The Art of Coaching
Unlocking Creative and Thoughtful Solutions From The People Who Bring You Their Problems
My dad was a professor of entomology at Mississippi State University and at the University of Arkansas. My mom also served on faculty, so my sister and I were raised on university campuses. Working with his students, my dad saw no shortage of effort to produce answers – but there was often a lack of clarity about what the question was. As a result, my dad trained my sister and me to really think about questions deeply. This made us independent thinkers – people who didn’t necessarily see things the way everybody else saw them. He helped us think deeply about situations, question them, and then work to develop our own opinion and our own assessment.
This is the beginning of the coaching model.
The ability to think critically gives birth to problem-solving, and I’ve gotten good at solving problems. However, being good at solving problems has made me a bit of a magnet for problems – especially for drawing in people with problems.
I wonder if you can identify with being a problem magnet – the one that people come to in order to get stuff done? 🙋♂️ Maybe you’re the manager or member of the team that everyone just relies on and knows you are the go-to person when they need to fix a problem. Maybe that rock solid problem solver that you take your problems to comes to mind. These people begin to have things mount and mount until they are just being dumped on and expected to deliver on somebody else’s problems. And you see, when we solve other people’s problems for them, we frankly wear ourselves out. A better approach to getting caught in this problem-magnet-worn-out cycle is to learn how to coach others in how to think and evaluate for themselves their own problems, and then let them make the decisions on how to move forward.
“Two percent of the people think; three percent of the people think they think; and 95 percent would rather die than think. ”
Enter: The Art of Coaching.
The visual image that comes to my mind with this is tomatoes, specifically, tomatoes on the vine. Healthy, growing tomato plants often need tomato cages or trellises. We often think of cages in a negative light—as things that inhibit or keep in and confined- but tomato cages serve an antithetical purpose. They are designed to add strength and structure to the plant, which allows it to become more healthy and productive than it would be on its own. The same is true for coaching—a little bit of structure can help us grow beyond where we are.
For that structure, I am borrowing from the Maxwell Method of Coaching . This is helpful approach with a clever acronym can serve as a guide on coaching others to make their own decisions.
Much of the coaching method is the ability to wait, to listen, and to be able to hear the things that are said (or not said, in some cases) – rather than offering our own solutions before the people we are coaching have had a chance to process what they may already be thinking about doing. Try to listen to the solution that they may already be thinking about, that they just need someone to validate or push them a little bit farther so that they can be really clear on what they should do.
The coaching method is T.O.G.R.O.W. and we’ll see some basic questions that you can use as you engage in coaching others to make their own decisions.
T: Topic
T stands for Topic. Essentially asking, What are we here to talk about? What is the general topic of conversation? This can be a very real question for people to answer. Sometimes, they launch into what is going on, and it is important to gently interrupt and back up to this first essential question. Or you may simply be able to glean the answer organically from the conversation directly. Either way, it is certainly worth clarifying.
O: Outcome
The Outcome is about thinking through, What is it that we actually need to get out of this conversation? Sometimes it is not always clear, and we get into it and begin to solve a problem – but we are not actually clear on what we are hoping to get out of the conversation. Are we looking for advice? An action plan? Information? It can be really helpful to clarify the intended outcome. Or even getting them to verbalize, What is the tangible step we need to have before we end this conversation?
G: Goal
Goal is where we take a step back and instead of just diving head on into what the topic is and what the outcome needs to be, we pause for a second and say, What is our overall goal? What are we ultimately trying to achieve with this? Where are we trying to go? Is there a strategic initiative we are trying to accomplish? What are the constraints we have? As we begin to clarify what that goal is, this can be a moment that often leads people to pause and to reflect. I have seen this be a powerful moment, when individuals realize the direction they have been heading doesn’t actually help them fulfill their goal. This is a profound clarifying step.
R: Reality
Reality. This is where we start asking, What is actually going on now? What is working? What is not working? In a coaching session, this is usually where the bulk of the conversation is. It is about getting the person to think through what the current reality is and giving and holding the space long enough for them not to get lost in their own train of thought. When I am receiving coaching, I am begin down a train of thought, and I go on and on until I get stuck in my own questions and I just come to a stop. That is where my coach jumps in to save me. They say back to me what they heard so I know where to pick back up and move the conversation forward. Holding the space so others can hear their own thoughts is a critical step.
O: Options
What options do you have? What would [the wisest person that you know] do? This is really where we can begin to think about a, b, and c. We have discussed our value, what the reality is—now we are talking about possible paths we can take. Let’s push the idea. This is where we are brainstorming the options and the tangible next steps.
W: Way Forward
What is our way forward? Which option will we choose? How likely are you to actually do that? Then you are asking, May I follow up with you to see how that went? These are those motivational and interviewing questions that help get us from contemplating what we are going to do to actually acting on it.
So, to recap, this is the T.O.G.R.O.W. Method—to help you stop solving others’ problems and to start coaching them to solve their problems for themselves.