Coach in the Moment

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”

William Arthur Ward

Most coaching never happens.

It gets saved for the monthly one-on-one. Or the quarterly review. Or the conversation you keep meaning to have. And by the time you sit down to have it, the moment that triggered it is two weeks old. Your team member barely remembers the situation. You’re reconstructing it from memory. The feeling of it is gone.

That’s the problem with scheduled coaching. The context that makes it land, the actual work, the real stakes, the visible behavior…doesn’t travel well. It often fades fast.

The leaders who develop their teams fastest are coaching in real time, right there on the floor. Two minutes. Right after something happened. When everything is still visible and fresh.

A Moment Worth Paying Attention To

A personal coaching approach in the workplace is often seen as a “lesser” or “touchy-feely” approach to leadership that many find uncomfortable.  I would challenge you to see coaching not as a gimmick, but as a way for a leader to identify the true strengths and passions of his team members and best draw out each person’s most effective input to the team effort.

A leader certainly can lead directly and with a “one size fits all” mentality, but doing so leaves so much on the table… specifically, your individual team members feeling like they matter as people.  Coaching bridges the gap between professional expectations and the personal passions and strengths that lead to better outcomes.

Community mental health leadership was my first encounter with true leadership in a Co-Ed environment, and it was humbling. I was used to leading the same type and focus of individual, but found myself leading a struggling team with 5 very different individuals, all good-hearted and capable, but all going in different directions.

Taking the time to get to know each team member individually allowed me to better understand each employee's needs.  Their goals, their past, their “why” in choosing community mental health to serve in; all of these combined laid out a road map as to how I could lead well by supporting the individual while completing the organizational goals. None of that would have been possible without taking the time needed to develop a coaching, not managing, relationship with each person.

The Framework: Observe → Ask → Offer

Three steps. Keep them in order.

Observe. Say what you saw. Specifically. “I noticed when the customer pushed back, you paused and let them finish before you responded.” Or: “That handoff to the next shift was rushed. I could see the incoming team didn’t have what they needed.” Name the behavior, not your interpretation of it.

Ask. Before you coach, get curious. “How did that feel to you?” or “What would you do differently?” Most people already know what went sideways. Your job isn’t to tell them; it’s to ask in a way that helps them get there themselves. One question is enough.

Offer. If they’ve got it, affirm it. If there’s something to add, say it simply: “The one thing I’d add…” Keep it to one thing. Two or three things at once are a lecture, not coaching.

That’s it. The whole framework fits in under two minutes.

Two Situations, One Framework

After a mistake: The reflex is to jump to the correction. Resist it. Start with what happened before you go to what should have happened. Ask before you tell. And separate the behavior from the person; remember you’re coaching the action, not the character. “That approach didn’t work in that situation” is coachable. “You’re not great under pressure” is just damage.

After a win: This one gets skipped constantly, and it’s just as important. When something goes well, name what worked and why it worked. “You gave them a specific timeline instead of a vague answer, that’s why it settled them down.” If they don’t know what they did right, they can’t repeat it.

The Surveillance Problem

In-the-moment coaching can feel like being watched if you’re not careful. The difference is in how you show up.

Managers who coach out of frustration, who walk over right after something goes wrong with an edge in their voice, often feel like a complaint. Managers who coach with genuine curiosity feel like a resource.

The other thing that helps: ask permission. “Hey, can I share something I noticed?” takes about three seconds and completely changes the dynamic. It signals that this is a conversation, not a verdict. Most people say yes. And if they’re in the middle of something, or if the timing is genuinely bad, they’ll tell you, and you can come back.

Read the moment before you coach the moment.

Try This Week

Pick one moment, just one, where something happened that deserved a coaching conversation. A mistake. A win. Anything with a lesson in it.

Don’t schedule it. Do it right there, or within the next few hours while it’s still fresh.

Keep it to two minutes. What happened. What did you notice? One question.

That’s the habit. One conversation this week. Build from there.

Reflection

What happened last time you held a coaching conversation back for the one-on-one? What did you lose by waiting?

When you observe something worth coaching, a win, a mistake, a close call, what stops you from addressing it right then?

If the floor is your classroom, what’s one thing you saw this week that deserves a follow-up conversation?

Lace up your Boots and Go Lead

You’ve Got This.

Suggested Reading

Stanier, Michael Bungay. The Coaching Habit. Box of Crayons Press, 2016. Short, practical, and completely aligned with this post’s thesis: ask more, tell less. The most usable coaching book for frontline leaders who don’t have an hour for a formal session.

Whitmore, John. Coaching for Performance. Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 1992. The foundational text on the GROW model. A structured way to move from observation to action without just telling people what to do. Still the clearest framework available.

Rock, David, and Linda Page. Coaching with the Brain in Mind. Wiley, 2009. Why questions work better than instructions, grounded in neuroscience. Explains why Observe → Ask → Offer produces lasting behavior change in ways that direct feedback doesn’t.