Coaching with Clarity: Navigating Coaching Challenges in Leadership

Summary

In this episode of the Faithful Podcast, Christopher Swing discusses the challenges leaders face when coaching employees who struggle to meet expectations. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing patterns in performance, providing clarity in communication, and fostering ownership among team members. The conversation also highlights the need for support without enabling, setting up wins to build confidence, and knowing when an employee may not be the right fit. Ultimately, the episode advocates for leading with truth and grace, focusing on the growth of individuals rather than just performance metrics.

Takeaways

Great leaders study patterns, not just moments.
Clarity in expectations is a form of kindness.
Asking questions before making assumptions is crucial.
Coaching should encourage ownership of problems.
Support should not enable dependency.
Celebrating small wins builds confidence.
Not every employee is a fit for their role.
Hard conversations should be approached with grace.
Correction is an investment in growth.
Effective leadership shapes hearts and habits.

Sound Bites

"Clarity is kindness."
"Ask before assuming."
"Let's lead faithfully."

Chapters

00:00 Coaching with Integrity and Empathy
02:08 The Importance of Clarity in Expectations
04:52 Fostering Ownership and Problem Solving
06:59 Supporting Without Enabling
09:20 Recognizing Fit Issues
11:16 Leading with Truth and Grace

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Transcript

Christopher Swing3 (00:19)
Welcome back to the Faithful Podcast where we explore leadership through a biblical lens and what it means to lead with integrity, wisdom, and grace in today's world. I'm your host Christopher Swing and today we're talking about something every leader faces eventually. Coaching an employee who struggles to meet realistic expectations. It's a tension point for many leaders balancing expectations, accountability, and empathy.

but it's also a sacred opportunity to lead as well. Let's dive in. So the first point that I would like to make is let's recognize the pattern, not just the moment. And this is in regards to someone that consistently fails to miss realistic goals. First, we need to step back and look for a pattern. Is this a one-time miss or part of a repeated trend? Great leaders don't rush to judgment.

They study the rhythms, the data, and the behavior. Ask yourself, what's underneath this? A lack of clarity, confidence, skill set, personal obstacles? The one thing that I've found is that more common than I'd like to admit, employees miss their expectations or my expectations of them based upon my own lack of clarity in setting those expectations.

We coach better when we respond to patterns and not just pressure. So if someone is repeatedly failing to miss objectives, it's important to understand kind of the rhythm of that and how often it happens and why it happens.

The second point that I'd like to make is clarity is kindness. One of the most common breakdowns, unclear goals. And I say this from my own personal experience because I think that there's situations where I'm completely clear in my own mind what I'm asking of my people. Unfortunately, for their purposes, it's completely jumbled. Or maybe I only gave them

A part of my expectation and the rest of it is in my brain. I always say clarity is kindness. I think in general people want to. Meet the needs or expectations set for them, assuming that they're reasonable. That takes us into this next part, which is we need to have smart goals. Smart stands for specific measurable achievable relevant.

and time bound. This helps both parties anchor to something tangible. When people fail at unclear goals, it's often about misalignment. It's often more about misalignment than incompetence. We owe our team's clarity. We owe our mission clarity. We owe our stakeholders clarity. Clarity is kindness.

My next point is ask before assuming. And I think this is where humility has to kick in. And I'll also say that being authentic in this conversation is extremely important. If they think that you're asking to set them up, then you're not really asking, right? And I think that's what this is about, is asking before assuming.

Before jumping into solutions or feedback, ask, what roadblocks are you experiencing that I might not be seeing? James 119 says, be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. It's a verse about emotional intelligence or emotional wisdom, and a guide for coaching. Listening first is often the key.

that unlocks real progress.

So we need to ask before assuming, we need to be humble.

and we need to be authentic in this section.

Coach towards ownership. We want to develop problem solvers, not just problem reporters. As any leader has experienced, it's not always fun to have problems laid at your feet, especially when the person who's laying them at your feet is likely the one that knows how to solve it. Good coaching moves the conversation from excuses to ownership. It shifts, I'll try.

into I will. Instead of fixing everything for them, ask, what do you think your next best step is? What would success look like next week? Grow sticks when it comes from the inside out.

Help those you're leading to be problem solvers for their own problems.

It kind of takes me back to the old idea of teach a person to fish, they'll feed their family forever. Feed the person, they have one meal.

The next ⁓ step in this process is providing support without enabling. Sometimes the employee needs help, but help is not the same as handholding. Offer resources, mentorship, or even training, but make it clear. You're here to support their effort, not substitute for it.

In Galatians 6.5 it says, each one should carry their own load. That's personal responsibility. And when paired with grace, it creates strength.

Setup wins. When someone's struggling, confidence can take a hit. One of the best coaching moves is to break down big goals into smaller checkpoints. Make it winnable. Celebrate progress no matter how small. Public praise for effort. Private coaching for improvement. Momentum builds confidence and confidence builds performance.

It's like I always used to tell Dennis Daters, ⁓ one of my best sales guys, when you sell something, you need to be out on the road. It's OK to celebrate, but don't lose that momentum because you're.

this position will enable you to sell the next thing. The other thing that I want to caution you in this particular area is that though you're celebrating in public and you're coaching in private, we need to make sure that we're not holding this person as a leader. Because I think that one of the things that we often do is we create confusion.

that something they're doing well is more important than their objectives. And that's not the case. We want to make sure that we provide clarity when we're celebrating a win in public, that it's a particular function that they're doing really well. It doesn't mean that they're in ⁓ completing their objectives timely or exceeding their objectives.

Now we're gonna get to the harder sections, and that is know when it's a fit issue. Let's be real. Sometimes it's not about the effort, the attitude, or the coaching. Sometimes it's just not the right fit. That doesn't necessarily mean failure. It means leadership, helping someone move into a better suited role, whether inside or outside your organization.

is a good form of stewardship. Not everybody is supposed to be on the same seat of the bus. Your job is to help them find the right one. And this is difficult ⁓ when you start to feel that it's a fit issue. But I will say that once you've identified this person as potentially being a fit issue, it doesn't mean that you can ignore the rest of this coaching strategy.

Christopher Swing (09:48)
You need to lead them appropriately as long as they're under your care as an employee.

Christopher Swing3 (09:55)
I would never encourage anyone to promote anyone if they don't fit that role unless they just have amazing skills to fit the next one because the problem is that sets such a precedence when everybody else knows that they're struggling to meet their objectives.

So my hope would be that it's a lateral move or even a slight demotion potentially, however you want to look at it. I would encourage you not to promote people even into other departments where they are struggling to meet their objectives. We want to promote people who are exceeding their objectives. That's just a situation where you will confuse your.

leaders or your people who are driving effective completion of their objectives to think that maybe they are the ones that are being overlooked.

So the last major bullet is lead with truth and grace. Hard conversations done right. And this one is really close to my heart. Leadership means having hard conversations. And it's imperative to do it with grace and transparency. That's not a soft approach, it's a strong one. John 1.14 says that Jesus came

full of grace and truth. Not one or the other, but both. As a leader, that's our calling too. When an employee misses the mark, address the behavior, not their identity. I want to repeat that. When an employee misses the mark, address the behavior, not their identity. You can say, hey, you've missed this deadline three times. Help me understand what's going on.

What you don't say is, you're unreliable. You may think that, and I would encourage you to not think that, but definitely don't think that going into that conversation because your frame of mind will affect your reaction to their statements. Truth without grace feels harsh, and I think that's pretty clear to everyone. But grace without truth feels hollow.

We can't just enable people to fail to meet their expectations. If we want to be an effective leader, we have to surround ourselves with people who can meet those expectations, assuming that they're clear and assuming that they're achievable. We want smart goals, right?

But truth with grace, that transforms people. And when you're transparent about your own intentions, when you say, is a tough conversation for me too, but I care about your growth, that's how you build trust. Correction is not rejection, it's investment. And accountability, that's another form of love in leadership.

So in closing, in the end, coaching isn't just about performance. It's about people. And people grow best when they're challenged clearly and supported consistently. As leaders of faith, our goal isn't to just get results. It's to shape hearts and habits along the way. Proverbs 15-22 says, plans fail for a lack of counsel.

but with many advisors, they succeed. Let's be the kind of leaders who counsel with both conviction and compassion. Let's lead faithfully. Thanks for joining me today on the Faithful Podcast. If this is encouraging to you or it brought someone to mind, go ahead and share it. As always, keep leading with courage, humility, and faith.

Don't forget to like share and subscribe. As always, please feel free to send me feedback either on the website or via LinkedIn. See you next time.