The Best of You – Coaching Skills for Every Day
Like so many of you, I took the opportunity over the last few years to further upskill myself. Coaching has been on the top of my mind for many years and after reading numerous books, I finally enrolled into an accredited program to become a certified Coach with Erickson Coaching International. Here are my top 3 Coaching skills for everyone, every day, at work or at home.
Listen with the intent to understand
I thought I was a good listener until I learned about the different levels of listening and realized that I was probably not that good of a listener. Effective listening is not something that just happens overnight, but takes time and practice to develop. Once you grow in this area, however, no other skill will serve you better in life. Effective listening is at the heart of everything we do as leaders. Whether we are making a decision at work or choose the take-out place with our spouse. Our ability to listen effectively gives us an advantage in just about every situation. There are three levels of listening defined as
Level 1: Listen to speak
Level 2: Listen to hear
Level 3: Listen to understand
The magic really happens when you start sharpening your listening skills for Level 2 and Level 3 because people truly start to feel heard – and who doesn’t want to feel heard and understood?
Using a solution-focused approach
Every problem has a solution, and sometimes even more than one. Yet, a number of people would rather lament over a situation instead of activating their critical thinking skills to find solutions. Focusing too much on a problem makes you feel powerless and focusing on solutions makes you feel empowered. Choosing solution-focused thinking makes you feel happier and more capable of changing the situations at work or in life.
The mind is a powerful tool. When its full capacity is engaged, creative and innovative solutions can solve even the toughest problems. Sometimes, just changing the way you think about a situation is all the change you really need. From that new place of calm, great solutions can flow more freely.
Everybody is resourceful
The realization that everybody is doing their best with the resources they have available at this point is so important when we set expectations for our employees and more-so rate them. Meeting every person where they are at and assuming they have all the resources they need within allows for realistic expectation management an opens the opportunity to coach the employee to be at their best in their capacity.
Let us support you in adopting a solution-focused + listen to understand approach through our coaching, workshops, and consulting solutions.
