Coaching Better

Coaching Better

One of the fundamental coaching errors some coaches make is coaching behavior. With this approach, a corporate leader is placed in the unenviable position of being positioned as the behavior cop.

How do you know if this is what you are doing? There are some telltale symptoms. Two of the easiest ways to discover if you are coaching your team’s behavior are:

• when you are away their performance goes down
• they seem to constantly come to you for direction

Either of these familiar to you?

If you are serious about becoming a better coach and coaching better, make your coaching about your team’s thinking. This one coaching focus will cause your team to naturally improve their behavior and, as a result, their performance.

Let’s look at it a little more closely. You behave the way you do based on your thinking. So which is going to get you more lasting improvement in behavior, focusing on your behavior or focusing on your thinking?

Many of the sales managers we teach how to coach have been mislead to believe their role is to coach behaviors. This leads them to being frustrated with their team. They feel they are constantly in a power struggle with their team.

Yet when sales managers embrace coaching their team’s thinking instead, they find their coaching improves and their team works with them. A sales manager recently described their new thinking-focused coaching as “it feels like we are on the same side. Instead of trying to control them, I’m helping them do better.”

So to help you coach better, stop coaching your team’s behavior and start coaching their thinking. Not only will your coaching get better but you just might start enjoying it even more.