Podcast: You Can Lead through a Crisis. But Can You Coach through One?
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Leadership Apr 30, 2020

Podcast: You Can Lead through a Crisis. But Can You Coach through One?

On this episode of The Insightful Leader: three ways to help your employees arrive at their own answers to difficult questions.

Borrowing from the executive coaching playbook can help make you a more effective leader, especially during a crisis.

Based on insights from

Brenda Ellington Booth

Listening: You Can Lead Through a Crisis. But Can You Coach Through One?
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As your employees navigate the COVID-19 crisis, they’re grappling with lots of complicated questions. “What’s my biggest priority right now?” “How can I do the right thing amid so much uncertainty?”

Learn more from Brenda Ellington-Booth in Kellogg Executive Education’s Energizing People for Performance program.

For a leader, it can be tempting to try and answer those questions for them. But an executive coach would recommend taking a different approach. “No one is going to grow and develop if you tell them what to do all the time,” says Brenda Ellington Booth, a clinical professor of leadership at Kellogg, and certified executive coach.

By coaching employees through their problems, you can not only glean new insights that make you a more effective manager—you’ll also maintain healthy relationships that can withstand any crisis. Ellington Booth offers three simple ways to incorporate coaching techniques into your next one-on-one.

Note: The Insightful Leader is produced for the ear, and not meant to be read as a transcript. We encourage you to listen to the audio version above. However, a transcript of this episode is available here.

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