We believe that coaching is an important skill for leaders and managers.

To create a ‘leaderful’ organisation people need to co-create the ‘plan’ and in particular you need to enable yourself by adopting a ‘coaching’ style with your team. You will co-develop goals and objectives that are fully understood and have been built through a shared exploration of options. Once you have the plan you need to let go of some control and support and coach people to deliver results.

If you immediately think - “yes but...I just don’t have time, my team is under pressure, we’ll do this later” - think again!

People give all kinds of reasons: I feel underappreciated, I’m misunderstood, I don’t learn, grow and develop, I’m fed up with being micromanaged. Managers and their direct reports are usually frustrated by the same things - from different angles.

The conditions people have faced over the last year have also affected their expectations of you as their leader.  As the workplace changes so do people’s daily experiences and their expectations of you as their line manager, leader - and all indications suggest that the skills of an Empowering Enabler have never been more important.

The social sector is ideally placed to benefit from the shift towards ‘leaderful’ workplaces, somewhere where people are trusted to take the actions needed to deliver on the mission.

The more you empower your team the more time you will have to focus on the future.  

To anticipate the future needs of your clients, the focus of your organisation needs to serve the mission and to develop the right conditions for people to learn and be able to ‘lead’ from wherever they are. Your job as their ‘leader’ is to: 

• Ensure that people know what they’re doing
• Understand why they’re doing what they are doing
• Develop each individual’s capacity to develop the skills and capabilities to have the confidence to figure out how they enact their tasks

Coaching skills are the key to unlocking the potential of your team. 

Your team needs to understand what needs to be done and how to figure out how to do it.  Your job is to support them.  You need to listen, ask questions, be curious, support and, where necessary, move obstacles out of the way. Your people know what is in the way, you have the power to enable them.

If you're looking to develop your coaching skills, take a look at our 4-week Leader as Coach course. This short course will help you understand the key aspects of coaching to help your team lead social change.

We all know that crossing the road is easy…right? But what has this got to do with coaching? Well, stay with me and I will explain.

In coaching, we use the GROW model, a widely recognised framework designed to structure coaching sessions. It is an acronym widely used due to its simplicity and usefulness in the coaching process. It stands for Goal, Reality, Options/Opportunities, Way forward/Willingness. It's a great model for understanding your goals and how to reach them, which I have recently had the chance to put into practice.

I have recently had the privilege of going to Cambodia to do some volunteer coaching with SHE Investments, a Social Enterprise making a great impact locally by working with local business women. This was a great opportunity for me and the start of a great adventure which began with simply crossing the road.

As a coach, this was my time to literally walk my talk. Here’s how I crossed the road using the GROW model.

Goal: What do you want?

The goal was set. The Royal Palace, the destination. It was a SMART goal – it was Specific – the Royal Palace, Measurable – I could tick off that I had been there, Achievable, Relevant and Timely. I had the route mapped out and could do it and be back in time for dinner.

Coaching helps you to create SMART goals. Getting the right goal for you and understanding the importance of having this goal to you – is a critical first step to the coaching process.

Reality: Where are you now?

Ok, so I was confident that I knew how to cross the road - I had done it many, many times before. I had graduated to unconscious competence nearly five decades ago. I was good to go.

What I hadn’t bargained for was the traffic in Cambodia’s capital city, Phnom Penh. It is just crazy! These were not like any roads I had ever seen before - there were motorbikes, scooters, tuk-tuks, push bikes, cars, vans all moving …at the same time…at different speeds …in different directions. My brain went into panic mode. Where are the pedestrian crossings? Where is the green man when you want one? OMG I don't want to die! OMG how am I going to do this?

Crossing the road had just become a daunting and scary prospect.

In coaching the first step is to be aware of where you are right now. Checking your reality. What is going on for you in this moment? How are you feeling about that? What is working for you and what is not? What is important about taking this next step? What is the purpose?

Coaching is about moving forward to the next step - and my next step was going to be into a sea of oncoming traffic. I began to question just how much I wanted to see the Royal Palace.

When assessing whether to take the next step or not fear can often hijack the amygdala and stepping out of the comfort zone can seem like a real ‘high stakes’ prospect. In my case it felt pretty real. But real or imagined, the grip of fear can make that comfort zone (or the comfort of my hotel room) seem very appealing.

Options/Opportunities: What could you do?

Decision time. It was time to assess my choices.

Do I just step out with gaze fixed on the other side?

Do I wait until the traffic comes to a grinding halt (that seem unlikely to ever happen)?

Do I walk really slowly? Or

Do I walk really fast to increase my chances of a successful outcome?

Survival. The stakes were high.

Coaching helps to explore choices (and possible consequences). Once the goal has been set and the destination in sight. What then? Options considered – the only real choice is will I do it, or won’t I?

"The time for courage and trust had arrived."