9 Steps to Help You Coach Your Employees More Effectively

How to be a good team leader

Being a team leader or a manager can be an arduous job position and a role that many fail to fulfill in a proper manner. What sets underachieving and mediocre managers apart from those who thrive and excel in this spot is the ability to properly coach different staff members. A huge part of becoming a great leader consists of knowing how to communicate with employees in order to pass the knowledge about the job appositely.

There’s a certain art to this, but it’s also something that can be learned. Some people are more talented and just have a knack for bringing out the best from each person. But even those whose teaching instincts are at the top level need some sort of guidance from time to time.

The teachers need to be taught how to teach, and the coaches need to be coached, at first. That’s why we’re going to present you with some pointers and methods that you can implement in order to become a better coach and overall a better team leader.

Embrace Your Role As a Coach

The path to becoming a more effective coach starts with embracing your role. Any team member out there is actually relying on you to give them proper steering and a direction that they should all move towards. This is simply not going to happen if you shy away from your responsibilities.

If you’re just starting out and you’re new to this coaching role, make sure that you accept it fully first. When that happens, your staff members will be a lot more willing to listen to your advice.

Always Stay Ready and Be Passionate About Your Job

You need to bring your A-game each and every day because this energy is something that others can also feed off of. Take any sports as an analogy here: those who have the most success as coaches are also often the ones that are extremely energetic and passionate about their work.

Just remember that much of the company’s success depends on your ability to motivate everyone to perform better at their daily tasks. If you just yell and scream all the time about the importance of getting the job done, you probably won’t see too much success in the long run.

On the other hand, if you’re too unassertive and acquiescent, chances are that no one will take you seriously enough in this role.

Don’t Micromanage Everything

There’s sometimes a fine line between coaching passionately and micromanaging everything. At the same time, you want to show everyone that you care about their work and you want to help them progress further in their jobs. What you essentially want to do is help your staff members reach their full potential, by coaching them the right way.

That’s why it’s so pertinent that you stay on top of the whole process. You’re there to instruct, guide and offer encouragement whenever those things are needed, but you don’t want to jeopardize their freedom and autonomy, at the same time. Don’t get too carried away in this coach/mentor/teacher role and give enough space to your employees to correct their mistakes on their own, whenever possible. You need to learn to recognize these moments when it’s far more beneficial not to interfere.

Be Flexible and Avoid Acting Stringently

The faster you realize that there’s no strict pattern for maximizing the potential of each person, the quicker you’ll make progress with them as a coach. Each person and situation are different, so you should be flexible enough to adapt to these different scenarios.

Being flexible and ready to compromise goes hand in hand with the ability to avoid acting stringently. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t insist on your company’s core values at all times, but simply to understand that mutual feedback and discussion are always welcome. When you coach somebody, it’s of utmost importance that you end all conversations on a collaborative note.

The fact that everyone needs to be coached differently only means that you have to work hard to establish a certain connection with each staff member. This may be much easier said than done in some cases, but it’s crucial to build a trusting relationship and have an ongoing dialogue with each employee that you’re coaching.

Understanding Your Employees’ Motives

The main reason why you want to get involved in this is fairly simple: understanding your employees’ motives brings you a big step further at coaching them more effectively.

There are basically three ways to approach this and find out what makes your staff members motivated. And even though the one is far more operative than the other two, we ultimately recommend you try all three. The first one would be to just flat-out ask each individual what motivates them. You can tell a lot about someone based on this answer, although you can’t take the answer they give you for granted.

The second approach would consist of distributing questionnaires and getting your answers in writing. This way the employees will have more time to think since you might be catching them little off-guard with the first approach.

Both of these ways can be good for understanding what motivates your staff members, but the third approach, even though it might be a bit unorthodox, can bring you better results. It’s genuinely caring about your employees and their well-being. This is something that takes more time, but putting an extra effort here can be beneficial in multiple ways.

First off, you’ll start creating this atmosphere where everyone feels pleasant at work. When people start to get comfortable around their colleagues, you’ll be able to assess much better what drives and propels them. Once you get a grip on these things, your job at coaching them will also get significantly easier.

Be As Straightforward As Possible

Providing straightforward feedback is the next crucial step you need to take in order to become a better coach. People don’t it like when the person that’s supposed to help them become better at their jobs is too vague, obscure, and ill-defined. That’s why you need to come up with examples when they have trouble comprehending some of the more complicated concepts, depending on their line of work.

What you also want to make sure is to tell them what was and what wasn’t done right. You don’t have to be arrogant, but you don’t want to sugar-coat things either. We’ve already hinted at the importance of keeping a straight-line communication with your employees. It’s almost impossible to achieve this if you’re avoiding to call things by their right names.

If something is not done right, it’s your duty to show them how it’s supposed to be done. On top of this, you should also have a ready answer and explain why this needs to be done a certain way.

Be Patient and Never Lose Your Temper

To properly coach someone, it’s paramount that every member of the staff has the necessary resources that enable them to meet their goals. But there are going to be cases when you’ve done almost everything in your power to be as straightforward as possible and still to no avail.

In those instances, you have to be patient, no matter how hard it may be to control yourself. You simply need to realize that results are not going to be the same every time and that there can be moments when you just don’t know how to handle a given situation. Even in these cases, you have to stay calm, keep your composure, and not lose temper.

Offer Positive Reinforcement At All Times

Positive reinforcement is crucial regardless of the end result. Your goal is to help your employees grow and learn – and there’s a strong chance that this won’t happen if you don’t maintain a positive attitude throughout the whole time.

When you look back on the entire project, you should openly discuss what was done right and what was done wrong. Make sure to ask the employees about their perspective on everything. Their insight can be an invaluable lesson to you as a coach, as well. This is how you collect the much-needed experience and how you grow and evolve in your coaching role also.

The Bottom Line: Be Ready to Continuously Learn

Like with any other job out there, it’s imperative that you stay open and ready for learning new things all the time. This is something that truly separates good team leaders and managers from those who just fill in the role. To heavily increase the chances of your company’s success, you have to take the coaching job rather seriously.

These 9 steps that we’ve talked about in this article are quintessential for anyone who’s determined enough to unlock the untapped potential of her or his staff members. This takes a lot of time and practice, but once you learn how to do this properly and master the whole thing, rest assured that you’ll find yourself in a position you’ve always dreamed of.