Over the years, I’ve adopted a simple definition of coaching: “To coach is to develop another person by listening and asking questions to clarify ideas and commit to action.”

If you look closely, you’ll notice five key characteristics. I’ve listed each of them out below:

Developing Others

To coach is to play a development role. It’s focused on growing the competency and capacity of the employee. Consider the difference between a directing approach (“Here is what I need you to do”) and a coaching approach (“Let’s think about how you might address this challenge”). Both are appropriate at times, but the coaching approach is explicitly developmental.

Active Listening

Active listening requires some of the most discipline of any skill there is – but the dividends are enormous. It’s impossible to coach effectively without it. Quite simply, active listening seeks simply to understand the situation and delay the need to formulate a response or craft a solution.

Asking Questions

Asking powerful, open-ended questions goes hand-in-hand with active listening. It’s the perfect antidote to giving unsolicited advice or providing explicit direction. (Those responses are necessary in many management scenarios, but tend to ruin a coaching-rich opportunity). The more input an employee provides, the more he’ll own the solution.

Clarifying Ideas

Clarifying ideas is an extension of both active listening and asking questions. Without this clarity, employees may be unclear about the ultimate desired result – and managers may be unclear about key nuances of the situation. Adept coaches resist the urge to solve the problem until they have understood the situation and taken the opportunity to explore a variety of options together.

Commiting to Action

The last thing coaching leaders do is elicit a commitment to action. Otherwise, the conversation may be positive, but it won’t be productive. Coaching leaders are sure to ask the employee to commit to following through on the agreed upon action.

My favorite conversational “formula” for holding a coaching discussion is the GROW model, which stands for Goal, Reality, Options and Will (or Way Forward). It incorporates each element into a simple framework that can be completed in just a couple minutes.

Coaching employees is hard work – it takes a lot of practice and discipline to develop and use the skills. But the rewards are enormous: a more capable staff, more buy-in, and more capacity for you as the leader, to name a few. Give it a try and keep at it. In the end, everyone wins on this one.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or follow him on Twitter.

If you’re looking for problems to solve, you’ll find them everywhere. New managers want to pick up the slack. Department leaders can find it easier deal with problems themselves than let others handle them. By the time an executive assignment comes around, leaders can sometimes be addicted to addressing smaller issues – at expense of their own effectiveness with a staff trained to consistently feed their problems up the chain.

I’d like to share a simple conversational model that can change the entire way you approach the problems that come your way. Whether you’re an executive coach or a frontline manager (or have an hour to invest or five minutes), it will allow you to develop the problem-solving skills of the people you lead rather than addressing each issue yourself. Here’s how works.

Goal – What do you want to accomplish?

When someone comes to you with an issue, inquire about the big picture. What is the person trying to accomplish? This creates clarity upfront – which is always the best place to start.

Reality – What is the situation?

This is where most conversations start. Someone raises a complication. (Isn’t that what problems are?) It’s important to understand the nature of the challenge in the context of the bigger picture – without jumping to conclusions. This is where your active listening skills come in handy.

Options – What could you do?

At this point, the temptation will be to step in and provide explicit direction. Hold back. Invest a few extra minutes asking the person if they can identify any possible solutions. On one hand, they are the closest one to the issue. On the other hand, stepping in robs them of the opportunity to exercise critical thinking at the crucial moment.

Will – What will you do?

One last temptation here is pick the solution and send the person on their way. Unfortunately, this move transfers the responsibility for a positive outcome from the other person to you. If the commitment comes from the other person, the ownership comes with it.

Once you use GROW, you’re in a great place to follow it up with one of my all-time favorite questions:

“How can I support you?”

It’s difficult to resist solving the problems we encounter, especially if it will take more time and occasional troubleshooting. But if you’ve had followers who were able to dissect their problems and solve them on their own, you know it’s worth it. Provide direction when it’s needed, but how about looking for opportunities to use GROW first?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.