Gathering know-how
One of the most common questions I am asked when training managers as coaches relates to when and how they can bring in their own experience. Coaching is about drawing out the employee’s know-how, raising their awareness and helping them clarify their thoughts using questions. However, managers tend to be concerned about their own wisdom going to waste.
One helpful framework consists of a spectrum of places where know-how might emerge, with the colleague or ‘performer’ at one end and the coach at the other.
When coaching, managers should start by seeking the know-how of the performer relating to the context. Try the following questions.
1 What helped when you did this before?
Useful ideas often emerge through such questions – enough to make progress. If more ideas are needed, there are plenty of possibilities to explore before the coach/manager adds their own know-how.
2 What was the best you ever did at this?
Solution-focused coaching is about being on the look-out for things that helped the person concerned at some point in the past (rather than whatever might have hindered them). The time when the performer did their best is often a fruitful source.
Once the performer has identified the occasion (and there must be one if the performer has carried out the task even twice before), the manager can help pick out the useful know-how by asking: ‘what went well then?’, ‘what did you do that helped?’, ‘what else?’, and so on. The recollections can spark ideas for things to do next time.
3 When have you done similar things before?
Now we are looking for related events, ones that share elements with the challenge faced by the colleague. For example, in coaching someone making a key career decision, I asked about other ‘big decisions’ they had made successfully. This performer had been through a long drawn-out process of choosing their house, and we were able to pick out ways they had come to a good result. This gave some excellent strategies for the current situation.
4 Who else do you know who is good at this?
Moving further away from the performer’s knowledge and expertise on the spectrum, we come to the area where other people’s know-how can be brought in. We have not yet reached the ‘coach’ end of the spectrum, and so we ask the performer about other people or groups who seem to have ability in the area in which we are interested.
Suppose the individual wants to improve their website? Who else’s website is good and what do they like about it? How did they decide to do it that way? Encouraging the performer to take time before the next session to seek out and examine other people’s know-how can be very helpful.
5 And finally: the coach
If the performer discovers and values the know-how, they may put it into practice energetically. And you might learn a new way of doing something to add to your own repertoire.
Once all the obvious avenues for making this happen have been explored, managers-as-coaches can input their own know-how to coaching conversations – after all, if you knew something that might help someone, it would seem unethical to withhold it. However, it’s best to take care in how and when this is done, and we’ll take a look at this in the next column.
Mark McKergow is director of sfwork, the Centre for Solutions Focus at Work and co-author of several books on solution-focused practice including The Solutions Focus (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2007).