More than 18 million people worldwide have discovered their talents with the CliftonStrengths assessment. According to Gallup, knowing and using your talents makes you 6 times more likely to be engaged at work and 3 times more likely to have an excellent quality of life.
As a manager, how do you lead with strengths? More than giving your team the chance to discover their talents, what really gets them up and running is when they have a conversation with someone who helps them make sense of their talents, develop their understanding and appreciation of their own talents, and invest in developing their talents into strengths. That’s where coaching comes in.
5 Tips for Getting Started on Coaching Conversations
Whether or not you’re a Gallup-certified Strengths coach, here are some tips for having coaching conversations with your employee or team.
- Have a clear set up and agreement with the ground rules for how you’re going to work together.
Know what clients see in you, why they chose to speak to you, their expectations of you. This clarifies the boundaries for your communication and accountability. Own the credibility you have! This includes your educational background, professional experiences, work you’ve done for and not for profit, your familiarity with an issue or industry. If you’re an internal coach, you have an edge in your knowledge about the work environment. The downside is your coachee may not trust you – address this by making clear what you will or will not communicate, and parameters of the coaching confidentiality. - Clarify your coachee’s mission, purpose, and goals.
Mission = what they’ve given their life to, or want to give their life to. What is your life about? Faith may play a big role, e.g. Empowering people and helping them to develop.Purpose = How do I contribute to my mission? What am I going to do? What is my expression to that?Goals = Specific, Measureable, Actionable, Results-oriented, Time-based. It’s what people who are high in Focus and Strategic do for fun. Goals sit in the context of mission and purpose. If people have no goals, no mission, no purpose, they don’t need a coach. For some, their mission may be to find a mission and purpose – that’s fine, because it’s something they’re striving towards.
- Capitalise on the insights people get from each coaching session
Break automaticity so that they know they have a choice in how they behave! Let them see that “Just because I see the world this way, doesn’t mean I have to react this way.” Familiar refrains will come up as you work with your coachee over time. Pay attention. Patterns of speaking reveal patterns of thinking and behaving. Use the moments when people are dealing with issues or confronting their own lens or talent to drive a truck in bringing up a learning point about self-awareness! - Periodically let the coachee share what they’ve gained from the sessions.
When they share how they have grown, it lets them own the ground they have taken, step back and assess how far they have come. A side benefit is that it gives you recognition for the coaching you’ve done with them. - Every session should leave the coachee in action and with action, with homework to do.
People don’t develop just from epiphanies and insights. People develop from actions taken as a result of epiphanies and insights. As Stephen Covey said, To learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.
Tips by Dean Jones, Principal Architect of Gallup’s Global Client Learning Strategy.
Click here for a complimentary Strengths Coaching session.
