COACHING SELF-ASSESSMENT – How good of a coach are you? Here are Nine Questions to help you self-assess where you stand in your evolutionary journey to becoming a world class coach.
1. Are you facilitating conversations with open ended or closed ended, leading questions?
If you’re asking closed ended, directive questions, you’re closing your people, directing them to the outcome you want. This is manipulation. Example: “What have you tried so far?” (collaboration), rather than “Have you tried…” (directive, manipulation)”
2. Are you patient?
Do you give people time and space to self-reflect, think through issues and arrive at a conclusion in the way THEY process information, or are you pushing them to do it your way?
3. Are you consistently scheduling one to one coaching sessions with each person on your team?
It’s like exercising consistently. Coaching consistently equates to exponential growth, critical thinking, self-accountability, greater performance. It’s also an attribute of a strong coaching culture.
4. Are you coaching in your own image?
Does your experience get in the way of assessing people’s experiences and skills? “When I was in your role, here’s what I did when I was in a similar situation.” If so, you’re trying to clone yourself, instead of honoring their individuality.
5. Are you asking questions that you don’t know the answer to?
While you may believe you have the answers, people resist what they hear but believe what they say. If they create it, they own it. If you’re asking questions you don’t know the answer to, you’re coaching and creating. If you’re asking questions you do know the answer to, you’re manipulating.
6. Do you act as the Chief Problem Solver?
Every manager wants an independent, accountable team. When you do their work, you’re creating dependency. If your solution doesn’t work, it’s your fault and they get to blame you because you adopted the problem. If you have time to give an answer, you have time to ask a question. “So, what’s your opinion on how to (resolve this, achieve this goal, etc.)”
7. How consistent are you with observation (joint sales calls, remote presentations, field visits, etc.)?
If you’re not observing, you don’t know what they’re really doing, making it difficult to uncover coaching opportunities Instead, you make assessments base on assumptions. You can’t assess their skills in a spreadsheet.
8. Do you feel that your value as a manager is being the subject matter expert?
It’s part of your value but your real value and primary objective is making your people more valuable every day and building future leaders who can think on their own. The byproduct? You hit your sales targets.
9. Are you working with a peer accountability coach?
Do you consistently meet with a colleague to get coaching, give coaching, model great coaching, and collaborate on goal attainment, while holding each person accountable for their commitments?
