How to Coach Your Team Like an Executive Coach

Expert tips on exactly what to say to lead your team, motivating inspiring and facilitating their efforts to great results.

Today’s post is by Keren Eldad, author and TED speaker.

Over the course of several years as an executive coach, I’ve been asked many times from company leaders for some pointers on how to take what they have learned in coaching back to coach their teams. Here’s the catch: they only ask for these pointers after a coaching series, making it relatively easy to help.

Before the coaching series, most executives are convinced that they already function as “coach,” and that they do so very well. In my experience I have found that most leaders see themselves as inspiring and accountable from the get-go. However, through coaching, assessments and anonymous 360s, a different picture often emerges – not of a coach, but of a manager who controls and commands.  These managers often find that those methods – while still prevalent and pervasive – are not effective to productivity, and in fact mostly lead to toxicity, gossip, lack of accountability, a lack of engagement, a fear of speaking up in the organization and in most cases I have witnessed: a talent retention problem.

Embracing a leadership focused on coaching is far more empowering and effective. In the words of Adam Grant: “coaching might be more essential than mentoring to our careers and to our teams. Whereas mentors dole out words and wisdom, coaches roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. They don’t just believe in our potential, they get in the arena to help us realize our potential.”

Here are the three fundamental ways in which you can coach your team towards greater productivity and engagement:

Practice what you Preach.

Think of a great leader like Gandhi. All great leaders have one thing in common with Gandhi – and it is the ability to practice and exemplify their values. In the role of the modern-day servant leader, a leader who empathizes, communicates and inspires – this comes down to actively asking: “how may I serve, whom may I serve, and how am I serving?” –  at each turn. A simple tool I use to keep myself in check, for example, is to journal each day and reflect upon the question: whom did I help today?

Please feel free to do the very same things. This is not hard, it’s just habitual. Get the systems started and you’ll start doing these things as routinely as you brush your teeth.

Gather Often and Ask Good Questions.

The key to a company’s success or successful transition is always to focus on people, and thus, your key function as a leader is to coach, nurture and see to the development of others. Your main goal, therefore, is the creation of an excellent team. To this end, espouse status meetings on a weekly basis.  If you do not currently hold these in your operation for the full management team – you must. Make these lively and human by opening on a personal note and away from the meeting’s agenda, such as sharing an anecdote from the weekend, or inviting others to share theirs.

Here’s why: people have personal lives. If you are going to ask them to spend a big chunk of theirs with you, you should be involved in theirs, and get to know them. By the same token, they too should get to know you. Your management team and you should have a we-feeling – a feeling that you all belong and have each others’ back. Having set the stage this way, you may always turn to your meetings’ agenda with trust, settling in through general and open-ended questions that allow and empower all to participate. My top questions are:

“What would you like to explore today?”

Followed by a powerful coaching question: “And what else?”

These questions are coaching favorites for a reason. When using them in sequence, I find we get to where we need to be, the core of the challenge and any additional issues or hesitations that others have. That tells us where we can go with the meeting, to clear our path towards a productive segment. For extra effect, once someone answers these questions, be sure to validate and reflect their words back. Make sure your counterpart feels head and be mentally present and engaged.

Get Out and Have Fun.

Coaches love off-sites, on-sites, team building exercises and generally any chance to rally people. Rallies are gatherings of people and they are highly effective for the simple reason that we are humans. Humans need connection, and connection is fostered through physical presence and physical sharing. Don’t let anyone tell you that off sites are useless; they connect people and let them learn and get to know each other at the same time. For example, in many of the companies I have coached and worked with, sales teams and marketing teams never meet. General counsels from different regions never meet. Many go years without meeting the company CEO and top leadership. This is madness. How can you understand the needs of your Spanish retail team if you have never met them? How is trust to be built? Gallup studies also show that 2/3 of employees say that they will stay at a job because they have a good relationship with their co-workers. Encourage this type of friendship among your employees by providing team outing opportunities or, if that isn’t possible, regular Coach-lead team-building activities. If employers make an effort to create a team-based environment, then workers may be more engaged because they do not want to let their “team members” down.  In sum, outings are how you create community.  By creating these communities you will help people put aside differences and integrate with each other.

Keren Eldad is an author, TED speaker, crisis-counselor and leading certified executive and personal coach for high- performance. As such, she is a trusted advisor to industry-leading executives and entrepreneurs who are setting records at the top of their fields, while working with top organizations, including Luxxotica, J.P. Morgan, LVMH, Van Cleef & Arpels, IWC, Waypoint, Beyond Capital, YPO, The Delos Shipping Companies, Sierra Constellation Partners, and more.

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