Bersin, from Deloitte, estimates that current skills only have a lifespan of 2 ½ to 5 years. Not only is this necessary from a business perspective, but today's employees don't want to just go to work and complete their daily tasks either. Faced with rapid and disruptive change, companies are realizing that managers cannot be expected to have all the answers and that command and control leadership is no longer viable. As a result, many companies are adopting a coaching model in which managers facilitate problem solving and encourage employee development by asking questions and offering support and guidance instead of giving orders and making judgments.
Leaders who train employees instead of giving them orders can create a much more talented and agile workforce, leading to a healthy and growing business. When you train employees to improve performance and engagement, approaching things from their perspective, rather than your own, will greatly help you to see the changes and results you want. Constant training helps to onboard and retain employees, to improve performance, to improve skills and to transfer knowledge. Guiding, open-ended questions lead to more detailed and thoughtful answers, leading to more productive coaching conversations.
The leadership style of coaching is proving to be much more effective with today's employees than the more authoritarian styles with which many business leaders operate. In addition to these benefits, training others is an effective method for reinforcing and transferring learning. Your job as a manager is to find out what each person's strengths are and to help them develop these training skills with a personalized plan. Keep in mind that coaching isn't just about helping employees learn from mistakes, but also about celebrating their successes at work and sharing their successes with the team.
In addition, they have deep enough knowledge of what should be done to be able to teach and train others on the task. Coaching conversations are meant to bring about change and results, so be sure to clearly define and describe what needs to happen next. You don't have to be the best friend of your subordinates for coaching to work, but you must build a relationship of trust. As a manager, you can train your employees and help them with each of these steps without intervening.
The authors explain the merits of the different types of managerial, non-managerial and situational coaching and point out that, sometimes, no type of training is appropriate. Another experience worth exploring is group coaching, which is also a fantastic opportunity to form teams, especially if they are far away and cannot be seen in the office.
