Following on from Getting to Grips with Trust, and Trust as an Inside Job, this article proposes that learning to coach and apply it is an effective way to communicate at work, about work. Coaching conversations are intelligent conversations and can be a powerful vehicle for building Trust in the workplace.
One fundamental principle of coaching is that effective action, solutions and results arise in the person who receives coaching. Coaching is catalytic in that it provokes a response or change but neither the coach nor the coaching is present in the result.
So what is the argument for building Trust with coaching?
Attention
Effective coaching demands intense attention. This type and intensity of attention is a rare gift from one person to another; it enables really connecting. When you give such focus to what a colleague is saying, the underlying presupposition is that they are important to you. It also enables you to hear and really listen to what they are saying. With adequate skills, you can notice patterns in their thinking, help them notice gaps and blocks, and create openings for new options. Such obvious concern can provide strong evidence that trusting the giver is appropriate and worthwhile.
Support
The intention of coaching is to support the receiver. Offering this support suggests “I care about you.” “I want to help you get results and to succeed.” This support is not necessarily in the form of answers nor soft solutions. It may be to challenge or a recommendation to do something surprising. Not letting them off the hook may push them to overcome a fear or move past something that has blocked them for years. This support may come in the form of tough love, but it is support. Trusting a colleague who clearly supports you is easier to do.
Vulnerability
When you connect with intense attention and support, it suggests “you are safe with me.” When you coach you invite the receiver to be open, honest and reveal fears, difficulties and mistakes. Showing your own vulnerability by being equally open and honest sends a signal of authenticity. Being receptive, impartial and free of judgment allows your colleague to be vulnerable knowing they are safe. The firmest resistances to taking effective action are sometimes buried in lack of self-awareness. Because of the coaching way of directing attention, especially to unnoticed habits of thought and behaviour, a person can feel exposed and vulnerable. It’s not unusual for an experienced Coach to share their own mistakes and learnings to deepen the connection and show their own humanity. Trusting someone capable of this is almost natural.
Feedback
Giving and receiving feedback is an area fraught with the notion of “difficult conversations.” Yet the basic premise of feedback is information about how far off target you are. A marshaller guiding an aircraft onto its stand signals to the pilot when he is off or on the line, and when he has reached his stop point. His bats will show – little bit to the left – little to the right, and he crosses them to signal Stop!
When you are trained to coach effectively, you will perceive feedback as a deeply rewarding part of the process. And encouraging self-feedback invites the receiver to assess their own actions, results, mistakes or failures. This can be even more effective if done from the imaginary position of an independent observer commenting on him or her over there. When they explore what differing options could work better next time, or what they could do that they didn’t consider before, they are working out their own solutions. It is so much easier to trust someone who avoids telling you what to do, but guides your own feedback-to-self.
And if there are times when you can, or need to offer valuable or important feedback, a powerfully productive and acceptable way is always to frame it by saying,
“I have some observations that might help. Would you like me to tell you what they are?” And if you always respond with agreement to a “no thanks” response, you will maintain respect and a focus on genuine support.
Five-minute Coaching
If you conceive of coaching as an interaction where one person assists another in working out how to solve a problem or obtain a specific outcome or result, then the formal “coaching session” may not always be needed. It is likely that many exchanges between leaders and your colleagues are about:
Problem solving
Asking for support
Seeking permission
Proposing action or ideas
These can often be handled with short remarks in a corridor or that, “have you got a minute?” conversation. They may be satisfied with fragments of a coaching session, specially selected by the Coach to address what is being talked about. 5 minute coaching is not only feasible, it can be more doable in fast-paced environments. The ability to recognise the opportunity, and to switch quickly into coaching mode enables rapid responses, and provides the quality of conversation that encourages cooperation, optimizes performance and builds trusting relationships. Learning to be that flexible, change mindset in a moment and focus on what is being said is a powerful way to interact with colleagues about performance, and to track work you’ve delegated. Coaching as an essential part of a Trusted Leader’s Toolkit.
Quality Conversation
One feature of workplace conversations is that they are often hurried, superficial, not specific enough or too vague to ensure efficient transfer of information. With all the characteristics outlined in previous paragraphs, coaching conversations raise the standard, amplifying attention, precision and making them human in scale. They create a sense of ‘we’ rather than ‘I’. Judith E Glaser in her very well-researched book Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results, talks about,
“Creating WE is a neurochemical shift that takes place inside people and enables higher levels of bonding and collaboration.”
Although she was describing the results of a process of sharing meanings she called Double Clicking, the same concept of shared meanings and the sense of WE created by the coaching conversation applies equally.
Such high quality conversations lie at the heart of creating the conditions for trust to occur. The necessary skills can be learned.
Trust
This brief description of coaching in the workplace has drawn a parallel with the two earlier articles in what trust is, and what it takes to establish and maintain it. This is a style of thinking and conversing about getting the job done that presupposes the intention of acting with honesty, openness and integrity. It is not soft, but in the often hard, unforgiving mindset of business, it reminds us that we are human, and that trust is the emotional lubricant that makes good business possible.
