Coaching in business

In recent years, coaching has been increasingly penetrating the business, and sometimes it becomes more difficult to distinguish it from other types of communication with employees. But it must be done. Firstly, because not all issues can and should be solved with the help of coaching. Secondly, to use coaching tools more meaningfully and to see a clear boundary between different ways of communicating with employees.
How does coaching differ from other methods of influencing the workflow?

The predicted response

The coaching approach is expressed in the fact that the manager asks his subordinates open-ended questions, that is, implying different answers. It is not difficult to remember this rule. A leader who has mastered the art of asking questions perfectly turns into a leader-coach. However, the following caveat must be taken into account here. These questions are coaching as long as the manager is really ready for any answer to the question, and not for the one he predicts and wants to get. Because the purpose of coaching is to find the answer to the question, thereby discovering a new solution to the situation. But if the employee’s response and the boss’s forecast did not match, it does not mean that they did something wrong. It’s just that the manager should set himself the goal of getting the employee’s opinion, not confirming his assumption.

Leading questions

If a manager asks a question with the “correct” answer visible to employees in advance, this is not coaching. The whole point of coaching is that there is no “right” answer. There is just an honest answer from a person who may seem good to someone, but not very good to someone. And in this situation, the manager puts himself in the place of an adult, considering the employee to be a child. And this, of course, is not about coaching. In coaching, everyone should be equal in dialogue. And if the boss does not recognize such a right initially, then in this case he should not play coach.

A pre-prepared strategy

As a rule, the head has a plan of what and how he will do in business. And if the purpose of coaching is to convey this plan to employees, then this is not coaching either. Communicating your vision to the situation is not a coaching task, but creating a joint, shared vision is another matter. Already based on a common vision, an employee can plan what he needs to achieve a result.

Manipulation

Coaching relationships are built on the basis of trusting communication, when the goals of both sides, both the manager and the employees, are open for discussion. Therefore, when a manager asks a coach: “how to make employees do it, and at the same time they would think that they themselves influenced it, and not someone from the outside,” this cannot be called coaching.

The idea of coaching

It is not so important to know the name as the methods and methods of effective business interaction. However, basic awareness, the ability to distinguish concepts and productively use various communication methods in business will only benefit.