The core activity of management coaching is to ask questions that stimulate thinking and them listen a lot, to help that thinking process.

It requires practice and experience to become really good at it. Managers are ideally placed to be good at coaching, because the nature of their role is with people. Interacting with them daily help develop the coaching skills and realizes potential as you go.

There are four useful additions to the questions and listening elements of this management skill:

Building Rapport

When you develop a close rapport with your people, you will find coaching much easier, because you already have a partnership going for you both.

If you have to formalize something as interactive as coaching without any previous work on relationship building, it's going to be much more challenging, so that why it's important to Build Rapport naturally.

The key here is to build rapport in every interaction you have with people by being interested in them all of the time.

That's when it works best.

The Value of Trust

When there is a trusting culture in your team, you will be able to open a lot of doors that otherwise can remain shut.

A trusting management relationship is much more likely to help an openness that will grow as trust builds. This openness is, in turn, great for getting to the bottom of challenging issues with people and letting them express themselves fully.

As a manager, being trusted is one of the most vital components to enable you to manage effectively, whilst also enabling your people to be of their very best.

Being sensitive to understanding what trust means in the eyes of your employees is one of the most important elements of a manager's own self-development.

Noticing Skills

There is another great tactic you can use, that makes a big difference in how you are perceived by your people.

People want to know they are appreciated and that the work they do is seen and valued, because we all like to have what we do recognized, whether it is in the workplace or anyplace at all.

The thing is - and this depends where you are in the world - when we get recognized for the good work we do, we can deny the thanks we are offered, so as managers, we need to nurture the ability in our people to accept praise when noticed.

Creating a team culture into a positive, productive 'way we do things around here' where everyone supports each other - by noticing.

Self-Management

The attitudes you demonstrate in the work you do, are a vital element of the way you 'get on' with your people.

Your own 'Self Management' as a coach, needs to be about recognizing the value of putting others first and leveraging their capabilities.

It means letting go a little, enabling others and taking risks with them. Being there to support, encourage and stretch them - as well as letting go of the complete control that you are so used to.

Self-management is about giving yourself permission to be more relaxed, knowing that you indeed have within you the capabilities to make this work through the way you manage your people.

Nothing replaces the core coaching skills of asking effective questions as well as listening closely to your people. With these additional tactics you can be even more skilled.