Inspiring Coaching Principles 

One of the best things about being a leader or a mentor is bringing the best out of many people, not just yourself. Your mentees are your swimmers, and you are coaching. Your job is not to do their job for them but to motivate them and provide them with the resources and a positive environment to thrive and transform. In this article, you'll learn how to become a more influential and successful coach so you can effectively change and influence the people in your organisation. 

How To Get Stakeholder Buy-In and Engagement

Your ability to internally influence, get engagement and buy-in from the people around you comes from your ability to see and help people with their transformation. One of the most frequent comments I've received is that "it's really hard to get executive buy-in" and that "it's tough to get the attention of upper management". I often also get some individuals who are really frustrated with people. A couple of nights ago, I had a conversation with a guy who recently sold his business literally because he was sick of dealing with people and the team members around him. This is the wrong mindset to have. 

To be effective, you've got to love being around people, helping people transform and getting your kicks out of seeing people grow, develop and evolve. If your mindset is that you hate dealing with people, you'll need to change your attitude to see any success from those you seek to influence. 

Think About Who You Invest Your Energy In  

Next, you'll need to decide on the deployment of your energy. Think about coaching people who want to be helped, and don't assume that everyone does. I've spent a lot of my time giving unsolicited advice and not receiving permission to do so. Furthermore, some people are just not physically coachable, and you do need to decide who you seek to serve. Your energy is a limited resource, and you have a finite amount each day depending on how you look after yourself. 

Relationship Building

Once you've identified the person you want to help transform and that they are indeed coachable, you can start building a relationship with them. The first starting point is setting up one-on-ones and finding out if that person trusts you to give them some guidance and advice. Are they happy to be influenced by you? 

Furthermore, if you can sit with deep empathy and deep curiosity, you will be more influential. However, if you sit there thinking that you're the smartest person and people need to listen to you, your body language will project the wrong message, and people will walk away from you. Forget about who is the smartest person in the room. It's not about you; it's about the person you're working with and their progress. It's about seeing the bridge they've got to cross to get from where they are to where they want to be or where they are and where you want them to be. No one likes to be told what to do. They like to be guided. 

Moreover, your goal is to guide them and make them the superstar. How will they be super proud of their achievements? How will you help them become proud of their accomplishments and help them have gratitude for what they've achieved? How will you help them move forward and continue to do more of that great work? 

The Most Important Question To Ask Your Mentee

The most important question to ask your mentee is, "what's on your mind?" and then provide them with the opportunity to speak and be heard. The next thing you'll want to ask is, "what else is on your mind?". You'll begin to see that they'll process their thoughts and identify their own strategies. 

It's like therapy if you like, but in terms of coaching improvement, you'll want the people you're working with to feel heard. You can do this by:

Summarising what they said and say, "okay, I understand that this is on your mind...". 

And then by asking them, "what's the most important to you right now that you want to solve or do something about?" and allowing them the opportunity to respond. 

A word of warning, it's about at that point that you're going to feel compelled to jump in and start giving advice. This situation is known as the advice trap, and Michael Bungay Stanier explains this further in his book, The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever. Michael states that you've got to be super careful when you reach this tipping point as you can make or break your ability to influence. In this stage, it's a good idea to say, "okay, so what might you do about that?". Begin to listen and let them map out how their strategy might work. Ask them what they think might go wrong with that strategy and if they think they can succeed. Most of the time, you can end that conversation there because they've got a pathway to change based on what they've said. They've solved it themselves. The solution is their idea, and then you can follow up with them on their progress. As they think, you must stay comfortable with silence, avoid the advice trap!

Measure Your Mentee's Successes 

Coaching is an infinite game; your mentee will always have the ability to improve. However, you can measure their successes in terms of transformations and milestones. Moreover, measuring is an excellent way of receiving motivation and actionable feedback. As your relationship with your mentee grows, you can thread the specific things you want your mentee to achieve into the conversation. For example:

"Okay, how did you guys sort out this issue". 

Or

 "Okay, what are we doing about this issue?".

An Opportunity To Strengthen Your Coaching Ability

I want you guys to be recognised as the Best Practice coaches in your organisation. That's my vision and mission because it helps your organisation be a great place to work, and I'm going to get my kicks out of having a little bit of influence over that. I've recently worked with my team at Best Practice to launch a coaching master class because many of the people I've worked with over the last 20 years have been internal influencers in organisations. They've been people who are trying to affect change in risk management, business processes and improvement, and they're trying to help their companies increase revenue and become more attractive. 

In our master class, there's an optional accreditation where you will have a one-on-one interview with Sarah, Best Practice's People, Culture, Compliance and Capability Manager and myself. On successfully completing the test and interview process, we'll issue you with a best practice accreditation as a master class coach. 

Click here to learn more about my Coaching Masterclass

I would love to hear your progress and career milestones and can't wait to see where you'll go on your professional journey. Stay in the loop with the latest news and updates by joining our email list below. 

Keep learning, 

Kobi Simmat