Coaching is a hugely helpful skill for leaders and managers. It’s a great way to help team members develop. It’s particularly effective when combined with feedback and reinforcement. We often ask leaders to “show up” as a coach, but what does that really mean? Showing up as a coach doesn’t just happen.  Showing Up When I talk about “showing up” it is all about energy and intentionality. I admit I used to be the king of sulking – I could carry a foul mood for weeks. How many times did a bad mood taint my next experience(s) for minutes? Hours? Days even? How many good experiences and moments did I miss when I sulked? I didn’t realize it then, but I was intentionally spending energy creating negative experiences. I was responsible for that mood and how I handled it and for how I showed up. We are all solely responsible for how we show up. For my coaching clients and teams, it is all about how I show up for them. I call it “being there.” It’s about being present and making sure that I focus and eliminate all distractions (I try to… ), so I can be my best self to help them achieve the goals they want during our session or at work. As a side note, as part of my energy, I do try to use some humor (I have a bit of a dry, dad joke style, so sometimes the humor does not land) to help keep the mood positive when appropriate. When the topic is more somber, I show up and stay focused on assisting, using empathy and compassion. When we show up, we demonstrate our connectedness. I recently read several articles that suggest as a leader, showing up as a coach, can mean being: Enthusiastic. Supportive. Trusting. Focused. Goal-oriented. Observant. I like these and add my own perspective regarding key tools a leader can use when showing up as a coach. Psychological safety GROW Model Deep questions Psychological Safety Why do employees sometimes remain silent when they should speak up? Do they fear consequences? Do they feel like new ideas will not be respectfully considered? Why do we hold back our potential contributions when we know a process or project is not working correctly? Typically, because it’s not safe to engage. We perceive the benefit of not saying anything tends to far outweigh the benefit of speaking up. Employees fear their ideas will be rejected or that others, including their leader and managers, will somehow dismiss or penalize them for their ideas. So, they keep their heads down, and they stay quiet. In a recent survey, 70% of US workers strongly agreed that their opinion did not matter at work. Given that we are in the time of the “Great Resignation” how can we afford this disconnect? Imagine what we could do if we could create an environment in which employees felt as if their voices matter.  First step in showing up as a leadership coach is creating an environment of psychological safety – a climate in which people are comfortable being and expressing themselves. A study at Google found that teams with high rates of psychological safety were better than other teams at implementing diverse ideas and driving high performance. They were also more likely to stay with the company. A culture of psychological safety enables employees to be engaged. They can take risks and experiment. They can express themselves without the fear of failure or retribution. So let’s look at how to show up and create psychological safety as a leadership coach.  Leader coaches can use psychological safety to create a culture of safety and to encourage participation. Coaches can create an environment where people are safe to engage, safe to challenge, and safe to take risks.  How can you show up as a coach? Create transparency Build trust Team psychological safety assessment Establish communication norms Establish meeting norms Establish rules of engagement Establish mutual expectations Establish conflict resolution norms The GROW Model In my coaching practice, I coach coachees who struggle to develop meaningful goals. Showing up as a leader coach means helping your team with their deliverables. One way to coach goal development and goal achievement is using the GROW model of coaching.  Consider that effective coaching is about achieving goals. The coach helps the employee set meaningful ones and identify specific behaviors or steps for meeting them. The coach helps to clarify milestones or measures of success and holds the employee accountable for them. In the GROW Model, the coach acts as a facilitator, helping the coachee select the best options, not offering advice or direction.  So what is the GROW model? The GROW model stands for Goals, Reality, Options, and Will. The desire is that by using the GROW model, the coach gets someone to think about their current state, their desired future, and how they can bridge the gap between the two. Goal The first stage of the GROW Coaching Model is to help your coachee (and team) think about how they’d like things to be in the future. This is done by helping express what their desired GOAL is. This stage may involve some exploration and refinement to help the coachee gain clarity over what they really want to achieve. As a coach, you should ask exploratory and refining, future-focused deep questions at this stage (more on deep questions shortly). You should aim to help your coachee identify a goal that is stretching enough to be rewarding, but also achievable enough to be motivating. Questions you might want to ask as a coach could include: What do you want to achieve? What are your objectives? How will you measure your objectives? What does success look like? How will you measure your progress towards your objectives? When would you like to have solved this problem? Are there smaller steps you’d like to work on? (*The journey begins with one step) What will it feel like when you reach your goal? Reality Once someone has developed a