What is coaching?
Last week, I was a guest on the Asian Boss Girl podcast with the amazing Mel, Janet, and Helen and I was asked a question:
"Do you feel pressure as an executive coach to have all the right answers?"
I love this question because that's precisely what a lot of people think coaching is. You need to tell people what to do, advise them, and fix their problems.
In reality, that's not what coaching is about.
As humans, we all have different maps based on our learned behavior. This was modeled for us early on in our childhoods and coupled with our lived experiences, they make us who we are today. So if I tell you what to do, I'm ignoring your map. Instead, the way I like to think about it is:
“Coaching is a means of conveyance”
This is one of the best definitions I've heard to date from my friend, former colleague, and mentor, Khalid Halim.
Coaching is really a travel word – if you look at the etymology it's related to carriage or coach class on a plane or a train. When you hold that visual in your mind you realize coaching gets you from where you are that you no longer want to be anymore, to where you want to go.
This is an important thing to remember, especially as a manager: you don't always have to be directive and tell people what to do. You can coach them and help them get to where they want to go.
So how do you do that? Coaching is one of the fundamental skills that we focus on at The Grand, and I wanted to share two questions that have been impactful for me and my coaching toolkit.
When someone comes to you with a problem, the most powerful question you can ask is:
What would you like?
This helps them paint a picture of where they want to go. But as Khalid masterfully tells us what’s fundamental to being human is we never want what we want. We actually want what it enables for us.
That's why the second most important question is:
What will having that do for you?
This helps you uncover the core of what the person actually wants.
A community member from The Grand came to me with a problem – they were stuck in their work and wanted something more. I asked them what they would like and they mentioned they wanted to go to business school. Then I asked what will having that do for you, and eventually, we landed on the fact that she was really craving community and a sense of belonging. For her, this conversation unlocked all the other ways she can get community, without necessarily getting an MBA.
This process helps you get to the heart of where someone needs to go.
Khalid reminds us that,
“As a leader, you have one job: to find stuck energy and get it moving again.”
If you hold that image of a carriage coach in your mind, it will guide your coaching and you’ll ultimately become a better leader.
To learn and practice your coaching skills as a manager join our next Grand Quest on Becoming an Effective Manager. Applications close tonight.
I’d love to know how using those two questions improves your coaching conversations. Feel free to respond and let me know how they work for you.
And if you want to hear more about my conversation on coaching, leadership, and more with Asian Boss Girl, tune in here.
💌
Anita