People use the term coaching in a very broad sense, where they see coaching as helping people to do their job more effectively and ultimately to improve their performance. The term coach was previously widely used in sports as the person to help the other person improve their performance. As a leader this is of primary importance, which is to continually support and help your team members to improve their performance.
In more recent times, coaching has developed into a whole profession and skill which is not just based around sport but performing arts, business, life, leadership to name but a few.
Within this, many different structures, techniques and approaches have also been developed. One concept to consider is the coaching spectrum to help you think about how you coach.
Do you ask questions and the person works it out for themselves? Or do you tell the person what to do? In what percentage of time do you ask questions and in what percentage or time do you tell?
The real originator of this concept was Professor John Whitmore in his book Coaching for Performance. He believes that the most effective way for people to learn and improve performance is by asking questions, not by telling. This sits at one end of the spectrum whilst telling sits at the other end. In between sits a combination of the 2 such as heavily weighted to telling with a bit of coaching (questioning) or heavily weighted towards coaching (questioning) with a bit of telling or an equal mix of both, often referred to as mentoring.
How do you coach? Do you ask questions to help the other person or do you tell them what to do?
It is quite likely as a dental leader that you spend much of your time telling people rather than questioning. Sometimes you may show people what to do, but that is still the telling part of the spectrum as you are showing them exactly what to do. You may be thinking, well yes, that is the quickest and easiest way to get things done.
What makes you believe that what you are telling them to do is the right way to do it?
How often do these things actually get done?
It may seem the quickest and easiest route, and sometimes it is. To take an extreme situation of utmost urgency, let’s say where there is a fire, you are going to tell people to get out and of course this is entirely appropriate. But this is rarely the situation. You can also still give relevant information, but there is a difference between giving relevant information and asking them questions around that information versus telling somebody what to do.
It doesn’t need me to tell you that people will not always do what you tell them to do. Where people do what you tell them to do they may start to rely on you to tell them what to do all the time. If they have nothing else to do then they won’t do anything and will be waiting for your instruction, which is then something that you have to do all the time. Ok, so you may have clear ongoing roles and responsibilities for people so this means they know what to do, which is true, but the reality is that in todays world things are moving and changing all the time. When anything different comes up to be done, what will they do? They will come to you to ask. With the world moving so fast due to the development of new technologies and the sharing of new ideas through the advent of the worldwide web, changes are happening all the time and as the leader you cannot be the person who knows the most up to date information about everything. It is not possible. You will need to rely on other people.
This is where coaching is extremely beneficial. It transfers the ownership from you to the other person. By asking them questions so that they solve the problem, they are much more likely to follow through and complete the task, as it is their idea. They start to be able to operate independently without waiting to be told what to do. Not only that, but as they are closest to the job they will know best and are more likely to come up with the best solution.
The other major benefit of the pure form of coaching is that it frees up your time in the long run. Yes, you may have to invest a bit more time up font, but ultimately you will get this time back because you are less likely to have to revisit it when it hasn’t happened and because the individual will start to take proactive ownership of their area of responsibility without you having to tell them what to do all the time.
To embrace the pure coaching concept you have to fundamentally recognise that you do not always know best and you do not always have the best answers. In fact it is quite possible that the person doing that role day in, day out will have better answers with everything changing and moving so quickly.
You can use this approach in many different scenarios. To solve problems, as a follow up to feedback to enquire as to the best way to move forward, to reflect and learn, to plan a project, to do appraisals and to achieve something that you want to make a reality are a few examples. It really can be used as an overall approach and style of leadership that engages team members in the work they do and this ultimately dramatically increases the likelihood of your dental practice or business being a success.
