Coaching and Mentoring in the Workplace
In today’s workplace, coaching goes far beyond sports. Learning how to adopt coaching techniques can help executives and employees reach their full performance potential.
Who Is a Coach in the Workplace?
Coaches in the workplace are those who influence their co-workers through direct action or direction. They are your C-Suite executives, VPs, Direct Supervisors, and more. For any executive to be a great leader, they must first be a great coach capable of influencing their team and embodying the change they want to see. Most importantly, workplace coaches understand that each of their team members’ wins and losses is their own and are willing to invest in their team like such.
What Makes a Leader a Successful Coach?
Three main workplace coaching skills make leaders successful in the workplace:
1. Collaboration
The best leaders and coaches incorporate and include various experiences, philosophies, and ideas into their day-to-day and strategic conversations. Inclusive teams that collaborate frequently are twice as likely to meet and exceed their financial targets and eight times more likely to achieve better business outcomes. By creating diverse collaborative teams, you ensure they’re more equipped for success in the constantly evolving world. By turning your meetings into collaborative events, you learn to win more games.
2. Continual Improvement
A growth mindset is integral to changing your team’s mentality and encouraging individuals to become better at their jobs every day. Growth mindsets represent the belief that all skills can be improved with effort and dedication — therefore it’s important to focus on even small steps toward growth. The concept of continual improvement throws away the idea that we have a fixed inclination toward certain talents and instead posits we can achieve anything we put our minds to.
3. Development of a Coaching Mindset
The most important element of becoming a great leader is developing a coaching mindset and understanding that each of your team’s losses and wins is your own. You always have a significant opportunity to influence your team’s successes. Remember that no team can succeed without their coach’s advice, but no coach can succeed without a team going for greatness.
4 Habits of Successful Coaches
We at the NeuroLeadership Institute have identified four key habits that all successful coaches possess, including:
Be an ally for your team: Remember that your team needs you to advocate for them and help them reach their full potential. You need to be a firm ally for your team before you can be a successful coach.
Clarify confusion: Confusion is the enemy of progress and can cause even well-intended efforts to go astray and waste time. Always be sure to clarify any confusion.
Provide autonomy: Each of your team members has an individual preference for autonomy, and it’s important to respect it by avoiding micromanagement. Give your employees space to do their work uninterrupted, and they’ll know you believe in them. Additionally, autonomy activates rewards within the brain.
Use inclusive language: Stressing your relatedness is integral to helping your team feel like they’re part of something bigger. Expand the in-group and use inclusive language like “us” and “we” to promote a feeling of unification.
Develop a Coaching Culture With the NeuroLeadership Institute
At the NeuroLeadership Institute, we turn leaders into coaches who are committed to making a difference in their workplaces. To learn more about our mentoring programs in the workplace and how we can help you GROW, FOCUS, CONNECT, and DEVELOP, reach out to us online today.