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My partner and I have conducted leadership development programs for thousands of leaders. In a recent program, for the top 800 leaders of a large city, I led the coaching workshops while she led the organizational/team culture ones. My first goal was to make the distinction between being a professional coach (like us) and being a leader integrating coaching skills. The average length of a "coaching session" for us is 60-90 minutes, but for leaders? Just 3-5 minutes. Professional coaches are not responsible for the actions of their coaching clients, while you as a leader are responsible for the actions of your direct reports. Our clients choose the topic of their coaching sessions. Sometimes as a leader you choose the topic for your direct report interactions.

The leaders with whom we work want simple yet powerful tools to increase their overall capacity to address complex challenges. Say your direct report comes to you and asks you how to handle a situation. This happens all day, yes? My suggestion is a response that's something like: "I'll tell you how I would respond. But before I do, I'd like to know what you'd do if you couldn't find me and had to act, and why."

Both parts of the question are powerful because it gets your direct report to tell you how they would respond and also opens their minds to you so you can understand why they would take this action. 

Let's look at what can happen from this simple but powerful coaching question, "What would do if you couldn't find me and had to act, and why?"

1. They describe a reasonable next step. This may be what you were thinking or an action that would have a similar outcome. This is an opportunity for acknowledgment: "Great response! I couldn't have done any better." This builds their confidence.
   
   
2. They describe a next step that is suboptimal in some way. Because they have told you why they made this choice, you have a teaching moment on your hands. You can point out something that was missing in their thought process, e.g., not putting themselves sufficiently in the shoes of others (perspective taking), not being aware of some downstream impact of their choice, etc. By carefully explaining your thought process, your direct report will hopefully be more effective in the future, taking more of a load off your shoulders.
   
   
3. They describe a next step that is even better than yours. You say, "That's what I was thinking too!" (Just kidding, of course. Although, this tends to get a lot of laughs at our training.)

But you get the point. You field questions like this all day. If you use my coaching question above, most of the time you'll either be able to acknowledge the effectiveness of your direct report's response, helping them be more confident in the future, or you'll have a teaching opportunity that will also help them be even more effective in the future. These possibilities are all far better than you just immediately telling them what to do. Please try it, and let me know the result.

Original published by Forbes Coaches Council