So many of the leaders I’ve coached struggle with time to coach the people on their teams. Intellectually they know that taking time to coach their team members is the right thing to do, yet it still doesn’t happen. Why? Time pressure, results pressure, relationship pressure, pressure, pressure.  

I get it, team members come to you because you have years of experience and expertise they don’t have. You have access to information they may not have as readily available. Time is of the essence and a problem needs to be solved, a project needs to move forward, or a perspective is missing. There is a challenge here in that your team needs you and as long as they need you, you can’t be promoted. The second issue is they don’t develop the necessary critical thinking and new skills to be promoted either. You create a ceiling for yourself and your entire team.

Often, I find myself talking to leaders about how to get out of the cycle of problem-solving that leads to the literal or figurative lineup outside their door. The hole gets deeper before you climb out. By this I mean, short-term, it takes more time to coach upfront. But, in short order the person you coach starts to develop and become more self-sufficient, develops enhanced critical and systems thinking, and becomes someone you can delegate more to. I like to call this project “Planned Obsolescence”.  By developing your team, you become obsolete in your role and free up time to dedicate to new more strategic initiatives. You’ll also have a successor ready to take over your role ensuring you can be promoted.

Coaching conversations don’t have to follow a model. You can become a coaching leader by asking one open-ended question in every interaction. Take the pressure off of coaching right and develop your curious questioning skills as a starting point. This way you can coach in a two-minute hallway conversation or a focused development conversation and even in a team meeting. Coaching is really just helping the other person think through the problem and possible solutions. Start now in asking more questions, you can still hand out answers once you’ve uncovered the gaps that need to be filled. Once you start to create more time, you might also consider holding regular one-to-one development conversations with your team members.

Finally, if you want to invest in the long-term development of a leader on your team to enhance their “promotability”, consider supporting them with an objective professional coach. Just remember that not all coaches are created equal. To know your coach has professional coach training and follows a code of ethics and professional standards, make sure your coach carries an International Coach Federation credential. You can check a coach’s credentials online here: https://coachfederation.org/credentialed-coach-finder.