While coaching is gaining popularity as a management concept in the workplace, in many cases it is nothing more than old patterns of management dressed up in a new name.

If you were to ask some organizations who claim that coaching forms part of their management style what they are actually doing, you would find that they are not coaching at all. They would point to the fact that managers do spend time individually with team members. But coaching is more than allocating one-on-one time, it is the content of that time and the process which is used which changes a talk into a coaching session.

Coaching is a distinct discipline with a definite skill set, some of which are not easy to master. Without using those skills, what might pass for coaching is actually a manager giving instructions and evaluation to a team member.

Coaching is a conversation which is results driven, the outcome of which is to enable the person being coached to think for themselves. It works on the premise that in most cases the coachee knows what to do and has the ability to do it or to find out how to do it. If they are able to think it through for themselves they are far more likely to be able to transfer that ability to other areas of work and to take initiative to complete tasks and resolve problems without waiting for someone else to tell them what to do.

The central skills coaching skills, and the most difficult to master, are the ability to listen properly and to frame questions which help the person discover the solution for themselves.

Listening in coaching involves listening with the intent to understand what the person is saying and feeling. Most of us listen with the intent to reply rather than to understand. While the other person is talking our minds are occupied with the answer we are going to give or what we are going to say in response to their remarks. The coach has to put aside thoughts of a response and listen to what the person is actually saying, conveyed by their words, body language and tone of voice. This type of listening also requires asking questions for clarification, which is part of the thinking process. Sometimes the ideas we express are not fully formed or thought through. The coach, by asking for clarification, also helps the coachee come to a better understanding of their own idea. So, for example, a coach might say: “When you said you are unsure of yourself when speaking on the telephone, do you mean you don’t know what to say or is it that you are nervous when speaking on the ‘phone?”
That question gives the coachee a chance to think through exactly what it is that makes them unsure of themselves. Once they have answered that question, the line of questioning can then follow to move deeper into the area which they have identified as being the problem.
Without correct listening, the coach might have said: “But speaking on the ‘phone is easy. Just speak clearly.” And in doing so would have missed the problem which needed addressing.
Careful listening with the intent to understand leads naturally into good questions which enhance understanding for the coach, but more importantly for the coachee.
Good coaching always focuses on the coachee and increasing their understanding. Both the listening process and the formulation of questions are there to help the person think more deeply and to reach the crux of the matter, which often is not the problem presenting itself on the surface but a deeper issue which needs attention.

While individual chats between managers and team members can be beneficial, they run the risk of failing to unearth issues which are hindering performance and of becoming instruction sessions where the team members carries out the managers thinking without thinking it through for themselves. As a result, when the managers instructions don’t fit the situation, the team member does not know how to proceed and their performance drops.

For talks with team members to become true coaching sessions, managers need to learn the skills of coaching, and to apply them in a disciplined way with the objective of enabling team members to think for themselves, find solutions for problems and so improve their performance.