3 Powerful Coaching Skills That Make You an Extraordinary Leader – Behind the Scenes

Leading people requires you to understand how people work. Managers and leaders must activate the people on their teams to align resources to a common goal. Google’s deep research on what makes GREAT managers provides context to the one skill you want to improve. Powerful coaching skills are top of the list on Google’s research. In this episode, we look at what it takes to be a better manager and leader without spending a dime. I give you details on three powerful coaching skills to help you understand how to activate people around you. I include a bonus for you too on one of these so that you can go deeper if you want. Unlock your powerful coaching skills by using the lessons provided in this short podcast episode.

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Behind the Scenes: The Transcript

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Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

Today, we’re going to talk about leadership but specifically a skill that if you want to be an extraordinary leader you have to be intentional about developing your skill to coach. Now, why do I say that? It’s very simple, because what I see, real leadership is not telling someone what to do or solving their problems for them, making their decisions for them, but it’s coaching them so that they can see what’s in front of them. They can make these decisions themselves and this takes your intention to develop your coaching skills. I’m going to go through three specific ways that you can look at your coaching skills and you can decide how you want to improve them based on today’s conversation. But to support you through this, I’ve got something I’m going to give you that’s absolutely free. I’m going to help you be a stronger leader and has coaching skills. But in just a minute I’ll tell you how to get that. Before we jump into, you know, what these three skills are, let’s go back to the study that was recently done by Google. Google did a study on what makes great managers great. And there’s a lot of data that goes into this, there’s a double-blind study.

They’re very serious about understanding and codifying, what does it take to run a successful company? And they knew great managers were necessary. I’m not crazy about the word managers so I’ll probably talk about leaders here. But the number one skill that they found in this Google study was coaching skills. So, that’s one reason why this is important, but the real reason why it’s important is that if you want to empower others to really think for themselves, you want to make sure you’re coaching them and not just managing them. And that’s a big distinction that you’ve got to wrestle with yourself of when do you manage someone and when do you coach them.

In my opinion, the sooner you get to coach them, the more likely you are to create the kind of employee experience that they want and that you want to have as well. So let’s dive into the three coaching skills. The first one questions. You know, every coach has great questions, right? I have been a coach for over 10 years and I ask them all kinds of questions. Some of them are very simple, some of them are a little bit deeper in thinking and reflection. But the ability to ask the right question at the right time is a game-changer.

When you’re facing an employee that is not getting the results they want or maybe there’s some feedback that’s necessary, you want to make sure that you can coach that person up to the next level. And you want to have the right questions to do. The right question at the right time will unlock an incredible amount of insight. Here’s an example, if an employee comes to you and there’s a problem and you would talk about depths and really have a conversation with them about what the problem is, you could tell them what to do. But that’s them being told what to do next. The question would allow them to figure out what’s next. And so when someone comes up there with their own what’s next answer, they’re more likely to take ownership of that. And so you want to make sure you come up with the right question at the right time.

Now, I’m going to give you three powerful questions that a lot of people just aren’t asking inside their leadership and it has nothing to do with managing the work. Managing the work is, when’s the deadline? What are the metrics? You know, what’s next? And those conversations are very important, but when you decide to be a leader who coaches, then you want to make sure you’re asking coaching-type questions. Here’s three that help you unlock your skills. So the first one is, where are you tolerating less than you can do? Do you get the elegance of this question? When you ask someone this question, they’ll have to reach inside them and say, what am I tolerating? Where could I improve? It has nothing to do with their work, it’s about them, how they see themselves. Again, where are you tolerating less than you can do? The second question I’m gonna give you here to consider is, where could you be more intentional?

We as business owners have to be intentional all the time. The problem is we’re not as intentional as we need to be, we’re reactive more than most. But asking that employee, where could they be more intentional, gives them a clue that you want them to be more intentional and you want them to be less reactive and having that conversation will help them. The third one is, wherein your work do you want to change or shift the results?

Because you want to put a spotlight on where they want to change. Now, my real question behind this is not about the external but about the internal, about their confidence, their courage, their fears, wherein your work do you want to change or shift the results? Those are three questions that you can use to unlock an incredible, bounty of conversation with your employees using a coaching skill approach. Now, are you looking for more questions around this? Well, I’ve got a whole list of questions that you can download absolutely free, just go to genehammett.com/questions. There’ll be a list of coaching questions. Some of those questions will actually be pairs of questions that go together that allow you to unlock something really unique inside your conversations with your employees. I share this with you because I want you to be empowered with the best skills possible to be the best coach you can be for your people.

So just go to genehammett.com/questions. But this is the first skill is questions.

The second skill is really about listening. You’ve got to be able to listen beyond the words. We all listen for what’s right in front of us like the words that are coming out of their mouths, but have you listened for alignment with their body? The body language really does provide clues to what’s going on here. You can do this on video calls. You can do this in person. You want to listen beyond what they’re saying. Active listening is so much more than just words. It’s the tone of voice. It’s the changes inflection that happens.

You know when something is really not being said, being able to pay attention to it, listening to it, allow you to come up with the right question, going back to number one. Listening beyond the words really is a powerful coaching skill because you can get to see what is really going on and you can ask questions. I remember one time when I was working with an employee and a team, and I said, “You know, have you ever asked what’s really going on and listen?” “Well, of course, I listen,” but I said, “Do you really listen?” Nearly every leader I know says, “Yeah, sometimes not as much as I could. I know I could do better.” So I’m putting a spotlight on it for you because you’ve got to learn to listen if you want to have great coaching skills. So the first one was questioned. The second one was listening.

The third one is stories. Stories are such a great way to coach because instead of you telling someone what to do you can find a story that teaches a little bit of a lesson, allows them to see an insight or distinction inside of how they’re showing up. And so you may share a story from your childhood. You may share a story from when, your early days. It doesn’t matter when it came from but constructing a story and selecting one that really gets to the heart of it allows you to have a conversation that is external from what they’re facing at the moment. But here’s where you connect the dots, once you share the story, the right story, and you tell it the right way, you’re able to say, “From this story, what do you see how that applies to what you’re facing here?” It allows them to infer how they want to show up or what they could really bring to this conversation. Instead of you telling them what to do next the story becomes a key that unlocks something special. Now I give you these three skills to be better coaches as a leader. What you do with them really does matter.

Hopefully you will go beyond managing the work to truly coaching and leading the person, that is the key to you being an extraordinary leader. If you want to get those free questions, make sure you go to genehammett.com/questions. You can download just a list of questions that you can pull from. And these pairs inside there allow for really unique powerful conversations, absolutely free to you. Just go to genehammett.com/questions. All of this is for you to be the extraordinary leader that your team craves when you want to step up the next way and make sure you do that with intention.

My name is Gene Hammett. I help fast-growth companies and ambitious leaders achieve impossible goals. You want to keep listening to these conversations, make sure you keep tuning in. When you think about growth and you think about leadership think of “Growth Think Tank”. As always, lead with courage. We’ll see you next time.

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

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