Coaching as a Force Multiplier?

Today’s post is a guest post from George Burton. 

George writes: I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that there will always be more work than there is time available. To cope with ever-increasing workload, I tried to get smarter and more efficient in my work, but every hour saved was filled with new tasks and projects and I found myself back at square one again. I understood that if I wanted to avoid burn-out or stress-related issues, I would have to find a better way to get things done…

This is where developing our people can help us beyond our personal productivity limitations and turn something that is often seen to be ‘soft’ into tangible business benefits. Helping our team members become more effective and efficient is the leader’s version of a ‘force multiplier’ helping us do more with the same resources. While everyone agrees with this in theory, the difficulty is that an investment in our people is a Quadrant 2 activity – something that is not urgent, but is proven to pay off in the long run. It doesn’t take a genius to admit that the urgent day-to-day operations often appear more critical and end up taking priority over people development… 

Over the past 18 months, as my knowledge of coaching grew, it became a key ingredient in my leadership style and simply ‘part of my DNA’. While I used to tell people the answers (or what I believed to be the answers – based on my own map of the world), I learnt that it would be far more valuable to help people find their own answers, meaning that they would ultimately no longer need to ask me for help. Apart from creating more time for me, this also helps the person develop and mature on their own terms and increases team performance. Critical thinking and self-reflection are cultivated and the employee is far more capable of solving issues, or creating new solutions. I’ve had clear evidence of this happening as I applied my coaching techniques to my day to day work.

As Clare points out in her blogs, applying a coaching style to your management is not a radical change. It will enrich the working relationship between you and your direct reports. Sometimes, just listening carefully in a non-judgmental way and asking open questions can help the employee look at things in a different light, resulting in the realization that the solution was there all the time!  This approach not only creates high performance in your business – it also increases employee motivation AND gives you more time! I can’t think of a better force multiplier than that!