We’ve been talking about coaching skills, something that we train a lot of sales leaders, managers and directors on. Helping them to learn a new skill and improve on any existing development work that they’ve been doing.  Some ask us: Is coaching a panacea, is it the fix for all ills?

The answer is ‘yes’ and ‘no’.  It’s like anything, there’s no one single tool that will fit every option. Coaching isn’t going to fix everything but what we do know is when coaching is applied in the right way, the ‘ask’ rather than ‘tell’ way, it becomes a powerful development tool. You can read more about the different development tools in our last blog Is coaching the right tool to use? 

The power of ‘Ask’

The interesting thing is when we speak to sales leaders, managers and directors they very often fall into the trap of ‘tell’, it’s very little about ‘ask’. The ‘tell’ bit is powerful and does work but when it comes to coaching, it’s the “ask” that they tend to be furthest away from.

So, when we encourage a coach to add more tools to their development toolkit by asking more questions. That different approach allows them to get more out of the individuals around them rather than their traditional ‘tell’ approach does. OK, so sometimes ‘tell’ is appropriate, but if what somebody needs at that point is coaching, then let’s not tell, let’s coach properly and “ask”.  So, if “tell” is appropriate use tell, where “ask” is appropriate, use coaching.

If you are new to coaching you may want to take a look at one of our free resources Planning your coaching session.

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