WATCH: How to Engage and Regain your Best People with a Coaching Mindset (E5)

In this video, I’d like to talk about “How to Keep and Retain your Best People by Developing a Coaching Mindset” because a lot of people are reprioritising and rethinking what it is that they want from work.

Rapport

And a coaching mindset helps managers to have and build really great ‘Rapport’ with their people. 

Understand

And to help them ‘Understand’ what it is  that their people want by asking really good coaching questions, around what their goals are, what their expectations are, and whether those are being fulfilled or not. What do they need from their job and what do they want in their career. 

Feedback and Accountability

And it’s also about holding people to account by giving robust ‘Feedback’, talking about ‘Accountability’ and the consequences of underperformance.

Performance

And ultimately it’s about ‘Performance’ and getting great performance in the workplace because no one wants to come to work and underperform. 

‘The Paradox of a Coaching Mindset’

And that is actually all captured, very nicely and neatly, in the ‘Paradox of a Coaching Mindset’, developed by Dr. Dan Harrison, he’s an expert in Positive Psychology and Behaviour Analytics. And there are two traits in a paradox that could seem to be contradictory yet when they come together form something synergistic, a new behaviour. And the two traits are ‘Warm and Empathy’ and ‘Enforcing Accountability’.

Warm and Empathy

 So, if we’re very warm and empathic without actually holding people to account, we can be seen as ‘permissive’. And if we’re not addressing underperformance because yes we understand that this happened or that happened, but we’re not actually addressing the underperformance and holding people to account, people will underperform. You’ll be letting them fail on your shift. And high performers may see that and see you as permissive and therefore leave because they think it’s unfair.

Enforcing Accountability

On the other hand, if we’re very, very harsh and accountable and holding people to account without warmth and empathy, then also people could leave because they’re feeling that you’re being too harsh and be too punitive and not caring. So, it’s this balance of effective enforcing and warmth and empathy that comes together to create compassionate enforcing and that’s what a coaching mindset is all about.

So, I’d like you to consider your own style and how warm much warmth and empathy you have without being permissive. How much accountability without being harsh so that you can have Compassion Enforcing. And remember, Stay curious! 

With best regards,