One of the most important things you can do as a leader is to coach people. I do this with coworkers, I do this with my family, and I do this with about half a dozen other people on a part-time basis. Helping people grow is really awesome, and most times, it is its own reward.
It is also very hard to do. One thing I remember from childhood was watching my father try to coach my brothers on the farm. Sometimes, he would explain a particular job to them, and it was clear they weren’t interested in learning to do it his way. He was pretty insistent about doing it his way because he learned some painful lessons in the process. When it was clear he was not getting through after repeated explanations, he would sigh and tell them, “Remember, when you are sticking your hand in the fire, you are dragging my hand along with yours.”
It was a particularly gruesome metaphor that stuck with me all these years because it was so apt. Now that I am all growed up and managing people, I find myself understanding where he was coming from. Sometimes, the people you are coaching will ignore your recommendations because you learned something valuable from failing that you are trying to convey to them in words.
So what can you do?
Welcome to the world of indirect coaching.
Indirect coaching happens when you help someone decide independently rather than telling them directly what they should do.
The Socratic Method is one way you can indirectly coach people. You can ask a series of questions to people to help them understand the outcome.
“What do you think you should do here?”
“How will the customer respond to your change?”
“What will happen when you push that code to production?”
“What will the product management team say about the changes to this feature?”
“Is there anything missing in your proposal?”
There are lots of questions you can ask people to see if they can reason it out on their own.
Sometimes, the answers you will get need to be corrected and indicate a lack of awareness or understanding of some element of the problem you are working through. This happens more often than you think.
When faced with someone not responding to coaching, you can walk them through a few likely scenarios about what will happen, or perhaps have a deeper conversation to help them become aware of things they are not considering when making their decisions.
Another effective indirect coaching tool is to rope in an additional leader or coach to help teach a valuable lesson. This is an especially powerful tool if you have teenagers and they have sports coaches or influential teachers. Whenever I needed to give my oldest son some important feedback, I would ask one of his coaches to talk to him about it. I have also asked peers at work, and sometimes even my boss, to help coach people on my teams. Bringing another voice to the conversation is an excellent coaching tool.
These are just a few ways you can coach people more effectively. Understand that people learn and grow differently; not everyone will respond to the same coaching techniques. Developing your coaching repertoire also takes time, so it is better to start experimenting sooner rather than later.
I tell everyone interested in leading and coaching that they should consider volunteering for a youth sports organization. I learned much about coaching people from AYSO soccer and Little League baseball. Both organizations give you a lot of training on how to grow and nurture young athletes. For young kids, you also get to witness a tremendous amount of growth and progress from eager and impressionable young minds over the course of the sports season.
The next time you are helping someone at work, and they are not picking up what you are putting down, maybe it is time to change your tactics. Try to coach them indirectly and see if it makes a difference.
