<aside> 💡 Shortcuts lead to dead ends.
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When you are a coach you care about long-term development, not about short-term results. Focus on how you can develop others to become their best selves and the rest is easy.
#1 Challenges thinking🧠
When a mentee brings forward a thought, solution, or concept, challenge them on their thinking. Even if they are coming to a conclusion that is correct when challenged they will learn how to defend their point of view. They may even find out they learn something more through the conversation.
#2 Uses honesty, is direct and authentic🎯
Sugarcoating helps no one. When you sugarcoat your feedback or advice the mentee gets an unrealistic understanding of their performance. They may leave thinking they actually did an okay job and just need to tighten up a bit when in reality they were way off course. Reality checks help us get back to high standards of thinking and executing.
This doesn't mean being unnecessarily mean or trying to make others feel bad (see what not to do below), it just means being straight up and honest
#3 Inspires others🧑🏼🤝🧑🏼
Enthusiasm, storytelling, excitement, personality, and personality all help to drive home good coaching. Bland and unemotional coaching will be more difficult to remember and relate to. This does not mean that coaches are bubbly and happy-go-lucky but rather they are memorable, authentic, and show themselves for who they are in the best way possible!
#4 Make sure the mentee knows you care🙋🏼
The mentee needs to understand you are there to help them grow. It's not about ego.
#5 Tells stories and shares personal experiences🗣️
Share stories with your mentee(s) about experiences you've had and how you learned to form them. Use stories to help them understand concepts and internalize your advice.
Helps their mentee hack success
To learn and be successful we need to fail. If we don't fail, we don't learn. When you are having a conversation and give someone a tip that can allow them to succeed their first time without having to understand or learn the process you are doing them a disservice. Let them experience the failure so they can internalize the key learnings.
Example: 🚫 Hacking success: "Hey [mentee] when you do your first presentation make sure you don't use any cue cards and try to just use specific words on your slides to remember what you want to say".
→ This limits the mentee's ability to experience this failure in a way that will cement this moment in their memory. It also limits them from fully understanding WHY they should not use cue cards. All they know is presentation = no cue cards, not the fact that they need to be able to engage their audience, seem legit be prepared and speak more clearly, all things associated with not using cue cards.
✅ Coaching: "Hey [mentee] one thing I found in your last presentation is you weren't able to engage the audience very well, what action items can we create together to level up your audience engagement on your next presentation?"