Empowerment Coaching

Empowerment coaching helps leaders extend their skills to others for the sustained benefit of their organisation. Thereby enabling their people to achieve objectives as well or better than the leader can themselves. Furthermore, such empowerment coaching  is one of the most fulfilling and productive of experiences open to people.

There are a number of coaching models that exist. Which one you choose to use will depend in large part on your relationship with the person being coached. Probably the most well known is GROW model of Sir John Whitmore. GROW is a pertinent acronym for the steps in the model: Goal, Reality, Options, Will. We favour this approach for self-coaching and for situations where the relationship is not subordinate.

However, empowerment coaching situations, where the relationship is subordinate, has an additional dynamic. Specifically, the ability to progressively confer authority as an integral part of the process. As a result, we have the opportunity to utilise coaching as part of a wider set of development options. This is reflected in the diagram on the right.

For this reason, our own preference for the empowerment coaching model is one that has been adapted from the excellent (but somewhat dated) Video Arts resource on coaching: The Helping Hand . In part, this is because the steps reflect a systematic discipline. They also act as a framework which will help people to sustain their success.

The steps in the model are reflected in the chart on the right. People can utilise these simply by exploring the questions listed therein together.

Working through these questions can help the coach draw out what their ‘student’ already understands. As a result this enables them to build confidence in their own abilities, and to augment them with well-placed insights from the coach.

Leaders can coach their people at virtually any point of the development process. From the person who is totally new to the role. Through to the person who is already very competent but is seeking to develop mastery of it. However, the nature of coaching is likely to vary as people gain in competence and confidence. As described below.

The empowerment process reflects a series of stages through which someone is likely to progress as a result of engaging in an effective ‘coaching’ process.

In the early stages, there may well be a more directive components (more like teaching or mentoring than coaching). Then in the later stages the relationship can develop to resemble a counselling type of approach. Particularly when the student’s skills begin to surpass that of the coach. At this point the coach can seek to help the student to find further insights and strengths within themselves.

The diagram below reflects this shift of approach. It illustrates each step of the coaching process from the more directive approaches of stage 1 (Tell) through to the mutual discovery approaches of stage 4 (Empower).

The purpose of the diagram is to help the coach think through which stage the coaching relationship has achieved. Furthermore, it proposes ideas for how the coach may best adapt their approach to that stage. It also proposes a number of viable tools to help the coaching process within the various steps. Accordingly, the approach can easily be adapted to incorporate other coaching models at stages 3 & 4.

There is no intention to be prescriptive in this diagram – we offer it simply as a stimulus for people to think things through.