Coaching with intention: When Your Default Coaching Conversation Style May Not Be What Is Needed

Peter Jensen

Founder, Third Factor

Sandra Stark

Partner, Third Factor

Great leadership, especially when coaching others, does not always come naturally. The way you normally interact may feel comfortable, but it is not always what a person or situation needs. Sometimes an abnormal approach works best. That’s why strong leaders think carefully about how they show up in coaching conversations. Even a small change in approach can make a big difference in how well a message is received.

Take a few common situations. You might have someone on your team who lacks confidence. Anne, for example, is capable and thoughtful, but she often defers to more senior people. Your instinct might be to tell her to speak up. But that rarely works on its own.

A better approach is to help Anne recognize her value. Point out where her thinking is strong and create low-pressure opportunities for her to present her ideas. In this case, you are not building competence; you are building confidence. That requires a different kind of conversation.

Or consider a high performer like Martin, who keeps getting in his own way because of poor interpersonal skills. You may need to challenge his assumptions about what is acceptable behaviour.

That can be uncomfortable, especially if you dislike confrontation or have already formed a negative opinion about his intentions. How will your coaching conversation style help Martin receive the message while also feeling your support?

Why Coaching Conversation Styles Matter

We all have a “go-to” interpersonal style, often shaped by what has worked for us in the past. But effective leaders are flexible. They adjust their approach based on the person in front of them and what they are trying to achieve.

At the centre of that flexibility are conversations. As leadership expert Susan Scott says, “The conversation is the relationship.” If you want stronger relationships and better performance, you need to be more intentional about how you have conversations.

Below is a useful assessment tool to help you reflect on conversations you may want to have with a person or a team. The tool looks at five behavioural dimensions.

Five Conversational Behaviours to Track

• Control: Do you tend to take control of the conversation or give control to the other person? Are you more likely to do most of the talking and give direction? Or do you prefer the other person to explain their thinking and share ideas?
• Pace: Do you tend to speed things up or slow things down? You may want a quick decision and have little interest in exploring feelings or options. Or you may prefer to discuss ideas carefully and think through possible problems before making a decision.
• Extroverted or Introverted: Are you energized by talking things through with others? Or do you prefer to think about an issue on your own before discussing it?
• Intellectual Expression: Do you quickly share your opinions and ideas? Or do you usually hold back your thoughts and listen first?
• Emotional Expression: Are you more likely to challenge ideas, criticize and say no? Or do you naturally express support, recognition and optimism?

Adjust Your Natural Coaching Conversation Style

The tool below can help you adjust your conversational style for different situations.*

STEP 1: Assess Your Natural Style

• First, think about your usual tendencies. Using the tool below, assess your natural style.
• Where do you normally fall on each scale when speaking with staff or team members?

STEP 2: Consider The Situation

• Now think about a specific leadership or coaching conversation. It could be one you are preparing for or one you had recently.
• Think about your goals, the timeline and the person involved. What style would increase your insight into this person’s behaviour and help them succeed?
• For example, if you want input and ideas from others, you may need to give up some control. You might ask open-ended questions, slow the conversation down and listen more carefully.
• On the other hand, if a quick decision is needed and you are dealing with someone who likes to overanalyze every possible problem, you may need to create urgency. In that case, you might take more control, make decisions faster, give direction and express optimism.
• The right style depends on what the person needs to improve and succeed. Go through the scales again choosing the ‘This situation’ tab. Drag the dot to the numbers that best reflect the coaching conversation style you think will produce the best outcome for this person in this situation

STEP 3: Compare And Adjust

• Once you have done that hit the ‘Compare’ tab to see where there may be gaps between your natural tendencies and what you believe would be the best approach for coaching this person in this situation.

Think About Your Impact

As a coach, it is important to think about both your impact and your goals for the person you are coaching. It helps to ask yourself what you want the other person to gain from the conversation. Keep in mind that your natural tendencies often become stronger during important or stressful conversations. Before a high-stakes discussion, especially one connected to a person’s development, take time to reflect on your style using the scales above.

You may decide to adjust your approach depending on your goal. Are you trying to teach a new skill? Mentor someone through office politics? Gain insight by listening and asking questions? Or confront a behaviour that needs to change?

Different goals require different coaching conversation styles.

Learning From Difficult Conversations

In our workshops, we ask participants to think about a conversation that did not go well. We ask them to score themselves on each scale based on what happened in that conversation and how they behaved, and then reflect on what they might do differently if they had another chance.

One participant chose a conversation that had quickly gone off track. The employee had failed to share important information that would have changed the project timeline. The employee was talented but junior, introverted, and not naturally expressive. They rarely shared ideas unless someone asked them directly. In this case, no one asked.

What would have been the best coaching style for this employee? What numbers would you circle on the scales? And how closely would that approach match your natural style?

The supervisor’s normal style was high control, fast-paced, highly expressive and somewhat critical, with lower levels of positive reinforcement.

The supervisor entered the conversation feeling frustrated and reactive. His goal, he believed, was to understand why the employee remained silent and to coach them on the importance of sharing information and ideas with teammates, even when not asked. Those were important coaching goals.

Unfortunately, because he was upset, the manager became highly controlling, highly expressive and highly critical during the discussion.

Later, he realized he had handled the conversation poorly. Given this employee’s profile – talented, junior, introverted, and non-expressive – the manager needed to dial down his need for control, slow the conversation down, and build the employee’s self-awareness by asking clarifying questions.

He should also have listened non-judgmentally, asked how he could help in the future, and worked on strategies for the employee to use when feeling this kind of pressure in a more senior group. The goal: help the employee see the value in speaking up for themselves and for the team. It was a great opportunity to teach leadership skills, recognize the knowledge the employee held, and build confidence.

When you are working with a valuable employee over the long term, trust and respect matter. Difficult moments are often when those qualities are tested most.

It helps to identify small, specific adjustments that can improve your effectiveness as a leader and coach while still getting the job done. Often, this requires conscious effort and clear focus during the conversation. This conversational scale can be a great assist in planning the conversation.

Good conversations are the vehicle through which good coaching travels.

*Credit to Robin Pratt for the development of this tool drawn from the work of Sport Psychologist Robert Neidifer; Test for Attentional and Interpersonal Style