Introductions

As a leader, you know that when you’re asking someone to do something differently, there are usually two things you can coach to: skill and will.

Coaching to increase capability is something most leaders are comfortable with, but coaching to “will” or “mindset” can be harder. The first hurdle is knowing when mindset needs to be addressed in coaching, rather than treating it as a straightforward skill issue.

So, how do you know?

There are two answers, depending on whether we’re talking about a team or an individual.

If you see the team lacking motivation, or if you see a lot of “below the line” behaviour such as blaming others or making excuses for performance issues, that is often a good indication that the team needs a mindset intervention.

For an individual, a clear indicator of a mindset issue is inconsistency of behaviour.

Let’s say you’ve coached a team member on asking more questions in project meetings, so they have absolute clarity on what they need to deliver. You see them put this into practice in the next meeting you attend. But in later meetings you haven’t attended, you hear from the project lead that your team member has missed key tasks they were supposed to complete.

When you dig deeper, you realise that while your team member demonstrated the behaviour, asking questions for clarity, when you were there to observe it, they stopped doing it when you weren’t there.

This inconsistency is the hallmark of a mindset issue.

It’s not necessarily someone openly resisting change. That’s usually pretty easy to spot. More often, it’s the inconsistency of behavioural application that gives you the clue that there is a mindset issue to address.

Another good indicator is when you’ve run a few coaching sessions on the same skill, set some goals, but the team member isn’t actioning them and therefore isn’t progressing.

How do you coach to mindset?

Coaching on skill revolves around observing a team member in action, spotting a skills gap, and then coaching to the behaviour that plugs that skill gap. From there, you ensure your team member practises the new behaviour or skill enough until they get good at it and the skill gap closes.

Coaching mindset is different.

What you’re trying to do is uncover the root cause of the performance issue. Whatever is causing the issue is not simply a skills gap. The art of mindset coaching is being able to explore what that issue is, so you and your team member can take the right steps to address it.

Let’s look at one common root cause

One of the most common root causes is a lack of awareness. The team member may not realise that what you’re seeing as a leader or coach is actually an issue.

If you look at our ACDC coaching model, the key phase to build self-awareness in a team member is the Current State. Here are the behaviours you want to focus on.

Observations

Present evidence that the behaviour is causing an issue with an outcome. These observations should be your own.

If we look at the example above, this would mean sharing your observation that you’ve seen the team member put “asking questions for clarity” into action, so you know they can do it, but you’ve also noticed that it is not consistently changing their outcome.

Give the team member space to explore this discussion. Only bring in third-party observation as feedback, omitting any names, if you feel it is absolutely necessary to progress the conversation.

Discuss the link

Get the person to articulate what behaviours they are demonstrating and how those behaviours relate to the current outcomes they are getting.

Encourage them to dig deeper into the impact the behaviour, or lack of behaviour, is having.

Spending longer in the Current State phase of your coaching conversation might feel counter-intuitive. You want this team member to progress. But ensuring you thoroughly address any self-awareness issues is key to getting a commitment to change that is more likely to stick.

Self-awareness is not the only root cause of mindset issues, but it is one of the most important places to start.

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Build coaching conversations that uncover the real issue

This post is an excerpt of key insights from our webinar on ‘coaching mindset’ as shared by Mike Dunn, Director and Senior Consultant at YakTrak. You can watch the full webinar here.

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