Abstract | Fueling RN Professional Growth: Steps to Adopt a Leader Coach Mindset
What nurses expect from their leaders is changing. Gone are the days of command and control leadership when staff was supposed to be grateful because they had a job. Today’s nurses want their leaders to be coaches who will help them learn and grow as professionals. In the recently published book, It’s the Manager, Gallup researchers analyzed decades of survey data and found that the very best managers are coaches (Clifton & Harter, 2019). They also discovered that both millennials and Generation Z want their leaders to be coaches, not bosses. These findings are supported in work published by Google (n.d.) indicating that one of the most important behaviors of their highest scoring managers is that they are effective coaches. The message is clear: Coaching is no longer a specialty that can be outsourced. You cannot be a good manager without being a coach.
Coaching is a different approach to developing the potential of staff. When you coach, you provide staff with the opportunity to grow and gain expertise through more consistent feedback, counseling and mentoring. Sir John Whitmore (2017), an expert in executive coaching, defines coaching as unlocking potential to maximize performance. The goal is to help others learn through self-exploration rather than teaching. When coaching, the relationship moves from being dominated by the leader to a partnership with staff. You don’t wait until the annual review to discuss areas in need of improvement. The effective leader coach takes the time to understand the motivations of individual staff, enables optimal performance, encourages professional success and removes barriers to high-level performance.
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