The Biggest Mistake Leaders Make When Coaching and How to Fix It as a Humanitarian and International Development Leader
Are your coaching conversations going nowhere fast—even though you're following all the "right" steps?
If you're a new coach or team leader, chances are you're spending too little time defining the real goal of your sessions—and it’s costing you clarity, impact, and results. This episode breaks down the top 3 mistakes that are sabotaging your coaching conversations from the start.
In this episode you'll discover:
- How to make sure your coaching goals are within the coachee’s control
- Learn the difference between a long-term coaching vision and today’s actionable goal
- Uncover how to spot the real issue beneath surface-level coaching topic
Listen now to learn how to create more focused, effective coaching sessions by asking better questions right from the start.
What Is Your Leadership Style? Free Quiz:
Want to know how to lead better? It starts by understanding your leadership style. To find out yours, take my free quiz “What Is Your Leadership Style” - you’ll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team and a few practical ways to become an even better leader. Just click on the link fill out your quiz and click submit.
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
How many of your conversations are wasted time because you are making these common mistakes? Find out in today's episode.
Welcome to the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast. The podcast helping humanitarian and development supervisors make a greater impact by taking control of your time, leading more inclusively and empowering your team all the while avoiding stress. Burnout and overwhelm. I'm your host, leadership coach and former aid worker, Torrey Peace. Are you ready? Let's get started.
All right, so whenever I try to explain to especially new coaches about the coaching conversation structure, why it's important to have a coaching conversation structure, we usually start by focusing on the most important part of the coaching conversation. When we're going on our [00:01:00] coaching journey
we need to know what is our destination? What is the GPS point that we need to put in before we start to drive? If we do not have that, if it's not very clear what is the goal or the destination for the conversation, then we can drive around all day or all year and never arrive.
So it's very important to me probably the most important part of a coaching conversation is defining that first part, which is, what is the goal? What is the result that this person that you are coaching wants? So today we're gonna talk about why spending time upfront will save you time in the long run, three common mistakes that new coaches make when that make their conversations ineffective when it comes to setting up the conversation and how to correct these mistakes.
So let's get [00:02:00] started. If we spend time upfront, we can save a lot of time in the long run because once again, if we don't have a clear goal or result that we want for the conversation, then we could just be driving in circles, but never reach there. We need to know where are we going, and that is why it pays to spend a little bit of time upfront
talking or defining the goal for the conversation with your coachee. This is something that I really emphasize with my students who take the course, "Becoming the Modern NGO Leader" that we need to make sure we know the goal, what the person wants before we move on. So what are these common mistakes?
The first common mistake that new coaches make when setting up the conversation is not making sure that the coaching goal is within the control of the person being coached. [00:03:00] It's very important. And I see what happens sometimes is new coaches, they ask the person that they're coaching, what's a problem that you want to resolve?
And the person says something like " my team member is not self-aware and I don't like their attitude and I want them to change". Or maybe they say something like, "the government has just put this new policy out and this policy is really making it difficult for us to to work". When we look at this, if we don't take time to further refine it, what could happen is we start to focus on things that not within that person's control.
So for example, in the case of my team member, I don't like their attitude. We can't change that person's attitude. We can't control other people's thoughts, feelings, actions. [00:04:00] What we can control is how we want to respond to them. And how we want to handle the situation ourselves. So making that subtle switch and making sure that we define that before we move on in the conversation and what's within your control here is very important.
And that's really all you need to ask too, is okay, I hear you. You don't like this government policy. It's making it difficult. What's within your control here in this situation? What's within our control is probably not changing the government policy. So how, what can you do now that this policy is a reality?
What is within your control? So that's number one, making sure that whatever the goal is for the conversation, that it is within the person's control who you're coaching. Number two is a mistake made is not clarifying what the goal is for the [00:05:00] conversation before moving into the next part of the conversation.
So sometimes you might spend time asking the person, yeah, what do you wanna talk about today? What's your goal for the conversation? And maybe they say they want to be more receptive to negative feedback, but if we just move on from there, even though that's what they want in terms of a big picture goal, to be more receptive to negative feedback, the conversation today probably won't achieve that.
So it's important to define both the bigger picture goal, which is I want to be more receptive to negative feedback. And then the goal for today, what do you want by the end of this conversation? Let's make sure also to repeat that before we go on, so we agree to what we're focusing on today for our conversation.
The third common mistake that new coaches make is not digging deep [00:06:00] enough into the problem. A lot of times when we're coaching our team, it's around some kind of problem that they're having and that they're facing. And if we don't take the time to dig a little deeper into that problem, sometimes we can start coaching too early around a problem that is not the actual problem.
And I'll give you some examples. Let's say that your coachee, your team member, they say that they want to create a plan for their team to follow. This is what they wanna talk about for the conversation. So you could just start the conversation there.
Okay, let's create a plan. But if we don't ask and dig a little deeper and find out what's the reason behind why you want this plan and what purpose will it serve, then we might miss the fact that they're hoping this plan will make their team more proactive or that their team will have more [00:07:00] ownership over the plan for the team, and so they will be more proactive or more independent.
So if we don't take the time to define that, and we focus just on the plan, then we miss the opportunity to look at how can we make the team more proactive around this plan, which really is the true problem?
Another example might be, one time I was coaching someone and they said they want to be a better listener.
And my thought was most people have some idea on how to be a better listener, right? So it's probably not a skillset that they need. It's probably something else. And so I ask them, okay, what's preventing you from being a better listener? And they told me that, "oh it's because I always feel like I'm getting interrupted and I'm always thinking about things I [00:08:00] have to do. I just don't have time."
So then I asked them, okay, then do you want us to focus on how to create more time so then you can be a better listener? And the conversation actually switched focus 'cause they said, yes, I do. So then we started focusing on creating more time. If I had listened to the original goal and not dug a little deeper, we would've been focusing on how to build their listening skills, which was not the real issue here.
So taking that time to really figure out especially if they are telling you that they want a certain thing, for example, being a better listener and you know that they probably already know how to do that. A helpful question at that point is "what's preventing you from doing this already"? And that might lead to the roots of the real issue which needs coaching on.
Okay, once again, the three common mistakes and how to [00:09:00] overcome them. Number one, making sure that the goal for the conversation focuses on what's within the control of the person being coached. Yeah? This conversation is between you and the person being coached, so you wanna make sure that whatever action plan they come up with is something that's within their control. It's an action that they will take, not your team member will take. Not that the government will take, that they will take. Number two, not clarifying the goal before moving into the second part of the conversation. So making sure that you're both in agreement about what the goal is for the conversation before you move forward and making sure that it's relevant to what you want today by the end of the conversation today, what do you want to have achieved? And then finally, number three, not digging deep enough into the problem. So they tell you that they [00:10:00] have an issue with someone else. And maybe that's what you start to focus on for the conversation. You just take that as the goal, like what they say, first thing that they say. If we don't ask more questions, then it could lead to us focusing on that surface level issue, which might not be the real problem here. Once again, you want to ask them a few questions to make sure that you understand what is the actual problem we need to focus on today that will be the most helpful and give them the most impact.
Okay. I hope this was helpful. And until next time, keep evolving. Bye for now.
Are you the type of leader that tells others what to do or to let them figure it out for themselves? Understanding your leadership style is a first step to deciding what's working for you and what's not. To find out [00:11:00] your leadership style, take my free quiz. What is your leadership style? You'll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team, and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.
Just click on the link in the show notes, www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz. Fill out your quiz and click submit. So what are you waiting for? Go to www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz and discover your leadership style now. Your team will Thank you for it.