One of the biggest challenges we will face in our coaching conversations is knowing when we are coaching and when we are mentoring. So, what is the difference and why is it important?
Without going into the many definitions of coaching and mentoring, the difference can be explained through two simple statements:
A mentor provides great answers to our questions.
A coach uses great questions to help us find our own answers.
Of course, the mentor role is important in helping individuals develop the knowledge and skills they need to grow in their job. The danger is that, if overdone, we may create dependency and narrow the experience of our mentees. A coaching approach will help and encourage the individual to discover solutions for themselves, taking responsibility for the problem instead of relying on someone else to provide a solution.
In practice, a balanced mix of both approaches can be much more effective. Sometimes we need to use coaching behaviours and sometimes we need to use mentoring behaviours to help individuals be the best that they can be. The key skill is in knowing where you are in the conversation at any time and what is appropriate!
The focus in any coaching conversation should be on the individual being coached.
The leader should control the process, but the individual must be allowed to decide the content – what they are willing to discuss.
Structuring our coaching conversations
As we discussed at the outset of this module, we are not trying to turn you into a Coach. It is more about you developing as a leader who can use coaching tools and techniques in your day-to-day role. It may be useful, however, to be aware of the structured approaches that are used in the coaching business. Coaching conversations can be pre-planned or spontaneous depending on the situation, but both will work better when based on a structure. The following should help you to develop your own style.
The 4 Stage Approach (adapted from Sir John Whitmore’s GROW model)
Here is a four-stage structure that you can use or adapt to guide the individual, help them to clarify their thinking, and identify and commit to the actions they will take:
Stage 1 – helping them to be clear about which areas they would like to work on, what they want to achieve and why.
Stage 2 – encouraging them to explore positively what is happening now, what may stop them from achieving what they want, and what support is available to help them.
Stage 3 – helping them to think creatively, to identify, define and develop ideas, options and possible solutions.
Stage 4 – helping them to decide what actions they will take to achieve their desired outcomes, and what support they might need.
The purpose of this stage is to help the individual be clear about what they are aiming for. This may sound simple, but often an individual doesn’t really know what they want until they are challenged to think deeper about the subject area being discussed. For example, the individual may say, “I want to improve my team meetings and make them more productive.” What does that really mean? Your response might be to ask what is wrong with them now. A reasonable response perhaps, but immediately the conversation is focused on negative things rather than positive. A more positive response might be to ask them to describe what a “more productive team meeting” would look like.
What are their team members doing differently?
What are you the leader doing differently?
What is the atmosphere like?
What impact is this having on individuals?
What happens at the end of each meeting?
Helping them to see the future and focus on positive outcomes will change their whole approach to goal setting. The goal they set themselves will be more aligned to what they need.
Having explored this with them, ask them if they would like to redefine their goal. It is likely that they will change it to something like:
“I will create an atmosphere in team meetings where team members feel able to contribute ideas for improvement, and where each meeting ends with team members taking positive action to implement changes discussed.”
This could be explored even further by asking them what they need to do differently to bring about the improvement described above. Their goal could be refined even further.
The important thing about the goal is that it should be clear, measurable, and compatible with the individual’s personal objectives and those of the organisation. They must own the goal.
The key skill required in successful coaching conversations is the ability to construct meaningful questions during the conversation, that are challenging and move the individual forward towards a solution. Questions that raise awareness. Questions that are constructive and help to clarify the individual’s thinking.
(We will cover this in the section below – “The secret is in the questions.”)
Describing how the future will look can help the individual to take a step back and examine the current situation. This assessment should concentrate on facts rather than opinions, judgmental evaluations, prejudices, hopes or fears. Your role as leader is to help the individual look at the situation or problem with a “fresh pair of eyes” – to help them to take the emotion out of the situation and examine it without judgement. Help them look for evidence of what is positive and what is negative. At this stage the objective is not to come up with answers, but to understand fully what is happening and the impact it is having. Once the facts have been established and the areas for improvement have been decided, you can move on to looking for options to introduce change and achieve a better outcome.
The objective of this stage is to help the individual use the information from Stage 2 to identify and develop possible solutions that have a good chance of success, bringing about the desired change. Having identified the areas requiring attention, you can guide the individual to articulate ideas that may provide a solution. Free-thinking is important at this stage because the quantity of ideas is more important than quality and feasibility. It is a creative and stimulating process, which is often more valuable than the options themselves (remember the Framing Actions section in the Practitioner Programme?). Options need to be identified initially without judgement or any expression of preference, and without assumptions, ridicule, censorship, obstacles or completeness. Remember, it is so easy to judge and an innocent comment or gesture could prevent someone from voicing an idea at the risk of it being ridiculed.
Have you ever been in a meeting where the team leader is asking for ideas? Someone puts forward an idea and a couple of people may say “That’s a good one.” That is a judgement! There may be someone with an even better suggestion thinking that their idea is not as good, or that people are going to judge it harshly. That idea may be lost, and it might have been the best solution.
Once the list of options is produced, they can then be assessed to determine their suitability and feasibility. Selection criteria can be agreed, and then each option can be judged against them to determine whether it can be used in this instance. This ensures that everyone’s ideas are judged in the same way – particularly important when having coaching conversations with teams.
Once the options have been explored and a plan of action is in place, you can move to the final stage.
In this stage of the process, effective questioning is used to help the individual clarify and articulate what will be done, and more importantly, what they will do and when. You can help them re-visit the challenges and obstacles they might face and how they will overcome them. At this stage it is important to check their willingness and determination to take forward the actions they have identified, and how they will measure success. Help them make a positive commitment to act and re-assure them that you will continue to provide support where necessary.
The 4 Stage approach is a flexible tool providing a simple and structured way in which you can consciously use the principles of coaching and mentoring to good effect. It enables you to help and support others without solving their problems for them. The individual being coached is the focus for the whole process, including taking responsibility for the actions and outcomes. As a result, they experience a growth in confidence and self-belief that can be quite remarkable.
It is not intended that you will go through every stage in every coaching conversation.
In some coaching conversations you may not get past the first stage as the meeting may be taken up by helping the individual to clarify what they want to achieve. That is perfectly acceptable, and the next stages can be addressed at subsequent meetings. It is not intended as a rigid process – in some situations, you might quickly move through all the stages and in others you might not.
Other tools useful for coaching conversations
SWOT Analysis. Encouraging someone to complete a summary of their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and then using it as the basis for a coaching conversation is very effective. Make sure that the emphasis of your questioning is on strengths and opportunities and how the individual can use them to address areas of weakness and threat. This can also be used in assessing possible solutions.
The Four Problem Solving Questions mentioned earlier (see the Solution Focus section), not only enables you to coach someone, but can also be used by an individual to coach themselves.
The Coaching Wheel. Simply ask the individual to draw a circle and divide it into a number of segments where each segment represents a key area of their job. With the centre of the circle representing “not effective” and the outer line of the circle representing “very effective”, ask them to rate themselves in terms of effectiveness for each key area. The result can then be used to start a coaching conversation. This can also be used when coaching a team to analyse a particular problem area.
Summary
We hope you can see that there is no real need for sophisticated coaching models in order to be an effective leader. Using the principles of coaching, your knowledge and understanding of Emotional Intelligence, and building your skills in questioning will help you to help realise the full potential of others and to increase your competence and confidence as a leader and Senior Practitioner.
