It happened again this week. I’m working with a group of
leaders on their coaching skills and we’re talking about potential objections
to using a coaching approach with their teams. “My team don’t want loads of
questions, they don’t want me dancing around the handbags with them, they just
want to be told what to do !” one manager pronounces.
I think this comes back to what you think coaching is... if
you believe it us some form of elaborate guessing game then I can see how you
can get in this sort of tangle. It would indeed be perverse to withhold useful
information or expertise from a team member, making them play ‘read the bosses
mind’ instead. No wonder their people regard 'coaching' as time wasting and potentially manipulative. However if you see
coaching as a thinking partnership between two consenting and informed adults
then maybe these confusions can be avoided.
Great coaching is always based on a relationship of trust
and openness - leading questions and
pointless obstruction destroy both.
No comments:
Post a Comment