Coaching Conversations in 2025
Coaching Conversations with Tim Hagen, where we teach leaders and managers how to coach their employees. This is the ideal podcast for leaders, managers, and aspiring leaders to improve their coaching and leadership skills to create a more positive coaching culture within their teams.
In 2025, we're doing weekly podcasts on various coaching topics and strategies that will rotate throughout the month, as opposed to 2024 where the weekly episodes featured a monthly theme. Coaching Conversations will continue to have four episodes per month and we're going to sprinkle in masterclasses, which will be lengthier, workshop-style formats.
We also invite you to join the new FREE e-publication, the Workplace Coaching Times founded by Tim Hagen. This weekly newsletter contains expert insights on coaching strategies on specific topics like sales coaching, leading with empathy, and self-awareness techniques, and much more. We're a community of leaders, managers and coaches transforming workplace challenges into coaching victories—one conversation at a time. Subscribe here: https://coachingtimes.beehiiv.com/subscribe
Coaching Conversations in 2025
The Practice Effect: Why Coaching Matters in Leadership
Welcome to Coaching Conversations
We have created a NEW and Innovative line of books called Workplace Coaching Books. These books use QR codes with embedded audio and video lessons speaking directly to the reader. Each book comes with assessments and journal based coaching pages where they document what they've learned and what they've applied. In addition each book comes with the self analysis link that prompts them to share what they've learned and what they've put into action leading to greater learner application a
Check out our Approachability & Coachability series, a webinar-based coaching approach that encourages all leaders and their employees to become approachable and coachable through specific, actionable techniques and strategies. This leads to better teamwork for leadership and creates a positive coaching culture within an organization.
Get more info here: https://form.jotform.com/233023396805051
Are you interested in the latest coaching strategy from Tim Hagen? Check out the new Journal-Based Coaching Guide series, where you can improve critical workplace skills by listening to audio lessons via weekly QR codes from Tim Hagen, and journal what you've learned from the lessons. Current topics include emotional intelligence, motivation, accelerating teamwork, mastering self-regulation, and more crucial workplace topics.
Check out how the new Journal-Based Coaching Guide series works and start your leadership development journaling journey today at https://www.WorkplaceCoachingBooks.com.
After 30 plus years of teaching leaders how to coach, I still get the question what's the purpose of coaching? Why do our leaders need to coach? Our people are really, really busy and I always think about that objection of how to handle it because I immediately want to go to. It can improve your culture, it can help leaders, it can help employees. Yet when we really think about coaching at its most fundamental level, let's honestly look at a sports analogy. If you have kids and you use sports, would you honestly go up to your kid's coach and say my son or daughter only plays games. They don't practice, they don't do anything to improve. They have no application. They have no time for application of what you're teaching them. They're just going to come and play. Now the first immediate reaction of someone hearing that's going to immediately say well, sports is different than the workplace. What's not different is the fundamentals of how people improve. First you need knowledge. How do I make a good decision? How do I handle a conversation, a conflict? Then we need to practice it. Do we honestly think somebody who practices conversations at conflict is going to be less likely or less skilled than someone who never practices such conversations?
Speaker 1:The other day I had a leader ask me about decision-making. I've got an employee who just won't pull the trigger. They always come through me, they always want me to make the decisions and I said do you? And he said well, yeah. And I said so, you own it. They don't you want them to own it, but you've chosen to own it. He said yeah, I have. And I said so how do you facilitate practice around decision-making? He said what do you mean? So you know the answer. He's not doing it and that's okay. I said have you thought about giving a weekly case study to get insight to their critical thinking skills? He said, no, that's a great idea. Now, great guy, wonderful guy. And I said I'd like to use this in my next podcast. And he was fully aware. So when he listens to this, I'll get an email. But I said think about it.
Speaker 1:Decision-making is terrifying to people. What if I make the wrong decision? We all know there's no guarantee of the right decision every time. So if you don't practice it, you won't do it. If you're not skilled or confident, you probably will find a way to transfer it to somebody else like this leader. So if you have somebody who is doing public speaking, they have to give a speech and oh, by the way, the CEO is going to be in attendance. Do we honestly think somebody is going to show up that day, not write out an outline, not practice, not know what they're going to talk about, and just get up there and wing it? Of course not. So when we think about coaching at its most fundamental level, its most fundamental level, so when you think about it, we also have to be very conscientious of one major fact If coaching is communication, if leaders are already talking to their employees, they're communicating Embed coaching.
Speaker 1:I hear it all the time. Well, I have a weekly check-in with my people. Doesn't that sound wonderful? A warm, friendly check-in? What do we do at check-ins? And there's nothing wrong with a check-in, by the way, even though I said that sarcastically but a check-in is not coaching. It's usually an agenda, it's usually a checklist of things that need to be done or haven't been done or are in the process of being done. That is not coaching.
Speaker 1:Coaching is about increasing someone's knowledge. It's about facilitating practice so they improve their skills, and using positive reinforcement to build confidence. Now, what's the end result to that? Talent development, talent retention, easier to recruit to the organization Now, before somebody says, well, wait, that's the training department's responsibility. Great, if it's the training department's responsibility, do me a favor, have them do the end of the year review, not you as a leader. Now, I know I sound crass right now. I know I sound agitated. I'm not agitated Yet. Think about it fundamentally and I'll tell you my opinion. The number one reason people don't want to coach is they don't know how to do it and they don't know what to say. They will come up with every reason.
Speaker 1:I recently had a vice president of a wealth management company said well, this is really simple stuff that you teach. Now we hadn't gotten to the advanced stuff. I said yeah, it's simple stuff. You want to practice. And he immediately had a facial expression change. He said well, why do you want to practice? I said I love to practice, and the reason I like to practice is it gives me insight to teach things. It gives me insight where I need to improve. And I said, when you say that it's pretty simple, I guess my question is do you practice it? Are you comfortable doing that right now? He said well, you know you're not giving me a lot of time to prepare, and I said so when an employee knocks on your door, do you tell them to go away because you want more time to prepare? He said no great point and really nice guy. And I said coaching is a skill. So, fundamentally, if we know what to do, we have knowledge. If we have skill because we practiced it, we will become more confident people. It's that simple.
Speaker 1:I want to give you this analogy and I remember when I was coaching my son in a community basketball league kids are like eight, nine years old and I had a dad that was so offensive towards his son and he would yell when he would miss free throws and he would scream at him and he, you know, just testosterone flying. This is a rec league, this isn't even a competitive league. And all of a sudden I said I want to talk to you after the game. And the guy goes. Well, you know, my kid's got to practice. And you know. And I said I understand he's got to practice, he's eight, he missed a free throw and you screamed when he air balled it. What do you think is going through his mind? He goes well, I don't care, you know, I want my kid to learn. And I said so, you don't care, do me a favor? Handed him a basketball. I said come with me. Went to the free throw line. I said hold this, stay here.
Speaker 1:Turned around, some parents were still in the gym and I said I won't use his real name. And I said Bob's going to show us how to shoot a free throw. I said go ahead, everybody's watching you. And what I did is I flipped the script. Basically, I put him on the stage. His kid was at, by the way, at the age of eight. I said by the way, don't you miss that free throw? And I mimicked him. This man was so red he put the ball down, walked out of the gym, never came back again. Funny thing was this kid started to become a pretty good ball player and I'll never forget that. And I said think about it, that's a big stage. So if you don't practice at that stage gets really big.
Speaker 1:Coaching is a stage. It's a stage we're already on. We're already having private one-on-ones. We're already having end-of-the-year reviews. Think about if you were scheduling your people weekly, bi-weekly and the end-of-the-year review came, versus not having those meetings. Wouldn't the end of the year review go better? Because they have a better insight to what their performance has been like what your likes and dislikes? Are your expectations met and maybe even not met? Wouldn't the employee benefit? Wouldn't that endeavor become so much easier? Coaching is not an in addition to endeavor thing. Coaching is not an in addition to endeavor thing. It's an element of what we already do, and that's communicate.