Tao of Coaching is an easy read on a subject which is complex and deals with coaching of employees to improve thier performance. It deals with practices and frameworks to consistently improve things with consistent coaching, feedback and appraisals.
Now these statements and words ring a bell about poor practices, partiality, office politics and so on. However, thats where the book scores, as it deals with such subject with a simple story of a guy called Alex. The book discusses his journey from a new entrant in a company dealing with an ice-cream project to becoming one of the key executives in the company. Deftly written by ex-Mckinsey and a Stanford MBA, Max.
It diminishes lots of myths and notions about coaching thru easy chapters and one of my biggest learning is that feedback/coaching others does improve others lives but also improves yours. And that is the reason why of coaching - Give and Take. Why because developing your team members in turn gets you spend more time on yourself and developing your skill set while you delegate work!
Here are few gems from the book -
1. #Coaching by asking is more effective than coaching by telling. Ask questions to coachee to help him come up with his own solutions rather than handing him doctor's prescription by telling what to do.
2. When u ask for #feedback, give proper time, notice and make it easier for somebody to do you a favour. Coaches who dont take feedback loose out on self-correcting mechanism to further improve themselves.
3. Some myths - we coach to primarily help others. We focus on coachee while coaching. Coaching means feedback. It takes lot of time. And its about work. Thats all incorrect!
4. Feedback is one of the coaching techniques where one should use AID format - Actions under focus to be discussed, Impact of these actions and Desired Outcome (how to do it better).
5. As some of u must have known, difference between a bad feedback and good one is that good feedback focuses on improvement areas vs blame, skills vs person and leaves person helped vs judged.
6. A coaching session can be structured well as #GROW - Goal, Reality, Options and Wrap up. Ask coachee what goals he has, to achieve better outcomes. Then ask about reality, what he has tried till now and his challenges. Discuss with him his options on countering and the best one to move on with. And wrap up with next steps and next review time.
7. Before coaching or managing a subordinate, one should apply #skill/#will matrix to decide on what kind of coaching technique to be applied. Its a 2 by 2 matrix across skill and will. High skill and low will means u need to excite the guy, low skill and high will means u need to guide him, low skill and low means u need to direct him while high skill and high will is what u need to arrive at so that u can delegate and get things done. This one is useful as ur team members will fit in different quadrants for u to apply different ways.
8. Assess motivation levels of ur coachees. At times the kind of motivation/demotivation loop they are in, can help u decide the course of action.
9. For any goal to be achieved. Here is the recipie - 1. Write down the goal. Publicise it. Discuss it. Share with more people. 2. Apply #Waypower (power to figure out ways towards ur goal) 3. Apply #willpower (action to chosen path).
10. And the last one is - Goal are many types and one should focus on process goals rather than performance goals or Outcome goals. #Process goals (hit a harder serve), #Performance goals (hit more aces) and #Outcome goals (Win wimbledon).
Great coaches focus on #process goals and practice it multiple times. Performance goals and outcome goals are way too less frequent to practise (winning a wimbledon).
A must read for anybody dealing with people - employees, colleagues, kids..
Do share ur comments if u like my chosen gems...or if this review makes you think about reading the book.
This is my 3rd book of 2018. Resolution is to finish 12 this yr.
Nitin
