Want to gain more time in your day AND unleash your team members’ full potential? Here’s the secret: Build your coaching skills. When you take a moment to coach a team member through a problem instead of solving it for them, you’re building their capabilities and confidence. That empowers them to work more independently — and frees up time for you. In my latest One Thing You Can Do video, I explain the first step to effective coaching.

Want more practical leadership strategies you can start using immediately? Reach out to me about New Lens®.

Transcript

Hi. I am Neena Newberry. Today I'm excited to share another One Thing You Can Do video. These are videos that are just a couple of minutes long. They're modeled after the New Lens app, which is all about helping you get leadership strategies and tools in bite-sized chunks. Today I want to talk to you about coaching. Coaching is such an important skill set, and I'm not just saying that because I am an executive coach. I'm saying this because as managers, leaders, even as team members, we always have that opportunity to decide: Are we going to just hand over the solution to somebody when a problem comes up? Or are we going to actually help them think through it in a different way and perhaps use coaching skills? It's a fantastic way to actually build critical-thinking skills in others.

Sometimes we forget to do that. We're in a rush, or we have limited time. We're stressed out, whatever it may be, or we're not necessarily even thinking about the fact that we should be pausing and let the other person think through this, even if they came to us for help. When I talk about coaching skills, one of the most critical pieces is to really understand what on earth is it that they truly need help with. Then, asking them some thought-provoking questions to help them think through it. Leverage your expertise that way vs. solving it for them. That typically involves asking some pretty good open-ended questions, meaning questions that you can't answer with just a yes or a no. Next time someone comes to you with an issue or problem, something they want to talk through, or even a goal, think about leveraging your coaching skills, and it can make a huge, huge difference. For other tools, resources, and strategies, please visit our website at newberrysolutions.com and check out our New Lens app.