Coaching Moment or Teaching Moment?
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Have you ever been in a one-on-one with a direct report and wondered: “This is an interesting challenge we are discussing. Should I jump in with my advice on what to do? Or help them uncover a solution on their own?” As a leader, one of your jobs is to grow your team members, to help them chart a course and support them as they learn and develop professionally. Knowing when to put on your advice hat and when to put on your coach hat — even knowing the difference of what those hats mean! — will make you more effective in developing others.
Let’s start with defining the two roles: advisor and coach.
When you are giving advice, you are acting in the role of the teacher and subject matter expert. You are guiding the other person with recommendations, skills, resources, and models. You may give them examples of what you’ve done in the past and suggest specific directions to pursue.
When you are coaching, you are enabling the other person to discover the solution on their own. Rather than giving them instruction and recommendations, you are facilitating their discovery, letting them determine the boundaries of the problem, and supporting them in arriving at their own answers.
I like to say that advisors have the right answers, while coaches have the right questions.
Both roles are extremely valuable at different times. And the more you think of them as distinct, the more you will be able to deploy them appropriately.
The teaching moment
A teaching approach will get the person moving quickly in the right direction. Best practices are imparted, resources are identified, and the person will can move forward with a clear direction. The tradeoff is that there will be less ownership of the solution and less discovery. Skills may be developed but not necessarily awareness or judgement.
The coaching moment
When you take the coaching route, you allow for:
Better internalizing. Solutions that a person arrives at on their own are better internalized and understood.
Greater learning and discovery. If we let the individual engage with the problem, they’re going to learn at a deeper level.
Deeper sense of accomplishment. Allowing someone to figure out what they’re capable of helps them grow and build confidence.
A solution that is uniquely theirs. A person synthesizing new knowledge with their own strengths and approaches leads to a solution that others may not have reached.
The person might end up with the same result as if you took the teaching approach, but their experience and takeaways will be different. The tradeoff is that the coaching route can take longer.
Why not both?
One strategy is to combine the two methods: first let the person engage with the challenge on their own (this could mean letting them sort things out for a few minutes during a discussion or it could mean letting them working things through for a few days). Then follow up with suggestions, ideas and guidance of your own to help them complete the work.
However you choose to proceed, your awareness of these two approaches will help you apply them deliberately and effectively.
© Jennine Heller and J Heller Coaching. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jennine Heller and J Heller Coaching with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. • Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels
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