But what if you are asked to coach a subordinate or a peer within your organization? Is coaching someone who you work with daily an impossible task? It isn’t — if you know the key principles of coaching for leaders.

6 Core Leadership Coaching Principles

Key Tips for Leader-Coaches

Whether you’re an external executive coach or a leader-coach working in the trenches of your organization, a lot of the same rules of thumb apply in terms of what it takes to coach people. Use these 6 core principles for leadership coaching to coach someone from an office, cubicle, or virtual call.

1. First, create a safe and supportive, yet challenging environment.

We all need our thinking challenged at times. But offered without sufficient support, challenge can cause damage by decreasing trust and eroding morale. Providing safety and support includes assuring people that they’ve been heard and that their feelings and values are understood. It builds trust, encourages honesty and candor, and helps your coachee feel psychologically safe at work.

It’s up to you to create an environment where risk-taking feels rewarding, not risky, so keep your attitude as open and as nonjudgmental as possible, and let the coachee know you support them, even as you test their knowledge and skills. (This is the basis of our Assessment – Challenge – Support (ACS) framework, one of our widely-recognized leadership development models; remember ACS to ensure you’re providing needed support at the same time as challenge and accountability.)

2. Try to work within the coachee’s agenda.

Remember, in a coaching conversation, it’s not about you, so let the coachee decide which goals to work on and even how to go about improving. Sure, it’s great when the coachee’s own agenda aligns perfectly with the organization’s goals, but never impose your personal priorities on the relationship. When it’s clear you need to push a point, put on your managerial hat — thereby preserving the special collaborative coaching relationship you’re trying so hard to build.

3. Facilitate and collaborate.

Like Socrates, who always led his students with questions, the best coaches don’t give direct answers or act the expert. Focus on using active listening skills when coaching others.

Really hear the coachee’s needs, and avoid filling the lesson with your own life stories and pet theories. Although you may suggest several options for responding to a problem or issue, the ultimate choice of what to do next should rest with the coachee — with you acting as the facilitator and collaborator.

Ready to start today? If you’re designing, initiating, or implementing coaching programs, explore our actionable guidance on approaches and techniques that drive better outcomes in our Handbook of Coaching in Organizations.

4. Advocate self-awareness.

You want your coachee to learn how to recognize their own strengths and present weaknesses — a prerequisite skill for any good leader. In the same way, you should understand how your own behaviors as a coach impact the people around you. Demonstrate a sense of awareness in yourself and you’re more likely to foster in your coachee a similar self-awareness. You may also want to share ways to boost self-awareness.

5. Promote learning from experience.

Most people can learn, grow, and change only if they have the right set of experiences and are open to learning from them. As a coach, always help your coachee reflect on past events and to analyze what went well and what didn’t. Foster experiential learning and using experience to fuel development, and your student will continue to improve long after the end of your lessons.

6. Finally, model what you coach.

This, the last of the 6 core principles of coaching, may be the most difficult to embody, as it means putting into practice outside of class the leadership lessons you’ve been trying to communicate.

And remember, if you don’t feel you have the capacity to coach on a particular issue, refer your coachee to someone more experienced — perhaps someone who, we hope, puts into practice the 6 core leadership coaching principles even better than you do.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

If you’re seeking a highly trained, world-class provider of leadership coaching services for your leaders, we can help. Or, if you’d like to instill the principles of leadership coaching across your organization, partner with us to offer enterprise-wide conversational skills training with our Better Conversations Every Day suite.

The post The 6 Principles of Effective Coaching for Leaders appeared first on CCL.