How would you coach it?

A question that stops people in their tracks and one that exposes coaches from the clueless is: How would you coach it?

Answer: “I’d get them to think about [this] then agree some actions.”

Oh yeh?  Except... there’s a fairly important piece of information missing: Who is it exactly you are coaching and why?

Let’s say you have three people doing the same job:

1. One can do it really well.
2. One can do some of it.
3. One has no clue.

Would you then coach all three of them the same way?

People do.  (Well, they have conversations and wrap it up with a coaching label.)

That’s what can happen when it's decided how to coach something before understanding who is doing the learning.

🤦🏻‍♀️ The person who can already do it gets a conversation they didn’t want or need.

🫩 The person who can do some of it gets coached on the whole thing instead of the bit that’s getting in their way.

🤪 And the person who has no idea gets asked a load of questions about something they may have to learn first.

Before you decide how you’re going to coach something, do a little bit of recon.

• Do they know the why and not the how.
• Do they know the how and not the why.
• Are they able to do it and choosing not to.
• Are they doing it already and you haven’t noticed.

Each of those takes you somewhere different:

Some you’ll coach.  Some you’ll teach.  Some you’ll support.  Some  you’ll challenge.  And some, you might discover there was nothing to fix in the first place.

Good coaching isn’t deciding what conversation you’re going to have and then talking at someone.

It starts with understanding the person in front of you.

So… I'll ask again:  How would you coach it?

Until next time, Aileen 

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