BNET Video

Best Practices

Now Playing:

Coaching Employees | Leila’s House of Corrections

If you find yourself constantly telling your employees what to do, you may be spending too much time managing, and not enough time coaching. Leila explains how you can guide employees to make decisions on their own.

If you have questions or suggestions for future video topics, Leila wants to hear from you.

Speaker: Leila Bulling Towne, Executive Coach, The Bulling Towne Group

1 Comment

See Full Transcript

Tags: Employee, Leila, Leila's House of Corrections, Coaching, Executive Coach, Decision making

 
Reply to Story

BNET TalkbackShare your ideas and expertise on this topic

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

  •  
    1

    desigrrl

    06/12/09 | Report as spam

    RE: Coaching Employees | Leila?s House of Corrections

    Leila's cool. reasonable, interesting and articulate. i like.

Please add your comment:
  1. You are currently: a Guest |
  4.  

Basic HTML tags that work in comments are: bold (<b></b>), italic (<i></i>), underline (<u></u>), and hyperlink (<a href></a)

advertisement
advertisement
  • Click Here
  • Click Here
  • Click Here
advertisement
Coaching Employees | Leila’s House of Corrections

If you find yourself constantly telling your employees what to do, you may be spending too much time managing, and not enough time coaching. Leila explains how you can guide employees to make decisions on their own.

If you have questions or suggestions for future video topics, Leila wants to hear from you.

Do you ever feel that you are giving direction on what to do and how, constantly? Are you telling your employees how to do something they already have the skills to do? If so, you are probably spending too much time managing the work of your team. Instead, you need to spend more time coaching. Come on managers, it s time to learn how to coach.

A fundamental difference between managing and coaching lies in how decisions are made. If you are telling employees what to do and what actions to take, you are making decisions for them: that s managing.

If you re asking employees questions to help them come to conclusions on their own, that s coaching. There is incredible value in both modes of operation, yet once managers ease into their roles, they tend to forget to step back and stop giving directions. They forget to coach.

To begin coaching, use these steps.

Step 1: Ask, don t tell.

Ask for a person s input. Don t tell an employee what you think. Ask what he thinks. Use open-ended questions to solicit ideas. Right now, in the beginning, you are helping him consider all the whats to do. What are your ideas? What do you think you can do? What are some ways to address this situation?

Step 2: Narrow down the list of options.

When you ask for ideas, you cast a big net. Now, you want to narrow the focus and help the employee select the best option or options for the situation. Use a question like, OK, considering the ideas you brought up, which ones should you pursue and why?

Step 3: Ask the employee how he will accomplish the task.

After you have coached an employee to pick an option, now is the time to consider how to do something. What approaches should he take? Ask questions like, What will you say?, How will you conduct that meeting?, and How will you influence someone?

Coaches help employees take steps and make decisions on their own. And the benefit for you, the manager, is that you have more time to focus on your talents and expertise. You spend less time telling people what to do because you re coaching them to make decisions themselves.