In a meeting with the current Lead With Curiosity cohort, I made a participant laugh by asking an unexpected question:

What opportunities does the first week of the fall semester open for using a coaching approach?

Of course I phrased the question that way on purpose.

This time of year tends to be incredibly hectic for academic librarians. Been there, done that. And that makes it hard to make the time to actually practice coaching your team.

But I didn't want us to get stuck in that space.

There's always going to be something in your way, if you let it.

During slow periods, people are out on vacation or taking a little mental vacation to catch up on tedious tasks that need to be done and don't require serious thought. During busy periods, it never feels like there's enough time. And during times with a lot of uncertainty around budgets, it can feel daunting to think about planning or setting goals.

How often do you find yourself in that Goldilocks spot where it feels just right to jump into coaching?

Using a coaching approach when there's no time to spare

As you work toward building more of a coaching culture within your library, you might need more time than you have this month to really get into a full coaching conversation with your team members. Once they're more comfortable with this approach, and once you practice enough for it to feel natural, then it'll be easier to fit coaching into a quick 5 or 10 minute conversation.

But most of us don't start there!

And that's ok!

“Using a coaching approach” is an umbrella term that includes but isn't limited to those coaching conversations.

It includes practicing all of the components of a coaching mindset, including intentionally regulating your emotions, giving yourself a few minutes to mentally and emotionally prepare for meetings, and remembering that your team members are responsible for their own choices.

All of this comes together to help you stay curious and ask questions, so that you can respond in a way that will actually lead to an effective outcome, instead of reacting in ways that aren't so helpful. This isn't suggesting that you'd fly off the handle or anything, but it's way too easy to hear half of the facts, make a few assumptions, and jump to giving advice that doesn't actually fit the current context.

Carving out just five minutes to take some deep breaths and ground yourself before walking into a meeting can make a huge difference in your ability to stay emotionally regulated and curious when a challenging topic comes up.

And that is part of practicing using a coaching approach.

Looking for opportunities to ask effective coaching questions, even if you only ask one all day instead of turning that into a full coaching conversation, is part of practicing using a coaching approach.

Blocking off 20 minutes at the end of your day to give yourself space to reflect on what went well and what you'd like to do better next time is another small way to practice using a coaching approach.

It's easy to dismiss these small changes, but they slowly add up to creating significant shifts in the way you lead your team.

The hardest part of developing a coaching approach is in your mindset. Once you develop a coaching mindset, then it becomes a lot easier to ask genuinely curious coaching questions.

So intentionally taking small steps as often as you can, even if it's just giving yourself 5 minutes to breathe, is an important part of learning to use a coaching approach.

How are you going to start putting this into practice?

Write back and let me know one small shift that you're going to make this week to remind yourself to stay a little more curious for just a little longer!

If you're ready to start seriously working on developing this approach, then my Cultivate Curiosity mini-course is a great place to start. You'll get an email each Monday for 8 weeks, each doing a deep dive into a different component of the coaching mindset, as outlined by the International Coaching Federation, along with some ideas for how you can practice building that mindset shift into your regular routine.