Overcoming Obstacles to Coaching

What has stopped you from committing to consistent coaching? The benefits of coaching are obvious. Coaching team members encourages a culture of trust and communication, and effective coaching helps people reach their full potential and ultimately deliver bottom-line results. Through coaching, you can create a work environment where people are engaged and feel encouraged to do their best. So, what is stopping you?

Now is the time to consider your own coaching practices and culture as well as the obstacles you have encountered. Here are three common coaching obstacles and how to overcome them to improve your coaching practices and culture.

1. Time pressures, demands, and emergencies

This is very common as many industries are critically constrained by time and hindered by surprises. The team’s tasks must be completed, but ensure that along with the tasks, you prioritize your team members’ development. It must be an active choice to prioritize coaching and scheduling coaching sessions along with other expectations of the role. Otherwise, it will never get done.

2. A Coach who is confident and certain of their opinions

The wonderful thing about coaching is that it requires you to active ly engage your team members and understand them. As you coach, practice empathy as you ask about their process, their experiences, and reasoning. Remember that they will not have lived the life that you have, so they will approach their tasks and demands differently. But this is your opportunity to both learn from them and guide them on how to reach their full potential, so take the opportunity to ask them questions and be open and accepting of others’ opinions.

3. A Coachee who is unwilling to assume responsibility for their actions or future plans

As you approach this coaching session, be careful to refrain from making accusatory or aggressive statements. Rather than telling them that they are wrong, ask questions to understand where their reasoning is coming from. If the resistance continues, call it out by naming it with neutral and descriptive terms. For example, say “You seem to be focusing on the things that will prevent the plan from succeeding. Are you feeling uneasy about this?” If the message is not resounding with them, schedule another session to revisit the issue. Overall, you must remember the importance of what you trying to achieve. By coaching, you are creating a culture of trust and productivity. You want to continue trying.

Don’t let coaching obstacles keep you from creating a team of engaged employees that trust you. By prioritizing coaching in this new year, your team will undoubtedly succeed in both development and bottom-line results. But if you want to improve your coaching skills with the aid of industry experts, contact CMOE for more information about Coaching TIPS2TM , our highly validated, research-based system for coaching.