Why Are Coaching Skills Important?

12 January 2023

In any business, it is important for any manager or leader to exhibit coaching skills their job. The role of a manager or leader is to guide their team through the objectives, ensuring any job is completed to a high standard. While you could simply say what needs to be done, it is far better to lead by example and coach your team and employees through something, and this requires the use of coaching skills.

The role of a manager or leader requires many different skills, and these people often find that they need to guide team members through a task or situation that they are unsure about. This role of providing guidance has become more prevalent in leadership and managerial roles recently. In most leadership and managerial roles, you don’t just direct your team as to what to do – you need to lead by example and coach your team through specific tasks and situations.

As such, coaching skills have become highly important for all leaders and managers to possess. In fact, there are few management skills that have greater impact on an individual’s performance, motivation, or development than coaching. Effective coaching can transform operational decision making, team discussions, client meetings, and career and personal development.

Here at Steps, we understand just how important coaching skills are to any business, and we believe that the GROW model is an effective and well respected coaching method. This helps people achieve goals and solve problems, and its techniques are easily understood and practised one-to-one and in groups.

We combine the GROW model with our own Steps to Change, enabling individuals to develop their coaching skills further.

What Are the Key Coaching Skills?

Above, we touched on why coaching skills are important for any manager or leader to possess. Through coaching and guiding their team, leaders and managers can improve an individual’s performance, motivation, and development in their role in the business. This in turn will increase the standard of work, overall morale, and how goals are achieved.

In essence, coaching isn’t simply telling an employee what to do and micro-managing them. Coaching is a process of helping employees grow their own potential by eliminating obstacles and motivating them to achieve better. It is helping your employees learn on their own, so they can continue to achieve their best.

There are many essential coaching skills required by managers and leaders to achieve this, and these include:

Listening
Support
Enabling Others
Empathy
Encouragement
And More

First and foremost, a key coaching skill is the ability to listen to their employees. You need to give your employee your undivided attention, ensuring you completely understand their needs. You also need to do more than simply guide an employee – you need to have their respect and trust, so they know they can come to you for support.

A great coach will also understand that you can’t just solve problems for your employees, as they will never learn this way. You need to enable your employees by allowing them to solve problems for themselves but provide support and assistance when needed.

An effective coach must also have the ability to put themselves in the shoes of their employees, so a key coaching skill is empathy. You need to be able to understand the conflict and work out a solution that is best for the business and the employee.

How to Improve Coaching Skills

Now that you know a little more about what coaching is, why it is important, and some of the key coaching skills, it’s time to discuss how you can improve coaching skills. As with anything, there is always room for improvement with coaching skills and, with situations constantly changing, it is good to keep improving upon your coaching skills.

Coaching is a great way to help your employees progress and develop their unique strengths, but to maximise your coaching potential, you must keep refreshing your coaching skills. There are certain things that you can do to improve your coaching skills, including:

Never Stop Learning
Set Clear Expectations
Create a Template for Your Coaching Sessions
Practice Active Listening
Complete Coaching Courses

Most of the above points are areas that you can work on yourself to improve the coaching that you offer your employees. However, there are always outside courses that you can take and complete in order to help you improve upon your coaching skills.

One such course is what we offer at Steps, using the GROW model combined with our own Steps to Change program. We can start a journey to developing a coaching style by allowing individuals to:

See the impact of their current behavioural style on others
Experience GROW coaching and how powerful it can be
Own their ability to adopt the GROW model and addressing the potential barriers to change
Change their behaviours to adopt a coaching style
Live this new way of working so they continue to practise, get feedback, and improve over time

What Skills Are Needed for Coaching?

You now know what coaching is, why it is important for leaders and managers to be effective coaches, and how you can continue to improve your coaching skills. But what skills are needed for coaching? Good coaching skills can be the difference between a team achieving greatness and a team languishing, so it is important for all leaders and managers to understand what skills are needed for coaching their team.

There are many skills required for effective coaching, but there are 9 skills in particular that are essential coaching skills for all leadership and management. These are:

Inclusive Leadership
Effective Communication
Safety and Trust
Emotional Intelligence
Active Listening
Ability to Give and Receive Feedback
Empathy
Goal Orientation
A Growth Mindset

Check Out Our Steps to Change Program

Hopefully after reading the above information, you will be much more informed regarding what coaching is, the skills required to be an effective coach, and why these coaching skills are important for managers and leaders to possess.

For any team to be effective and continue to thrive, managers and leaders need to not only hand out tasks, but also coach their team through situations and tasks, encouraging them to be their best. It is here where coaching skills are important and, to ensure your team continues to thrive, you need to always be improving upon your coaching skills. This can be achieved through coaching courses, such as the one offered by us at Steps.

We offer an effective coaching course where we combine the GROW method with our own Steps to Change. We can tailor this course to your business and requirements, ensuring that your team can achieve their best at every opportunity. You can check out our Steps to Change program on our site for further information.

If you would like to contact us directly, however, you can do so by giving us a call on 02074 039 000. We will be happy to discuss your requirements in further detail, answer any questions you have, and offer helpful advice. You can also reach out via a written method by filling out our contact form or sending an email to mail@stepsdrama.com.