What constitutes a good leader in an interconnected world, where teams work together across oceans, and collaborate through different timezones and cultures?

Claudia Geratz Leadership Coach coaching leaders as a coach

The traditional command-and-control approach is obsolete in modern work environments. Agile and asynchronous work formats require leaders to focus on support, guidance and providing their team members with the space for personal and professional growth.

Additionally, younger generations in the workforce bring different expectations and priorities. Gen Z is looking for a value-match, flexibility, autonomy, work-life balance and wellbeing.

The core skills of the positive leader in tech

A special set of core skills is required for a positive leader in tech.

Emotional intelligence. The ability to understand and manage your own emotions, as well as those of the people around you is crucial in leading hybrid and remote teams. Typical characteristics of emotionally intelligent leaders include relationship building, good communication skills, positive emotions, optimism and self-belief.

Leadership strengths. Strengths are personal character traits and values that help us perform at our best and do good in the world. Positive leaders with a focus on sustainability and working to protect future generations foster their strengths of stewardship, prosociality, humility, courage and justice.

Growth mindset. In a fast-paced world with constant change, cultivating a growth mindset is the foundation for life-long learning and the belief that people can develop and grow to reach their full potential.

Coaching mindset. The modern leader in tech needs to inspire growth, learning, a positive outlook on life and a willingness to tackle challenges and find solutions. The best way to empower people to be at their best, is to coach them.

Enabling learning in others through coaching

At its core, coaching is a form of personal development based on the belief that every person has the capacity to reach their full potential. Coaching is to the leader what the magic fertiliser is to the gardener: that little bit of extra help that makes all the difference, bringing about an abundance of growth, beauty and smiles.

The European Mentoring and Coaching Council defines coaching as “activities within the area of professional and personal development…to help clients…see and test alternative ways for improvement of competence, decision making and enhancement of quality of life…with the purpose of serving the clients to improve their performance or enhance their personal development or both”.

As a leader coaching is your gateway to enabling learning in others. At its best, coaching doesn’t even require you to have any answers. Coaching works on the belief that the person you coach already has all the answers within them. Your role as the coach is to help them uncover these answers.

Building your self-efficacy in coaching your team

When you start to coach others you will feel clumsy, maybe a bit like an imposter, and not really confident in yourself. It’s a different kind of language and a different kind of questions to ask. Building your coaching self-efficacy is essential for the leader as coach.

The GROW model for coaching as a leader

A simple yet very effective coaching framework is the GROW model. This evidence-based tool follows a four-step process that can help leaders in their coaching conversations with their team members. Coaching leaders apply a coaching style to most of their interactions with their employees: from problem-solving, to personal development conversations, team meetings and annual reviews, framing all these conversations with a coaching mindset inspires learning in others, intrinsic motivation and a growth mindset across your teams.

GROW model of coaching follows a four step process of goal phase, reality phase, options phase and will phase

Setting a goal. Start with setting an objective for the session. Focus on letting your team member express their goal. When you use the GROW model in annual review it makes sense to let your employee set a long-term goal for their career development. Refrain from suggesting in this stage. Focus on asking questions to help elicit a goal from your team member.

Checking in with current reality. Invite your team member to self-assess their current situation. What goes well? What isn’t going well? How would others rate their performance? How would their peers describe their strengths? Your role as the leader as a coach in this phase is to ask questions that help to test their beliefs and assumptions that they might be making.

Discover all options. In corporate settings we often need to make decisions quickly, without having the time to assess all available options. Coaching offers a valuable space to deliberately take time to discover all options. What other options are available? What could you do that you haven’t thought about yet? Invite different perspectives. When you both feel you have discovered all available options, encourage your team member to make a choice. What is the best option to proceed?

Promote their will to action. In the final phase of your coaching conversation encourage a commitment to take action. Ensure that the action follows SMART goal setting (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic & rewarding and timebound). Identify potential obstacles and what kind of support the employee might need (e.g. resources, people, skills, learning, coaching).

Close your coaching conversation as a leader by asking your team member how they feel. More often than not you will see excitement and a readiness to take action.

Practice your coaching skills as a leader

Practice makes perfect. Give it a go and observe how motivated and energised your teams become. Sometimes we need that bit of extra support to step out of our comfort zone. Consider getting your own coach into your support team to become a leader as a coach. I support leaders in tech on their journey to become positive leaders and effective coaches. Book a free chat with me to discuss how I can help you become a coaching leader.