Ok, so I get that we are all mega-busy. And I get that it’s tough to lay all of our tasks down to coach. And yet, there’s something else that I believe. Susan Scott summed it up in her book Fierce Conversations:
“Why do we have such a long history of mistaking profitability and stock price as the sole predictors of success?…..Human connectivity is the next frontier for exponential growth and the only sustainable competitive edge, more visibly useful than ever before.”
So we NEED to make time for coaching, if we are to grow as a business. We need to recognise how important people development really is. It’s not something that we can keep pushing off until after the work is done….our people will create more value if they find meaning in their work…and that means we need to have conversations with them that help them to find that meaning for themselves.
Susan also says:
“I believe that culture is shaped by our daily practices and that the most powerful practice of all is conversation.”
I believe in that too.
So I don’t see your problem as carving out time…I see the solution in shifting your mindset. Building more coaching conversation into your day, so that more work will get done by your whole team, including you – those conversations will turnaround your engagement and therefore your productivity, so you’ll get more done anyway.
“Your central function is to engineer intelligent, spirited, conversations that provide the basis for high levels of alignments, collaboration, and partnership at all levels throughout your organization and the healthier outcomes that go with them.”
“Old leadership model – high task/low relationship and the culture of compliance that goes with it. Fierce Leadership model – high tasks/high relationship and the culture of passionate engagement that goes with it”.
Getting it?
It’s all about what you prioritise. If it’s important enough to you, you’ll make the time to have coaching conversations.
