It generally takes less time to tell someone what to do than it does to hold a coaching conversation, and even less time if you did it yourself. Your time is precious and if you are like most managers, you may already have more things to do than time to do them in. Further, you got where you are today because of your expertise in your own field, didn’t you? Why then should you devote some of your valuable time to coaching your staff?
Here are 5, research-backed reasons why you should make coaching your staff a part of daily routine. Adopting a coaching style of leadership has been shown to:
1. Increase your staff’s intrinsic motivation to do their work and do it well.
2. Raise the level personal responsibility and initiative shown by your staff.
3. Boost your staff’s self-confidence, both in general terms and in relation to their ability to meet workplace challenges.
4. Build your staff’s capacity to solve their own problems.
5. Save you an average of 20 minutes of time over the long term, for every 10 minutes you spend in a coaching conversation.
Coaching, however, is not suited to all situations. It is a single tool in your broader repertoire of leadership tools. For relatively simple tasks, where your expertise is high and your staff member simply does not know what to do, tell them. In ‘mission-critical’ situations, where you have a high level of expertise and staff commitment is either unimportant or is likely to be given regardless of who decides, you should again make the decision yourself and simply tell the person what to do.