Coach your coworkers with these questions in one-to-one meetings

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To coach staff might sound a bit cliché, but it can have great effects like increased self-leadership and higher employee engagement.

Lead your coworkers through coaching leadership, instead of telling them what to do. A coaching leadership is something that many organizations want to see more of, but, as a leader, it is sometimes hard to know how to do.

To coach means that you lead by asking questions making the coworker think for themselves, to find solutions and opportunities. The most powerful tool we have as leaders is probably the one-to-one meeting, which can be to quickly touch base, or a longer talk.

If you will have a coaching meeting with a coworker you should probably set off a bit more time, preferably 1h-1,5h.

Focus on five areas in your coaching one-to-one meetings

To really be able to coach your coworker in a one-to-one meeting, you need to understand the following:

How they view the current situation: How does the coworker see themselves and their performance? Ask questions giving you information about their view on their current work situation. It is extremely important to understand this, otherwise you will not be able to coach anyone to make progress.

What their desired target image is: Where is the coworker at the moment, and how does this correspond to where they need and/or want to be? What should be achieved and why?

What motivates your coworker the most: What is it that makes your coworker motivated? A big part of coaching coworkers is about being on the same wavelength and creating a mutual understanding. It is also about you as a manager understanding how you can help creating the right conditions for your coworker.

What limits your coworker: What limits the coworker from performing the way you want, reaching the targets you have set up, etc? The best coaching questions highlight how the coworker either (1) unintentionally limits him/herself, or (2) has not evaluated a barrier from another angle. By asking the right questions about what limits your coworker, you can enable them to solve their challenge by themselves.

How they should act until the next time: Just dreaming and talking does not help the coworker reaching their target image. Most important is acting.

Focus on clarifying these five areas, and you can coach a coworker the best way in a one-to-one meeting.

Questions to use in one-to-one meetings to coach your staff

 

1. Questions about the current situation

 

  • How are things right now?
  • How do you experience your current situation right now?
  • What works well right now?
  • What can improve?
  • Is anything worrying you right now?

2. Questions about the desired situation

 

  • What do you want to achieve the coming period?
  • How do you know that you have reached your target?
  • How does someone else know that you have reached your target?
  • Why do you want to achieve this?
  • How will it feel when you have achieved it?

3. Questions about what your coworker is motivated by

 

  • What is most important for you to feel motivated?
  • If we fulfill that, what is second most important?
  • What can you do yourself, as a first step, to be motivated?
  • What have you done at work lately, where you felt really proud?
  • Is there anything or anyone in our team that you feel has given you energy lately?

4. Questions about things limiting your coworker

 

  • What limits you?
  • How does it limit you?
  • Is there anything in the team limiting you?
  • Can you reach your desired situation? If not, why?
  • Perhaps it is not possible, but if it was, how would you do?

5. How should we/the coworker act

 

  • What can you do to get around the barriers you see?
  • What is the first thing you will do?
  • What is the most important thing you need to do?
  • What will you do until next time?
  • What resources do you need to do that?
  • How can I as a leader help you?

Do you want to get started with short one-to-one meetings?

Download our guide here (in Swedish)

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Why does Puls Solutions exist?

Puls Solutions exists because we want to develop teams and leaders to feel and perform better.

We offer an AI-based employee engagement platform to create the right conditions for a good work environment and high employee engagement. A platform that is the team´s best friend.

Our platform involves the employees, relieves the managers and helps them to prioritize and implement improvements that leads to increased employee engagement and increased business results. For real.

Read more about Puls employee engagement platform here.

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