E15 | Why Coaching Mindsets Boost Engagement, Trust, And Respect

Hi. Welcome to live with a coaching mindset, a Podcast where we explore how leaders and look for our potential. I am Dr Damian goldwat, and I am very excited to discuss my new book, live with a coaching mindset.

Hi everyone. I'm Elaine Padilla. I'm also a coach, and I will be the host of this podcast. We hope that you find this space inspirational and thought provoking. Let's get into it. Welcome everyone. This is the podcast lead with the coaching mindset, and I'm here with Damien Goldwater today, and we're going to explore chapter one, leading and coaching. Damian, how are you today?

I'm doing great. Looking forward to the conversation around my first chapter.

Great, great. Well, I have a question to ask you. Let's just dive right into it. What are the competencies of a leader manager with a coaching mindset?

Well, a leader who develop a coaching mindset is very interested in developing his or her people. So because it's interesting, in that development, they show interest, genuine interest, in developing their colleagues skills. They look at strength and what is missing, not only what they are missing, but also what are the strengths, so they can support them in leveraging the strength, and also they look about what they need to be more effective, what are opportunities for growing and learning so they can support them in developing the skills. So a leader with a coaching mindset is committed to the development of their people and spend time in getting to know them. So there is an element of understanding their colleagues. So that requires some time. That requires some investment in time, in understanding what are their goals, what is their vision, what is important to them, what are their values, what they care about, so they can align, to the extent that is possible, their passion to job opportunities and task opportunities.

Okay, so you touched on something that made me think about the importance of self awareness. Tell me about what role this plays in developing a leader with a coaching mindset.

Well, from two perspective, from one perspective, the leader needs to develop self awareness about him or herself. The leader needs to be aware of what are his or her own strength and area for development. Ideally, they want to work with a coach or a mentor or somebody who can support you looking at the mirror, you know, sometimes not easy. Look at the mirror and look at ourselves and see what our strength, what our blind spot, what may not be seen. So it doesn't matter what is our job. They're always blind spots. So leaders who are effective and committed to the learning of their study also modeling that. So they are working their own coach. They're all a mentor or a colleague, somebody who helped them to look at places when they cannot go there by themselves, and they do the same for their people. They help their colleagues, their direct reports, to build that self awareness, because that self awareness allows us to go to the next level of effectiveness. Allow us to look at our blind spots.

So in preparing to to write this book, you you looked into different leadership styles and and how they relate to the coaching mindset. Um, tell us more about those, those six leadership styles.

Well, I follow Goleman article about the six style that he identified, and the idea is that leaders need to have the flexibility to adapt and provide different kind of leadership based on the circumstances. So sometimes they need to be more directive. Sometimes it's time for them to tell people what to do. So when they are more directive they are sometimes that's because they don't have time, or because there is an urgency and they need to go fast. So this style is a style that is very appropriate when there is crisis or there are a lot of challenges. So it is or sometimes the employee is a new employee, and need direction. So there is a time for leaders to be directive, and we call that style a style more coercive. It's called a coercive style where the the leader is more directive, then we have the authoritative style. That is when, not because they impose an authority, but because they have more experience, they share what they know. So there is a time for leaders also to be more mentor like there is a time for leaders to teach and use their authority, their knowledge, their experience, and share that with other people, so people can learn from that. So this is more when they are mentoring, that different that coaching. Because in the coaching style, the leader is less directive. In the coaching style, the leader invites people to look at the mirror, as we were saying before, and come up with their own solutions. So the coaching style is a style that invites others to reflect, to develop their own insight, to come up with your own solution, and as a result of that, to go to the next level of effectiveness. And also we have the affiliative style, that is a style that focus on relationships, is when the leader spend a lot of time and energy in building the relationship. And that's sometimes very appropriate and important at the beginning of the relationship, we're getting to know each other. So the leader may spend time with his affiliative style. That is when the leader spend a lot of time in building the relationship, being supportive, and sometimes also in some circumstances, very appropriate for the leader to apply this style. So the idea is that the different styles, they all are appropriate at different times. So a leader is effective, knows when to use the different style in different circumstances.

And is it possible? How do you support a manager, a leader, to move from one style, if they heavily, if that's their default, how do you support them to to be able to flex when appropriate?

Well, that is a great question, because we always go to what is comfortable for us, what we know. So we may have one of these styles. Can be more like us. We may be more directive, or we may be more coach like this is a sometimes the one we're talking here with this mindset, sometimes we can be more like teaching and mentoring. So there is one for each situation. So we need to be aware and we need to be effective, but building the skills to assess and understand what you require. Because different circumstances, different employees, different times require different approaches. So the idea with this mindset is that you are coach like when it's appropriate, but also sometimes you need to be more directive. For example, if somebody not performing, you may have used the coaching mindset you have, may coach a person you can may ask questions, you came up with some ideas, but then there is no alignment. There is not the behavior consistent with the promises. So people may promise that they're going to be doing things, and they are not doing it. So then at one point, the coach style is not working any longer, so you need to go to a more directive style, and maybe you need to put somebody in a probation space, or write a letter with telling people what they need to change and start like a process to maybe letting somebody go. So it's about knowing what is the right one and also reflecting evaluating and being intentional. So here the key element Elaine is being intentional when we are doing whatever we are doing, and that center requires to stop, reflect and then act okay.

Okay, tell me so I know the focus of your book is lead with a coaching mindset. What is the impact? Or what can the impact be on an organization if the leaders and managers are not supported to show up this way,

there is some research done by the international coaching Federation that they compare organizations that invest in what they call a coaching culture, a culture where leaders develop coaching skills, or they hire coaches, or they train internally, coaches like at USC, where we have the opportunity to collaborate, and they and they show that the organizations that invest in coaching compared to the one who do not have higher level of loyalty, commitment, engagement and at the end of the day, productivity and results. So when companies are not investing in developing their leaders and on coaching skills, they miss opportunities for engagement, for productivity and for results.

Damien, in the context of the book, you utilize the ICF framework for the core competencies. How did you tell me about how you were inspired to take that framework, to utilize it when looking at at leaders and developing a coach mindset.

Well, there are many books on leadership, so when I was thinking what kind of book I wanted to bring to my clients and the world, I was thinking based on my experience of working with leaders for more than 30 years in more than 50 countries, how this book can be different. And what makes this book different than others is that I am bringing to the conversation the framework from International Coach Federation that all eight core competencies that all coaches need to demonstrate to be at the professional level. So the framework with these eight competencies are the competencies that are trained at coaching schools. They are used to evaluate coaches worldwide to get credentialed. And I wrote the different chapters based on these eight competencies. So basically, each chapter is one of the competencies. So one, I start talking the next chapter. Chapter Two is about ethical issues, because coaches demonstrate ethical behavior. The next chapter is about contracting and agreement, being sure that the contract and the agreement is clear when we're working together as coaches, but also when leaders are working with their teams. Trust. How to build trust. We cannot give more granting presence, how we can be in the moment, versus thinking what's coming up next, but connecting to people around us. The next chapter is about communication and listening, being effective at listening. The next one is about creating awareness. It's about the ability to create insight, support people to see things from different angles, to look at the blind spot, to look at places they are not seeing, to dissociate, to separate, and see seeing from different angles. So that create new learning opportunities. What create new possibilities for action? What is the next competency that is around learning is about designing your learning process and coming up implementing whatever you have learned in the coaching process. And in this case, it being sure that the leader delegate and consistently make people accountable for whatever they are committed to do, and they support them in the process.

Great, great, yeah, I thought it was quite innovative. In your book, you highlight a leader, hasinda Arden. Tell me she's a former Prime Minister of New Zealand. Tell us about about her and why you decided to highlight her in chapter one. Yes, I

was looking for an example of a leader who embraced a coaching mindset, and I thought that she was a good example, particularly at that time when I was writing the book originally was after covid, and the book was going to be called Leadership after covid or post covid leadership, and then people tell me, No, we don't want to hear about covid anymore. So I edited and got everything that is related to covid, but if you get my Spanish version, what I wrote first, there are more examples around covid, but this is a good example, because she was very effective about dealing with covid in New Zealand, and what made her effective, and what made different other leaders, is that she had a campaign where she spent a lot of time in working with her team and coming up with a strategy where communication was key. So in times of crisis, in times of challenging, times, like during covid Or right now that there is a lot going on in the world, coaches need to be very effective at communicating and being clear, and in that communication, they need to bring to conversation their values, what is important to them, so people can align to them. People can respect them. They feel that they are genuinely interested in them. So she was very, very effective at first coming up with policies, locking down the whole country. What at the beginning, had resistance if people didn't like it. But she act fast. So she was fast in coming up with the policies. She communicate and communicate why she was doing what she was doing to the extent that she was a little bit over communicating. That is always better over communicating than under communicating. And then something that was important is people felt that she was genuine. She really cared about the country and the people, and what she was doing was aligned to that so, and she engaged and involved her teams in coming up with strategies. So she was very supportive and clear and caring. And again, this mindset is a mindset of caring for others and supporting others is the kind of mindset we want.

Great, great. Thank you. Thanks, Damian, and thank you everyone for joining us today for another episode of Lead with a coaching mindset. We hope that you enjoyed today's conversation. Right? We talked about the competencies for leader to have a coaching mindset. We talked about the importance of self awareness in. Leaders as they make, as they develop, that that coaching mindset, we Damien explored the various leadership styles that are important. Sometimes it's important to flex, and it's also possible that even if you default into one, you can learn to to utilize the others when, when it's called for. We also explore the the impact that, if leaders don't have a coaching mindset, how that can impact an organization. And we had a great example of the former Prime Minister of New Zealand and how she demonstrated a coaching mindset and as well as the inspiration for this book, which is the ICF core competencies. So thank you again, and we'll see you next time. And thank you, Damien, thank you.