How are you at coaching your team and your family?
Are you like a college football coach constantly sending in directions?
In the picture attached to this blog post I want you to notice the team in blue looking towards their sideline waiting for the coach to send in the call. Meanwhile the other team has snapped the ball (look at the center #71) effectively putting the team in blue a few crucial seconds behind for the play.
Business leaders think being a coach means constantly sending in orders like a coach on the sideline of a football game. They believe they should tell the team what to do and how to do everything and then the team will just execute. The issue is that these people just become “yes men” and do not learn to not think for themselves. Instead they constantly come to the coach for the answers for everything and anything essentially slowing the organization down.
This style of coaching does not promote effective thought in individuals and does not allow them to break through ceilings. What I learned in 2016 from John Maxwell about coaching is that coaching is not about telling people what to do. Coaching is instead asking questions for the individual to produce their best answer for the given situation. It’s encouraging them to look within for their best answer. Not telling people what to do, but allowing them to look deep inside to derive their answer.
Most of the time in business we are trying to answer questions and get to solutions fast. We are looked upon by our peers, or reports to provide the course that is needed so much that we get used to coming up with the answer all of the time. When we arrive home at the end of the day, we are still dictating what needs to happen, how it needs to happen, and when it needs to happen to our families if we are not careful. Will that help our families thrive?
We are getting things accomplished, but we need to grow others around us so that they can make decisions so if we were to be “hit by a bus” they could still move forward. If we are not coaching these individuals correctly, we are actually hurting them. We are not allowing them to grow their confidence in decision making, and growth from within.
As coaches, we can not be the sole source of answers. We need to help cultivate within those around us to find those answers if we want to move forward fast together.
Coaching is also the act of giving more and more trust to those around us as they exhibit those traits we are working to grow in them. We do not give a ten year-old child keys to a brand new Ferrari and say you’ll figure it out. We need to guide them and train them before they are free to make those decisions. We need to continually ask those thought provoking questions to help them come up with better and better decisions. Even if those decisions do not align with what we believe is best at the time, we still need to trust the process to help them grow.
Ultimately, we will expire and it is on us to grow those around us.
I hope this year has been good for you and your organization and that this blog has helped you well this year.
Next week I am going to take the week off to focus on vacation, time with the family, and goal planning. I will be back January 4th to provide my Goal Setting Strategy and share with you how this works.
Looking forward to a great end of 2019 and a great start for 2020. Have a great Christmas and New Years everyone!
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom