How to Have Coaching Conversations to Inspire Others Around You

I recently spoke at a virtual event about the importance of having coaching-style conversations within the workplace. Before we dive into how you can have coaching conversations to inspire others around you, let’s define what coaching actually is.

What is Coaching?

Coaching is the process of helping another individual or group of individuals reflect, learn and create a plan of action to help them perform to the best of their ability in their life or on-the-job.

A rule of thumb when coaching is to aim to be speaking 40 percent of the time or less. If you find yourself talking more than the person you are coaching, you are likely heading into the mentoring territory. This may be fine, but you are likely losing some of the benefits of actually coaching an individual and giving them the space to come up with their own solutions or ways to get to those answers.  Coaching also is about teaching people to have confidence in their own leadership ability.

1.  Coaching often comes down to asking good questions.
Great questions lead to great answers, and great answers lead to great conversations. Not only will this help strengthen your own relationship with others, but coaching can be very powerful in helping your people or other leaders reach their own best conclusions and plans of action. 

Here are some of the questions that I often ask my coachees and that you could ask your people when having coaching conversations with them. *Note: coachee is the word I use to refer to the person who is receiving the coaching.

• What are you wanting to achieve?

• What resources are accessible to your team?

• What are the options for achieving this goal?

• What’s possible?

• How can others support you?

• What are 3 action items you can take away to work on this week?

Notice these questions are open-ended, non-leading questions. After you ask the question, you will want to give the other person time to respond. This may require you to sit in silence for a while. Don’t jump in to fill the space or to try to help the individual come up with an answer to your question! Learn to be comfortable in silence. This is where some of the best time for reflection can occur during your coaching conversations.

2.Listen and empower.
Coaching requires us not only to listen, but to really hear what the other person is trying to communicate.  Sometimes you may need to read between the lines of what your coachee is saying to you.  And that will involve you to ask some probing follow-up questions to test any potential theories you may have.  We never want to assume we know what another person is feeling/thinking, but we can ask the question if we are sensing there is something more to the situation.

I have learned through experience that as much as I would like to help someone ‘fix’ their situation, sometimes one of the best things I can do as a coach is just listen to them. 

And as you all know, listening and hearing someone can be two different things.  This involves me getting out of my own head and trusting myself to not have to think of solutions or even not worry about formulating that great question to ask the other person that will help them.  It is allowing me to really be in the moment with them, hear each word they are saying as well as potentially what they aren’t saying and then using my gut instinct to be curious with the questions I ask.

Let me share an example with you.

I was working with a leader who was in a tough emotional space during one of our sessions.  And by all accounts, she had a legitimate way to feel the way she was. I started to jump in to help her brainstorm some options to help her.  But, I could quickly see that her heart wasn’t into it and everything we suggested, she had a reason why it wouldn’t work.

She was too overwhelmed in that moment to spend any energy on planning action.  So, I pivoted and just really started to listen to her.  I tuned everything out of my mind and zoned in completely on her as if she and I were the only two people in the world.

At the end of the session, she thanked me and told me how valuable this time together had been just to help her take some of the pressure off herself.  She described it like releasing air from a balloon.

Sometimes, we just need to hold the space quietly and listen. To let others release some of the pressure from inside to help them continue on with their work and lives in a more grounded way. 

3.Take a positive approach.
When having a coaching conversation, try to maintain a positive outlook even in tough situations. A positive attitude will help both you and the person you’re coaching respond and react in a way that fosters positive change.

There is a lot of doom and gloom in the world right now.  Fear and uncertainty is driving even more heaviness.  What I am saying here is not to be inauthentic and sugarcoat everything.  That wouldn’t serve anyone.

But, there are always two sides to every coin.  And if you are able to inspire others through your coaching to look for opportunities and to maintain hope, that will lead to a much more powerful outcome.

How do you do this?

Sometimes, it is simply acknowledging and then asking. For example saying, “I see Lucy, you are in a tough situation.  I know how much you care about the project.  What is your wish for your team and this project right now?”

4, Know how to guide conversations.
You can guide coaching-style conversations both by asking questions and listening, not by giving directives.

There may be times when one of your people gets stuck within the conversation, which is really a reflection of where they are in their mind too.  It may seem like they keep going back through venting about the same situation and not moving forward.

This mental/emotional dumping is okay for a bit, but after a while, it is like a car’s tires stuck in the mud.  They just don’t seem to be getting anywhere.

When this happens, try and get them into a different physical position. This may seem like an awkward ask but trust me, it works. You will likely be thanked for bringing in a fresh and innovative approach to the conversation.

Let me show you what I mean by this.

Sometimes when a leader I am coaching is stuck, I may ask them to stand up.  I will then explain to them that I have learned that to see a different way of thinking, research shows it helps if we assume a different body posture. So you can share that little tidbit to give them some context for why you have asked them to stand up or change body position. Then I let them know I really want to help them find new possibilities and solutions. Being authentic with them about the process and why you are asking them to do this makes sense and I have never met a person who wasn’t game to try it.

Then while they are standing or in a different position, I pivot my questions to bigger picture, open-ended questions.

I may ask, What is possible here?

or

If you were to look at this situation from a different perspective, what would that look like?

Remember, when having coaching-style conversations with your people you need to stay authentic to yourself. Is your style championing or direct and to the point or are you more of a sounding board.? I often switch between these different roles within one coaching session. You need to try on these different styles to see what feels right for you. Then trust yourself enough to dive into these coaching conversations!