Characteristics of an
Effective Coach
Coaching is a key tool for developing your people to their full potential.
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A great coach helps their team discover and develop solutions.
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Coaching is about performance and an effective coach needs to develop a variety of skills.
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Before we look at the skills a coach needs, let’s take a look at some of the traits, or characteristics, of an effective coach.
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Effective coaching depends on a number of elements, not the least of which is effective communication, so as well as having a positive attitude towards your team members you need to not be easily annoyed or get angry.
To make a difference and help your people to realise their full potential – and after all that’s the primary purpose of coaching – a great coach needs to be:
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Empathetic
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Credible
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A good listener
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A good observer
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Trusting and trustworthy
amongst other things.
Managers who coach are advocates of their people, give praise when its due and deal with poor performance in a straightforward way.
They treat each team member as an individual.
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Coaching in business is not unlike coaching in other walks of life. Sports, personal, life, business and other coaches all have the same set of characteristics.
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How do you stack up in terms of what makes a successful coach?
Use the worksheet and list what you believe are the top ten coaching qualities – what you think are the most important characteristics of an effective coach. And then give yourself a score out of 10 for each of them. Consider printing out copies of the worksheet and asking your team members to do the same.
Take action now:
