Some coaches use coach-focused coaching, while others are employee-focused. Coach focused is dictating what needs to change and how to change it. Employee-focused coaching focuses on what the employee feels they need. It builds a deeper relationship and also helps them feel valued, wanted, and respected. Pivot your coaching process to be employee-focused to improve results and employee engagement.
Focusing on your ideas of what needs to improve, often based on how they are performing, is coach-focused coaching. However, your employees see things differently. If you don’t understand what they want to improve, they will start to wonder why they are still working for you. Coaching someone on presentation skills when they feel improving their communication would be most helpful; you aren’t meeting their needs. They will start thinking they aren’t getting better at communicating and wondering why you are focusing on presentation skills.
Over time, this misalignment on the employee’s coaching needs will create a rift between you and the employee. They will become disengaged and potentially toxic. The employee will begin to lose respect for you, and conversely, you will start seeing them as uncoachable. Ultimately, both of you will fail.
How to Get Started
- First, let go of your power and ego
- Next, ask open-ended questions to engage and understand them before you go in and start asking them to make changes
- Finally, focus on their perspective, their “why”, and their “how”
Because you’re giving up your ego and power and are asking open-ended questions, employees will feel you are listening to them. Listening demonstrates caring. It tells them they have a voice, and their input matters. These things are the foundation for employee-focused coaching.
Employee-focused coaching helps develop a deep relationship because you understand their perspective. When coaching to improve performance and engagement, approaching things from the employee’s viewpoint dramatically improves the changes you need to see. You can tailor the coaching process to meet their needs when you understand their “why” and what their “how” looks like. It creates alignment between how they work best within the improvements you are both aiming to achieve.
Examples of Employee-Focused Coaching Questions
- What are you doing well?
- What are you not doing so well?
- How can you get better, what can you improve on, what are you going to work on next?
- What do you want to achieve?
- Why are you here?
Facilitate the employee-focused coaching process using a guiding and discovery process by asking open-ended questions. Go off on tangents based upon the answers they give you. Leverage “tell me more” to dig deeper. The best questions to facilitate growth and discussion are how, where, and when questions.
Finding out what they need allows you to integrate what you feel needs coached with what they believe. If you start coaching what they say they need, you can evolve it to what they do need. It is their time, their journey they are going on. As a coach, you are trying to provide the best possible environment for them to be successful. Employee-focused coaching is the best way to provide that environment. The key is to have a shared purpose and agreed goal. It isn’t you saying you want to do this, you need to do that, or you need to achieve this.
Employee-focused coaching gives them the empowerment to take ownership of their improvement. Asking questions and developing relationships with your team allows you to engage and understand them before you go in and dictate where they need to improve and how. They will feel listened to, understood, and, that you are interested in their success. More importantly, it shows you are actively interested in their career, accomplishments, and professional success.
Employee-focused coaching uses questions throughout the coaching session to get employees to come up with answers for themselves. Doing so gets them to take ownership and provides autonomy and choice, which is crucial for gaining their buy-in. It helps increase confidence, gain competence and relatedness. As a result, they better understand why they are doing it, how it fits within their role, and how it helps them improve.
