Coaching

What is coaching?

So, you’ve learned about mentorship. It’s a structured relationship between two people, one with skills and knowledge to teach and one that would like to learn them. However, you can still form relationships with people and greatly assist them in their problems even if you don’t share any skills with them. You may find yourself wondering how you can have a tangible impact on the performance of people of all skill sets and all experience levels.

• You may already have people on your team that you don’t share skill-set backgrounds with. Up until now, you’ve been able to focus your conversation within the bounds of what the team is working on and try to support them through it. However, how do you really help them solve any problem?

• You may have staff on your team that has many more years of experience and expertise than you do. As such, you may have been struggling to give them direct advice, as they’re able to work things out on their own most of the time. How can you still help them develop?

Modes of conversation

So, if coaching is effectively just having a structured conversation, is there a special way in which you should be talking to the person being coached? The answer is yes, there is, and it’s straightforward to grasp.

To frame it, consider two mutually exclusive modes of conversation:

• Directive: This is where you’re instructing someone on what they should do. This is considered to be a “push” action, meaning you’re solving their problem for them.

• Following interest: Here, you’re predominantly listening to understand, reflecting on what they are saying and summarizing. This is a “pull” action, meaning you’re helping them solve their own problems.