C: Welcome to Slingshot25 shot cast a series of bite-sized podcast that will feel like an espresso shot to your brain. I’m Courtney.
J: I’m Jackie.
C: Today we’re going to talk about our favorite thing. Coaching! Coaching coaching coaching. So coaching the word that’s used in business all the time and it means different things to different people. Today we want to unpack a very hidden kind of coaching that’s needed in your organization. I think when we think about coaching, we think about hiring a coach for an executive.
J: Yah and you know what? You should do that. Executives have big jobs they got big decisions to make and they can get stuck and they have lessons to learn all of that yeah absolutely.
C: When you hire a coach you’re hiring someone with a coaching skill set. And one of the areas where we find a ton of value potential is teaching that coaching skillset to your leaders. And that’s different right you can hire a coach for a leader but it doesn’t teach him how to coach.
J: That’s correct it doesn’t at all as matter fact coaches over there if there really are good at what they do they aren’t teaching your particular skill-set instead they are helping you to find your own answers and maximize your own potential. So no there’s no teaching of what what it actually takes two to coach.
C: So, what we’ve learned through our change management background because you can’t do change management without coaching. With our leadership development background you can’t build leaders without coaching. We started really chewing on what if more leaders knew how to coach. And what part of people don’t know how to do it or don’t learn as they have the wrong idea what coaching is.
Coaching is not giving the answers. Coaching is not about correction coaching is not about I think about kids that played a lot of sports the coach that the kid gets up to bat and a swing-and-a-miss and the coach say, well hit it next time. What coaching is coaching is about getting yourself in a place to see the other person and get curious about what they need and helping them learn and see themselves so they can be self-aware. They can get some clarity that they can make some choices to behave more like the person that they want to be in the more like the person or organization needs them to be.
J: Yeah so I always think about now imagine if all of your front line leaders were able to to use these skills to do that for every employee in your company. Imagine if every employee in your company had a leader who knew how to do that knew how to bring out the greatest productivity to get them unstuck to help them prioritize to help them solve their own problems so that they stay solved to learn from those solutions. Just imagine that. Imagine if you had a Frontline like all of your front line leaders which by the way that’s who your entire organization reports to. That’s what they all report to so can you imagine if they had the skills to release all the potential of your employees?
C: It’s hard to imagine because it’s what we’re talking about is very different than how it works today. So I think maybe our hope for this discussion is to chew on this a little bit. Be uncomfortable think about where you’re spending your time where you’re making your investments. What it look like to invest in building coaching skills in your front line leaders putting your time your investment in your bank on them? I think I’m amazing things could happen.
J: I think so as well. And I think it should be noted to that it’s possible to teach those leaders how is a coach. It doesn’t mean that you have to send them off to some fancy coaching certification program they don’t need to become certified coaches they actually just need to learn some really basic really effective skills for how to coach. And that’s entirely possible and I can help you with that that’s right we can certainly help with that and I don’t want anyone to think that that is bigger than what their leaders can handle because it is not.
C: Okay I think that’s all we’re going to say about this today. That’s all for this episode of Shotcast we always have much more to say if you want more or drop us a line at Slingshot25.com.
Until next time…