills needed for the position he or she holds, or when the behaviors are questionable from a legal or ethical perspective. 

Ideal coaching moments may present themselves when an employee approaches you with a question or problem. Here, you should avoid automatically answering the question or solving the problem, which potentially adds something to your own to-do list. Employing key coaching skills can often lighten your workload as well as increase the motivation of your employees, and it results in creative and innovative solutions you may not have come up with yourself.

Once you’ve established that your employees have the skills to do their jobs, it is important to approach them with the fundamental mindset that they are capable and wise. Your job will be to probe their thinking in a way that stimulates their creativity and sparks their motivation. 

The brain is a social organ

Understanding a bit about how the brain works will help you to understand why certain coaching approaches are so effective. The brain is a social organ: its physiological and neurological functions are directly influenced by social interaction. Brain scans indicate that the areas of the brain associated with physical pain are the same as those associated with social rejection, resulting from arousal of the sympathetic nervous system. The result is decreased cognitive ability and perceptual openness, decreased immune functioning, and feelings of nervousness and anxiety. In contrast, when a reward response is prompted, the parasympathetic system is aroused, a state in which cognition is optimal and new neural tissue can be created, which allows for new learning and an openess to new ideas. As leaders, how you approach and interact with your employees can have dramatic consequences. When your actions prompt a reward response rather than a threat response, your employees become more effective, open, and creative. The coaching behaviors described here align with those behaviors known to elicit a reward response. 

Key coaching behaviors

So, what are these coaching behaviors? While trained professional coaches must demonstrate proficiency in multiple competencies, you can focus on these key elements: listening actively and asking probing, powerful questions. 

To be an influential leader, you need to know what your employees are thinking, which means you have to be a good listener. Communicating your trust in them and sparking their motivation by probing their thinking with powerful questions will create an environment in which they are eager to perform. This seems simple enough, yet it can require a bit of mindful practice. More importantly, it may require a change in your attitudes.

Quick Coaching Tips

Features of Active Listening

• Listen for the complete message
• Reserve judgment
• Reflect and clarify
• Be patient

 Examples of Powerful Questions

• How important is this for you?
• What is your thinking on this matter?
• What do you want the outcome to be?
• How will you make that happen?
• What is possible?
• What is the real issue?
• What else are you thinking?
• What matters most to you?
• What do you want me to know?
• What input do you want from me? 

Listening actively

Good listening is related to interpersonal influence. So, if you want to be influential, you need to be a good listener. Listening actively is fundamentally a state of mind. To be effective you must have a sincere interest in the other person. It requires that you try to get inside the head of the speaker, to try to see things from his or her point of view. More importantly, you must convey to the speaker that you are seeing things through this point of view. 

Listening actively means you are listening for the complete message. Their message includes both content and feelings or attitudes. It is crucial to understand not only what they are saying but also how they feel about it. In fact, sometimes the content is much less important than the attitude that accompanies it. To hear the complete message, you must also pay attention to tone and inflection of voice as well as non-verbal cues such as facial expressions, posture, hand and eye movements, and pace of breathing. 

To listen for this complete message means you must give the other person your undivided attention. Put everything down, turn toward the speaker, and make eye contact. Giving someone your full attention conveys the powerful message that you are interested in what they have to say and that you respect their thoughts.

In fact, demonstrating this message through your behavior is much more powerful than conveying it in words.

Listening actively also requires that you reserve judgment, either favorable or critical, so that the speaker can communicate freely. You can’t get the total message if the speaker shuts down because he or she feels judged. Being non-judgmental and open arouses the reward response rather than the threat response. Make sure you understand by reflecting back or by asking clarifying questions. These behaviors ensure that you not only get the message right but also demonstrate your sincere interest in what the speaker is saying. Further, it is crucial that you are patient. Provide an unhurried environment for the speaker to think clearly withthe opportunity to elaborate.

Asking probing, powerful questions

You can empower your employees to reach their goals and be high performers, not because you have all the right answers, but because you have the right questions. Good questions help your employees access their personal strengths and creativity. Asking questions rather than supplying answers or dictating actions implies a level of confidence and trust that precludes the threat response in your employees. Instead, the parts of the brain associated with openness and creativity are stimulated.

What do probing, powerful questions look like? Where do they come from? Let’s answer the last question first. Good questions come from good listening. When you start from the basic attitude that your employees are capable and wise and assume an attitude of openness and curiosity when you listen attentively to them, the questions will present themselves. It may take some practice, but it will eventually become second nature.

As for structure, powerful questions are those that are not strictly for gathering facts and information. Rather, they are geared at helping others to access personal strengths, reflect on beliefs and attitudes, and access their own knowledge, wisdom, and creativity. Although there is no strict formula for powerful questions, they generally share some of the following characteristics: 

• Open-ended
• Short and simple
• Focus on possibilities instead of problems
• Incorporate the other person’s words
• Do not imply a correct answer
• Do not include a conclusion or suggestion 

See ‘Quick Coaching Tips’ for some examples of simple yet powerful questions. Although you will naturally develop your own questions based on the specifics of your situation, the people you lead, and your preferred style, these examples may be helpful as you practice a coaching approach.

The benefits of a coaching approach

My clients who have adopted a coaching approach tell me about the positive impact it has on their effectiveness as leaders. They have found renewed passion for their jobs and have become more influential leaders in their companies and organizations. Many report that they feel less stressed at work. One client was amazed at her ability to leave meetings without other people’s responsibilities added to her task list. Another client who had recently been promoted from a strictly technical position to one of leading a group was considering giving up the position. 

As we worked together and he learned that he did not have to have all the answers and began to listen carefully, pose the right questions, and handle conflict effectively, he truly embraced the new leadership role and was given rave reviews by the company executives. 

Increase your influence as a leader. Create new habits. Learn to coach!

Janice Manzi Sabatine is President of Avanti Strategies LLC, which provides executive coaching for physicians and scientists.