The Liberating Power of Coaching

In my coaching business, I've come across many leaders who have sincere intentions to change and become better leaders to their team. However, when they focus only on their values and ignore the individual team member's values, then an unhealthy work environment persists and their leadership is disdained.

In one of my coaching sessions, one leader was suffering from exhaustion as he felt he was doing a lot of work, more than his fair share. As his coach, I asked him what he wanted as his outcome for the coaching session. He responded that he wanted to feel excited about coming to office and that the workload should be fairly distributed. Upon exploration of the reality of what were some reasons for his exhaustion, the leader shared that he had assigned some work to one of his team members. Upon reviewing that team member's output, he was saddened that the quality was not up to his mark. Due to this, the leader decided that since time was already lost and he could not take the risk of poor quality work, he decided to complete the task. He felt overwhelmed with the workload. In order to complete these additional tasks, he stayed back late during the weekdays and sometimes even returned to the office on the weekends.

In the coaching session, I explored how congruent his current behaviour pattern was versus his desired outcome of having a fair workload and not feeling exhausted. He observed his behaviour pattern and admitted that this was not a sustainable plan of action. However, he could not see any possibility of resolving this as long as he had that 'weak' team member with him.

As his coach, I validated the leader for upholding and respecting his two values of producing high quality work and submitting timely work. I explored the impact of the leader's behaviour on the 'weak' team member. The leader became aware that his own behaviour was rather selfish as he was standing in the way of his team member's learning, growing, becoming mature and improving his talent. The leader mentioned that this awareness was the most useful takeaway from the coaching session.

To close the coaching session, I enquired what he would like to do next. The leader realised that he was not 'stuck' anymore. Rather, new possibilities opened up for him. He was going to stop making assumptions and drawing conclusions about the 'weak' team member. Rather the leader was willing to stretch himself to find out and understand what was the reason the team member was making mistakes; either he did not understand the instructions, he lacked clarity or he really did not know how to do the task assigned. After knowing the real reason, the leader could support his team member to grow. The leader would then curate the most appropriate step to move forward.

In conclusion, coaching skills can liberate leaders from their stuck 'assumptions' and 'conclusions' to appreciate wider understanding. Leaders who practice coaching reduce their 'telling', 'yelling' and making assumptions. These leaders move toward building a healthier work environment where teams work happily, collaboratively and grow their talent. These leaders do more "asking" to understand reasons for bottlenecks and then create win-win resolutions where they can confidently delegate and teams can flourish under their leadership.

Would you be interested in learning these coaching skills and become the Empowered Leader to your teams? Do join us!

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