Using Coaching Instead of Giving Answers Dianna Anderson One of the questions that I get the most when I’m helping people learn how to coach is, “How do I stop trying to solve everyone’s problems for them?” Let’s face it; we are hardwired to solve problems for other people. We’ve been trained all of our lives to do that. It’s just a habit that we’ve got. You know, someone asks you a question and, boom, there you are, you’re giving the answer. So when we want to start integrating coaching into our leadership style, there’s a couple of things that we’ve got to do. The first one is notice those cues that set you off into problem solving. It could be that somebody is asking you a question, or maybe you just kind of like to be the expert, or maybe it’s when you’re in a hurry, you just want to give people the answers. The key is to start to notice when these things happen and then if you can, choose to actually take a different path and coach somebody. So once you start to recognize those cues, then you can be at choice about whether you’re going to solve the problem or step into coaching. The more you start coaching, the thing to really do is notice the reward that you get from coaching, because here’s the thing: when you’re solving people’s problems, you get a little adrenaline hit. We like to be the person with the answers. Personally, the reward that I get from coaching far exceeds anything I experience from having the right answer. I love to see when people get engaged and excited about the path forward that they’ve chosen for themselves. So as you start to build your coaching skills, really acknowledge for yourself what a great gift it is for other people. That’s going to keep this coaching habit moving. Lastly, really deepen your coaching skills so you can trust them. The more confident you are in your coaching skills the more likely you are to use them. And so what you want to do is just keep building and stretching those capabilities so that eventually they just become part of who you are and how you do things. It’s so worth the effort to make coaching a part of your life. So start noticing when you’ve got the choice to solve a problem or to coach, and start choosing coaching; it’ll change everything.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 19:36:53 +0000
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