5 Creative Coaching Strategies

Leaders are busier than ever, so here are five creative strategies to save time in coaching. Firstly, start a book club and have the team share what they learned from each chapter. Secondly, encourage self-coaching by having employees practice and evaluate each other's skills. Thirdly, assign monthly topics for group coaching. Fourthly, use journaling as a way to reduce stress and provide coaching. Lastly, leaders should find creative ways to reduce time spent coaching without abandoning it altogether. Let's face it, leaders are busier now more than ever. We have to find creative ways for them to save time. Think about starting a book club and assigning a book to everybody on the team, or maybe have the team literally read a book at the same time, yet structure it. Have them share biweekly or monthly what they learned from each chapter. Number two, implement self-coaching. Things that people did on their own where they facilitated their own learning, their own skill development. I think one of the greatest things we can do is facilitate what I call rotating peer-to-peer coaching. Let's say you have a team that needs to improve a skill. Have them practice with each other, yet have them evaluate each other using feedback sheets. The feedback sheets should be delivered in the following way. Number one, what are three things your partner did well? Number two, what's an area your partner has an opportunity to improve? At the end of the month, take all the sheets after they're turned into as a leader and give them back to employees so they can do what? Share what they've learned from the feedback and what they're going to implement as a result of the feedback, which drives self-coaching. Group coaching, assign a monthly topic to a person. Maybe it's a product, maybe it's a skill, maybe it's a concept, maybe it's a communication method where they have to facilitate instruction and one activity that brings people together. Journal-based coaching, the progress principle by Teresa Amable reports that journaling can reduce stress, yet I think it has greater value. Journaling also creates a repository where people can write things down, reduce their stress that allow the employee and the leader or maybe even a peer-based coach to ultimately come back to the journal entries and receive further coaching. Leaders need creative methods to reduce time when it comes to coaching. That should not exonerate them from coaching, yet we wanted to share these five creative strategies to help save time.