Goodness based coaching

Goodness includes the intentions and abilities that help us progress and succeed in work and life. Intentions include our hopes, wishes and dreams. Abilities include skills, strengths and expertise. We bring attention to goodness by focusing on any instances of success and progress.

We focus on goodness because engaging our goodness is the root cause of how we contribute, grow and enjoy the fruits of our efforts. The more we focus on our goodness the more these become possible. Focus on goodness helps people feel a sense of confidence and creativity. More options become more obvious.

We teach people how to respond to problems and disappointments with focus (instead) on success, progress and goodness. We spend no time discussing or debating what's wrong. We focus on intentions and abilities that can bring about more progress and success. People do better only when they become more conscious of their abilities and how they can engage their abilities in their best intentions. 

This includes the spectrum of unwanted feelings that people blame for not engaging their best intentions and abilities. We help them discover how feelings are natural events and conditions like the weather, always coming and going. When they no longer hold themselves responsible for their feelings, they become more free to act on their best intentions whatever their feelings are, just as they go about life whatever the weather. 

These strategies and awarenesses make it possible to practice and entirely goodness based approach to leadership.

Whole person coaching

Why not use coaching time to wisely and caringly focus on skills that can explicitly serve both work and life intentions? Are the dynamics of communication, learning and organization so different at home and at work? Not really. Maybe it's this reality that's behind the debate about the differnt kinds of coaching, like life and leadership coaching. It's not a helpful distinction when our focus is always the whole person.

The Art of coaching

At the heart of coaching is the discovery of new distinctions. Agile planning, engagement, habit building, growth mindset, mindfulness and momentum are a few of the endless distinctions that support growth.

Behind every gain in growth is working from new distinctions. They are intrinsically interesting and useful. They have more power than the belief we must know and remove our weaknesses.

Coaching and rounding

When we as leaders round our team members this means checking in with them briefly to find out how they're doing, bring them back to consciousness of their goodness and the good they are striving for, recognizing progress, time lining their next phase of momentum and giving them some nourishing feedback. This is a matter of 2 to 3 minutes can happen in any kind of media.

Coaching takes more time and has more to do with problem solving together. Problem solving is the identification of our questions and the development of potential approaches that we could try. Coaching can also involve all of the brief aspects of rounding.

Rethinking accountability

There are any variety of reasons people on teams would perform or interact at low levels. On the short list:

• They feel their work is by command and control and they have no passion for obedience in parent-child relationships
• They have little or no passion for the work
• They feel not valued, undervalued or devalued and feel pessimistic about changing this
• They don't have the self-discipline or emotional maturity to perform and interact well
• They have no tolerance for uncertainty and see anything more than it takes to "look good" or "stay off the radar" as a risk to creating intolerable uncertainty. 

Lecturing, pressuring and threatening people has no power over any these. Skillful coaching does.

Is there an ideal team leadership personality?

There is a constellation of qualities that enable team leaders to help their teams grow together. These includes qualities like curiosity, kindness, creativity, agility, mindfulness, humility, courage and trustworthiness.

Each can be developed into habits. They don't require any special physical abilities, super human powers or specific kinds of knowledge. We don't have to be a "certain kind of person" to grow any. All it takes is feeling ready to develop them and doing the practice into their growth. Any can become part of any leader's brand. Coaching, in contrast to a strategy of hope, is often the most optimal way to support this growth.