Effective Coaching Builds a Confident and Competent Team
Well, not all the time.
Yet when done properly, effective coaching provides a solid foundation to assist in developing your team’s skill set and helps you as the manager deliver desired performance results. Yes, a lot depends on the team members skill set, their ability to do the job, and their individual willingness to accept coaching for improvement. After all, they are the ones actually doing the job.
Simply stated, as a manager your coaching goal is to create competency and confidence in your people so they will deliver on expectations.
Coaching in itself is a complex and at times lengthy process. It’s importance and relevance to the individual and ultimately the team’s success, is the subject of countless books, seminars, training sessions and business meetings. In fact, Market Research reports the self-development industry is approaching $10 Billion dollars annually, and the personal coaching industry is topping $1 Billion dollars annually in the U.S.
For the purpose of this article, let’s keep this simple.
Effective coaching is a way of leading, communicating, thinking and being. It is at the core of your management responsibility to yourself, your team, and your company.
Effective coaching provides an opportunity to change behavior or create a new behavior. It can also increase effectiveness, broaden thinking, identify strengths and opportunities for the short term and forecast long term career contribution. Effective coaching allows people to discover their hidden potential, live up to perceived potential, and release from their comfort zone. Effective coaching via observation is a manager’s sharpest tool to understand an individual’s current performance and future potential.
Use these best practices to get a handle on your coaching responsibilities.
· First and foremost, as a manager you have to earn the right to coach. Trust and respect go hand in hand, yet are not automatically granted to the manager. In order to gain these valuable traits, the individuals on the team and the team as a whole must acknowledge and accept that you are working with their best interests in mind. The coach must be perceived as legitimate, credible, and knowledgeable and one who provides a service that is readily accepted by the individuals on the team. Coaching is not an authoritarian demand. It is a mutually beneficial discussion.
· Part of earning trust and respect is to build a relationship with each member of the team. Spend time with each member to show them you actually and genuinely care about them as human beings more than you care about them as widgets on the assembly line. Results through people only happens when people feel engaged and know that their contributions are appreciated and valued. Respect and trust is a bonding two-way exchange.
· Do you understand all the parameters of how to do their job? Do you have the qualifications to coach? One would expect that a person in management would have earned the right to coach by having a grip on the ins and outs of the job the person being coached is doing. Yet this isn’t always the case. Managers get so wrapped up with their own accountabilities like forecasting, budgeting, and scorekeeping sales results that they at times overlook what is happening on the front lines. Their skill set no longer matches the needs of the people they are supposed to be coaching. Spend time in their shoes. Get on the phone, make calls, talk to customers. Understand what the job entails and stay sharp to be able to coach accordingly.
· In the same token as making calls yourself, plan your time to allow for observation. Before you coach, you must observe. It’s basic, and required to be able see what actually needs improvement and most importantly to avoid assumption. The worst thing a coach can do is to offer solutions for what they “think” is the problem. A real coach offers encouragement to change outcomes based on what they “know” will work.
· Prepare your coaching questions in advance, yet be sure to plan your questions specifically to the individual being coached. Asking pertinent questions not only provides an opportunity for you to gather information and data, but also shows the individual that you are cognizant of their personal needs. It demonstrates you are in tune with their situation and are not just going through the motions with a generic list of required interrogatories. In your coaching prep work look for potential differentiations with the individuals that you coach and plan your questions to those differences.
· Providing on the spot feedback is critical to effective coaching. Coaching should be prompt, efficient, timely, and absolutely relevant to the most recently observed situation. It is to be considered in the present, so both coach and receiver have the experience fresh in their minds. Use these three questions as standard coaching foundation feedback:
o What did you like about the call?
o What didn’t you like about the call?
o What would you change in your approach to what you didn’t like?
While the coach allows the receiver to answer, the coach also provides his or her own responses to these questions in the coaching discussion.
· Reach a mutual agreement on the outcome of the coaching discussion. Regardless of how in-depth the coaching discussion is, or if it is limited to only using the three basic questions mentioned above, there must be agreement between the coach and receiver on the mutual observations or outcome of the feedback. This is critical to ensure respect and also sets the stage for the next step in the process. If the receiver doesn’t agree on the coach’s efforts to assist in performance via logical, sound coaching feedback, then one of two things is occurring. Either the coach has failed and offered no credible feedback, or the receiver is an unwilling participant and does not accept the feedback as credible. Yes, it could be both, poor coach, unwilling participant. Unwilling combined with Unable equals Unemployed. Let’s move on.
· Create an action plan for the next coaching observation opportunity. This step in the process is important for improvement, yet does not have to be elaborate or complicated. In fact, the simpler the better. Small wins along the road to improvement can be huge milestones over the course of the development journey. Perhaps the coach and receiver agree that there is one singular item that needs to be adjusted which when dealt with on future calls will have a major impact on improved results. This could be as simple as being able to recognize a customer’s key buying interest or critical objection. The action item is an element that the receiver will work on for future calls, and the coach will look for in those same calls. Is the receiver applying or ignoring the coaching? Is the coaching effective? Is it working?
· Recognize the individual coaching need. This is especially true to avoid over-coaching, over thinking. Keep it simple with those that are performing to expectations and are willing participants. Encourage them to continue delivering great results, thank them for their commitment, support their requests and be there for them as needed. For those that need more attention, ensure your coaching is being accepted and enacted upon. In the same token be flexible enough to coach to specific items identified for improvement. Narrowing it down to one or two focus points versus a laundry list of issues, can help to drive correction, improvement, and ultimately better results.
I hope you find these brief bullet point best practices to your benefit. For more information visit my website at tedkaye55.wixsite.com/21lessonslearned or contact me directly via LinkedIn.
Best wishes in your coaching endeavors.
Ted