Effective leaders don’t have to have the right answers all the time, especially when they have leadership coaching skills to enhance problem-solving and decision-making with their team members.
Sure, sometimes it can seem easier just to tell your team or a team member what to do. But while that’s easier for you, is it helping them grow and develop?
While there are times that giving advice is helpful, there are challenges to consider.
- Did the other person ask for your advice? Or was it unsolicited? Someone who doesn’t actually want your advice isn’t likely to take it. If you really overstep, it can affect the relationship with that person (who feels resentful that you’ve overstepped).
- Have you got a complete and accurate understanding of the issue or problem? It’s possible for the person giving advice to make assumptions about the challenge. Conversely, there is also a risk that the person with the challenge has only shared some of the information or given a biased account. If the issue is inaccurately defined, how helpful will the advice be?
- How well can the other person act on the advice? Is it possible they won’t understand the suggestions—either because your expertise far exceeds theirs or because you’re not able to explain it in an accessible way? Or that they won’t have the skills, resources or even the power to do what you advise?
- Is it possible someone else might be in a better position to offer advice? You might not be the one with the best answer to a niche problem. Is there someone else who is a better fit, with the time and expertise to help?
- Is this advice the best guidance? If you give poor advice, you risk losing credibility and future influence.
Leaders navigate complex challenges and uncertain situations, and not all decisions have straightforward answers. In fact, many involve complex issues where there is no clear solution (often called “adaptive challenges”) and the answers might even require new ways of thinking.
A Mindset of Leadership Coaching Goes Beyond Offering Solutions
Leaders can approach challenges with a mindset of coaching and collaboration rather than merely giving advice.
Here are some leadership coaching skills that are alternatives to offering solutions:
1. Concentrate on Active Listening
When someone is seeking your advice, it’s critical to listen with the intent to truly understand the problem—rather than respond, jump to conclusions or immediately offer advice. It’s about creating space for a deeper understanding of the issue. Leaders who hone their active listening skills are better able to connect with their team members, uncover hidden challenges and define challenges more clearly. Active listening also reduces the temptation to offer solutions before you have all the information.
2. Be Comfortable with Silence
Sitting in silence longer than a few seconds feels incredibly uncomfortable for most of us in North America. Yet, when leaders can sit quietly during a conversation when someone has an issue, the silence gives time for reflection. Often folks will share things they otherwise might not. Resist the temptation to jump in and start giving advice. Instead, make space for people to think and reply. Try reflecting back what you hear when they share, which invites deeper thinking and reflection. One of the most effective techniques professional coaches use when helping clients figure out problems is to remain silent longer than one would expect – those are the thoughtful moments where clients often have a breakthrough realization.
3. Ask Thought-Provoking Questions
Thoughtful, open-ended questions are one of the best leadership coaching skills to develop. Rather than providing answers or suggestions to someone, a good coach asks questions that encourage the other person to think things through. The goal is not to tell someone what to do, but to guide them toward uncovering issues or blind spots, examining the complexity of the situation and discovering their own insights and solutions. So, for example, instead of asking, “Have you thought of X and Y?” you could ask, “What else do you need to understand before making a decision?”
4. Facilitate Connections for Collaborative Problem-Solving
Rather than giving advice that solves the issue on the spot, use leadership coaching skills to create a space for collaboration. This might involve facilitating a constructive discussion with healthy conflict that leads to a deeper understanding of the issue and a range of potential solutions, or it might be fostering connections for peer-to-peer problem-solving.
The five stages of advising—finding the right fit, developing shared understanding, crafting alternatives, converging on a decision, and putting advice into action—can be used in leadership coaching to guide this process. By encouraging dialogue and input from all parties involved, leaders can foster an environment of shared responsibility and ownership that ultimately leads to more sustainable and impactful decisions.
5. Express Confidence in Their Abilities
There may be times when your gut tells you that someone can solve the problem, but they’re nervous for some reason. It’s not unusual for limiting beliefs to hold folks back. Suggest that you are confident they can figure it out and ask them to come back to you with some ideas or a plan. Instead of swooping in to rescue someone with advice, encouraging them to find their own way forward fosters growth and development.
6. Challenge Assumptions and Biases
As a leader, it’s critical to be aware of cognitive bias (your own and other people’s) and ensure that feedback doesn’t merely validate someone’s existing viewpoints. Good leadership coaching involves challenging possible assumptions or biases to help arrive at a clearer, more informed perspective.For example, during the “converging on a decision” stage, an adviser might play devil’s advocate to help team members identify potential blind spots or biases in their reasoning. This step ensures that the final decision is well-rounded and accounts for multiple perspectives rather than being driven by unconscious biases or negatively affected by incomplete information.
7. Cultivate a Growth Mindset
Instead of offering direct advice, leadership coaching can focus on developing a growth mindset—encouraging individuals to view challenges as opportunities for learning and personal growth.
Leaders who coach with a growth mindset help their teams see mistakes as learning opportunities, rather than failures to avoid at all costs. By normalizing uncertainty and ambiguity, others are empowered to confront challenges head-on, experiment with different solutions and grow as problem-solvers.
Leadership coaching builds stronger teams
Effective leadership is not just about telling others what to do; it’s about creating an environment where leaders and their teams can work together to navigate complexity and uncertainty.
The overall goal is to help others build the confidence, skills and resilience they need to excel. In this way, the leader’s role becomes that of a partner in the journey, rather than an authority figure delivering advice.
By mastering these coaching skills, leaders can make more thoughtful, informed decisions while also fostering a culture of collaboration, growth and shared success.
Coach’s Questions
How often do you give advice? Are there times you could take a different approach? What benefits do you see with leadership coaching?
