One of my favorite gifts at Christmas was from my daughter – a book on coaching called Every Moment Matters. Coaching has always been extremely rewarding to get more time with my kids and have an opportunity to help other kids grow and develop in the sport and beyond. The few years I have had the chance so far to coach my kids, I’ve realized how the environment you create to learn and grow may be the most important aspect of coaching.
In Every Moment Matters, there’s a quote from Dr. Joe Baker that sums this up well. “Coaches need to stop seeing themselves as transmitters of information and start seeing themselves as architects of an optimal learning environment.”
While this quote is aimed more towards coaching in the sense of sports, this concept runs parallel to a key aspect of leadership. As a leader, it’s so much easier, and to some degree more natural, to go in and solve the problem for their team member by simply telling them the answer. It’s quicker, simpler, but misses an opportunity for the team member to grow.
Telling as a leader is certainly needed at times, but telling as a normalcy creates a stall of development. As Dr. Baker references, creating the environment of learning is the key to the growth you want to see as a team. So, what can this look like?
⚡️Create a standard on the team that helping one another through questions and difficult situations is expected.
⚡️Ask more probing questions instead of going right into solve mode. Help your team members through their journey of developing their own approach and answers.
⚡️Create an environment of open dialogue that allow diversity of thought to flow into collaborative moments. Diversity of thought helps create different viewpoints to consider.
What do you expect in your environment for your best learning and development opportunities? Drop in the comments any other ideas to emphasize how to be an architect of an optimal learning environment.
Take your step: take a look at one of your leadership roles (work, volunteer, parent, etc). Reflect on the learning environment you have created. Identify opportunities to shift more from a telling mode to a coaching mode. Challenge yourself to not just help those around you solve the problem, but also to help empower them with the tools they need to solve the problem on their own in the future.