A NEW Way To Engage With Your Team

An essential aspect of leadership is knowing when you should coach, mentor, or provide an outlet to vent. As a manager, learning how to read situations with those you are in contact with will further increase your communication skills. When it's not clear what your employee needs or wants, ask them, and they will tell you. "Would you like to be coached, given advice, or use this meeting as a place to vent about the problem?" Below are three options to offer your team members.

First, coaching your team focuses on leveraging strengths and abilities to create a new mindset and spark a productive next step. Coaching team members requires active listening to what they are saying and asking questions to understand why they believe it. A coach is someone who guides you through a problem and teaches tools for others to solve their problems. Your job isn't to be the expert; it's to guide someone to discover their wisdom. Coaches primarily listen, ask empowering questions and help people to stay accountable to their action plans. It may best be said by Maimonides, "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."

Second, by giving advice or mentoring, you're helping others recognize and address their problems. A mentor listens and offers advice to solve problems. Giving advice is an opportunity to share what you have learned from your own experiences and offer your suggestions for their problems. Remember, before providing your opinion, double-check they are looking for counsel in this fashion.

Last, providing a space for team members to vent from time to time and withholding judgment or advice. Allow them to explain a story and their interpretation of it without interrupting. A system to follow to help your team member feel seen, heard, and understood is to; Acknowledge what the person has just said, add the emotion that you hear, and ask if you go that right. It may sound like, "I heard you say that you didn't receive credit for a project that you were heavily involved in, and it sounds like you're frustrated. Did I get that right?" Listening allows the other to blow off steam without any intention of fixing their problem. After your team member or colleague has vented, consider challenging them to spend the same amount of time trying to determine how they can make that particular issue less frustrating for themselves.

Skillful leadership involves coaching, mentoring, and listening. Understanding when to employ one technique over another is key to rewarding positive performance and motivating others. When it's unclear what they want, offer a choice so that you don't risk offering unsolicited advice or frustrating a team member who is looking for a decision from you. When you ask upfront, you will be aligning yourself with their goals and creating a more positive outcome.

If you found this article helpful, let’s talk! My clients are leaders and busy. Often they don’t create time to reflect on what’s working well, look at their reaction, and improve their leadership style. 1:1 leadership coaching solves this problem and is the most effective way to get results because our conversations are reflections on my client's engagements, their goals, and the outcomes they want to see.

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