How to empower others
As a leadership and success coach, coaching is what I do, but why should all leaders adopt a coaching approach and what does this mean?
Tim Gallwey, creator of the Inner Game and one of the grandfathers of coaching said:
Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them
When you help a person remove the obstacles that are getting in the way of their performance, when you help them to do this themselves, you create a situation where the person feels empowered and in charge. They feel that their decisions are their own. They feel good about having done the work and figured it out. And they own those decisions.
When you own your decisions you are more likely to take action and get things done.
Have you ever had a conversation with someone where they have asked you for advice, you give them your best advice and then they go away and do something else entirely? And when it doesn’t work they don’t understand why?
Help your people come to their own decisions and you will see them take action more quickly. You will see them learn to make decisions, to make mistakes and course correct themselves. Why? Because you have taught them to think it through. You have taught them to evaluate their decisions. You’ve taught them to correct their mistakes and learn from them.
Does this take time? Of course! But does it really take more time than just telling them what to do? Not in the long term, because eventually they will take more action without you, they will correct mistakes without you and they will learn and own their learning too. This will free you up to do so much more and help more of your people do more too.
Tell me when you have tried this and what the results have been.
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