As a management coach, it's essential to have a deep understanding of what it takes to be an effective manager in order to provide accurate and valuable advice. To become an excellent conversation coach, you need to constantly improve your training skills.The first step is to make a conscious effort to get to know each of your employees on a more personal level. Learn about their strengths and weaknesses; what they excel at and what challenges them; what motivates them and what discourages them. Along with formal personality tests, consider having each member of your team perform periodic self-evaluations and use the results to ensure that you're using each employee as effectively as possible. Managers should evaluate each member of their team to determine the type of training that will work best for them.
One of the most popular training models is GROW, first explained by Sir John Whitmore in his book Coaching for Performance. However, to maximize your training potential, you should ensure that you continuously reevaluate your training skills. When working with managers or with people just starting out in their careers, it's important to tailor the program not only to the client's general needs, but also to more specific and personal ones. Just as you train your team towards the goal of personal development, your development as a coach is also part of the big picture. This means that even the most successful coaches should be aware that knowledge and training styles can quickly become outdated.
Discuss the feedback you receive with your own coach and create practical measures to make your coaching conversations even more effective. Managers who adopt a coaching style put employees in the driver's seat, allowing them to make their own decisions when possible. Coaching involves giving feedback to employees, so coaches can't be apprehensive about receiving feedback on their own. A good mentor offers advice and experience; a good coach asks lots of guiding questions to help their client find the answer for themselves. To become an effective management coach, it's important to understand the techniques used by experienced coaches and how they can help their clients succeed.
