Unlocking Potential: 7 Coaching Skills That Transform Individuals, Teams, and Organizations

126 Pages·2014·1.91 MB·English

by  Michael K. Simpson

Text copyright © 2014 FranklinCovey No part of this book may be reproduced,
or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express
written permission of the publisher.
Published by Grand Harbor Press, Grand Haven, MI
www.brilliancepublishing.com
ISBN-13: 9781477824009
ISBN-10: 1477824006
Cover design by Faceout Studio, Tim Green
Interior visuals by Faceout Studio, Emily Weigel Library of Congress Control
Number: 2014932185
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE FOUR PRINCIPLES OF COACHING
1. TRUST
2. POTENTIAL
3. COMMITMENT
4. EXECUTION
PART TWO SEVEN COACHING SKILLS
5. BUILD TRUST
6. CHALLENGE PARADIGMS
7. SEEK STRATEGIC CLARITY
8. EXECUTE FLAWLESSLY
9. GIVE EFFECTIVE FEEDBACK
10. TAP INTO TALENT
11. MOVE THE MIDDLE
12. COACHING: A FINAL WORD
EPILOGUE: COACHING THE ORGANIZATION
NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

FOREWORD
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
Michael Simpson’s Unlocking Potential is a skillfully written treatise about how
you can be a great coach In the book, Michael coaches you on how to be a better
manager-coach; as a result, you, your people, and your organization can thrive.
In this book, you’ll find the paradigms and key principles that are essential for
you to coach effectively from and to any level of the organization.
This book is such an important work because in all my years of coaching
and all my work with senior leaders, I’ve found that one of the most common
complaints direct reports have is that their managers do a poor job of providing
coaching! Validated in 360-degree feedback scores for 30 major corporations,
the item “provides effective coaching when needed” consistently scores in the
bottom 10 of all items when direct reports evaluate their executives.
There are a number of reasons why managers tend to do a poor job of
coaching. For one thing, executives are often managing knowledge workers, that
is, people who know more about their work than their boss does. How can a
manager be expected to coach someone who already knows 10 times more about
his or her job than the manager does?
In Unlocking Potential, Michael identifies seven key skills that every great
coach needs to help transform people into great employees. None of these
include detailed instructions on how a knowledge worker should do his or her
work! Michael and I agree that people want ongoing communication with their
managers concerning the “big picture”—how their work is making a difference,
and suggestions about how they can improve.
Another reason managers might avoid coaching is because they are so busy
with their own jobs. If you view coaching as a complex and time-consuming
process, you won’t do it! And because your direct reports are as busy as you are,
they may not want or need coaching to be a time-consuming process. As
Michael points out, they want it to help them break through from one level of
performance to another. They want help becoming better.
Follow Michael’s advice in this great book. He’ll help you coach
individuals without alienating them. He’ll help you focus on how you can help
people be successful in the future, rather than dwell on their past mistakes. He’ll
give you guidance on holding coaching conversations with individuals,
conversations where you listen carefully and fully commit to helping them
succeed. Individuals will grow and develop while you discover the invaluable
rewards of helping them succeed. And—not to be discounted—your team and
organization will thrive as a result!
Foreword by Marshall Goldsmith, author/editor of 34 books, including the
bestsellers MOJO and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.
INTRODUCTION
Success as a leader is a difficult thing. As a leader, your success is directly
measured by the success of those working on your team, and in fact their success
is your success. Team members rely on you in order to succeed, and you rely on
them. So whether you are a CEO, a government administrator, a department
manager, a project leader, or any other kind of leader, you need to know how to
coach your team.
The need for effective coaching has never been greater. Gallup research
shows that a team that is highly engaged has double the chance of job
performance and success. Engaged workers are more productive, profitable,
loyal, and customer focused. Most importantly, the research also shows that an
immediate manager has the most profound influence on an employee’s level of
engagement.1
That’s why every leader, manager, or supervisor needs to become a great
coach. In an era when people are required to do more with less, they can become
disengaged. The essential work of a coach is to engage the team—but many
leaders are ill-equipped to do that. Often, these leaders possess great functional
skill, technical know-how, expertise, and training in business management,
finance, accounting, operations, sales, marketing, engineering, law, or science.
But they don’t know how to be an effective coach.
One of my clients is a key business leader in Shanghai, China. During one
of our coaching sessions, he told me, “When I graduated from law school, I
came out with the very best of academic, analytical, research, and legal tools.
But what I was not trained in, and what I was not prepared for, was how to coach
my people. The first day I had a boss, I had direct reports; I had peers I needed to