Coaching Skills

A company’s reputation depends on how well its leaders guide and coach employees to achieve excellence. But only those with well-developed coaching skills can successfully lead employees to greater productivity.

Skilled coaches know that sustained superior employee performance is achieved through regular coaching that recognizes and reinforces good behavior, helps employees recognize problem areas in their own performance, and empowers employees to improve in those areas. A person’s individual coaching style must be known and developed in order to perform the best coaching possible.

What is Coaching?

Many professions have a specific set of skills that a person uses over and over throughout their career. However, coaching itself doesn’t have a specific set of skills that are repeated in every coaching situation.

Each coaching relationship comes with new challenges and presents different opportunities to learn new skills. This is because no two coachees – or coaches – are alike. Each coachee goes to their coach with different needs and aspirations, so no two coaching relationships are the same. Consequently, coaches need to be skilled in a variety of areas in order to achieve positive results. Some of these skills include goal setting, action planning, problem solving, decision-making, listening, and behavioral change techniques.

The Four Coaching Styles

There are different types of coaching styles that leaders tend to have. Everyone is different, and some coaches are more “take charge and direct” while others may be “warm and empathetic.” One style isn’t necessarily better than another, and someone may have a few styles they exhibit. The four coaching styles are:

1. Direct. People who take charge, in control, competitive, fast-paced, authoritative, leaders.
2. Spirited. People who are enthusiastic, friendly, motivators, high-profile, decision makers.
3. Considerate. People who are warm, counseling, cooperative, reliable, caring.
4. Systematic. People who are accurate, objective, factual, organized, problem solving.

So what does your coaching style say about you? It shows who you really are as a coach. If you are a direct person and your coachee is considerate, for example, you will want to flex your style to meet theirs in order to be a better coach to them. You can make the experience better by being more counseling rather than authoritative.

Improving Your Coaching Skills with a ‘Meeting Model’

A manager’s coaching skills can be improved with a “7-Step Coaching Meeting” model. The steps and skills in this model are all based on behavioral science research and distinguish managers who are effective at conducting coaching meetings from those who are less effective. An effective coaching meeting can be viewed as a process consisting of seven steps:

• Building a Relationship of Mutual Trust. Mutual trust is the foundation of the coaching process and directly rooted in a manager’s day-to-day relationship with an employee. Build it up so both parties are comfortable.
• Opening the Meeting. In opening a coaching meeting, it’s important for the manager to set a direction for the discussion and to get the employee involved in the conversation.
• Getting Agreement. The manager’s goal during the meeting is to get the employee to agree verbally that a performance issue exists.
• Exploring Alternatives. The manager and employee together explore alternatives that will improve the employee’s performance. The manager should begin by encouraging the employee to identify alternative solutions.
• Getting a Commitment to Act. The next step is to get the employee to commit to implementing the alternative that will best improve his or her performance situation.
• Handling Excuses. A manager should avoid arguing with an employee over the validity of an excuse, but rather try to disarm the excuse or turn the excuse into a problem-solving discussion.
• Closing the Meeting. In closing a coaching meeting it’s important that the manager emphasize the developmental nature of the discussion so that the employee views the meeting as more than a reprimand.

If a manager follows these steps, they will have a successful coaching meeting with their employee, leading to better performance and a more positive relationship.

More Help with Coaching

To learn more about coaching, attend the “What Does Your Coaching Style Say About You?” webinar on December 9, 2019 at 2 p.m. US ET. Participants will learn how to use What’s My Coaching Style? as part of their personality style and coaching training, identify personal preference for one of four behavioral styles, develop an awareness of personal behavior patterns, and see how one is viewed by those he or she coaches. Click here to register: HRDQ Webinar “What Does Your Coaching Style Say About You?”

This webinar is based upon research from What’s My Coaching Style?, a coaching assessment that measures personality style and explores how it relates to coaching and interpersonal relationships. Coaches and managers identify and understand personality traits, learn how to capitalize on personal strengths, and minimize potential weaknesses. Learn more about What’s My Coaching Style? by CLICKING HERE.

Effective coaching is necessary in order to succeed. It can benefit both the leader who is doing the coaching and the employee who is being coached. But there are specific ways to coach in order to create the best possible results.

Coaching skills can be used in many areas of a person’s job. They can help with interpersonal teams, clients, customers, and between managers. Coaching in and of itself is a specific method/technique that can be used to guide an individual to new learnings in a dedicated time frame.

Coaching has specific goals:

• Motivating and inspiring individuals to do more and work harder
• Supporting clients in breaking down large goals into manageable steps
• Holding people accountable to their commitments in order to produce results

The Coaching Process

There is a specific process that a manager should follow in coaching. They should first start with assessing the skills, personality traits, and learning styles of their employees. Then they should define their vision and what the successful outcomes are. They should create an inspiring mission statement that will make an impact with team members. They should also establish annual goals with objectives to meet regularly.

During a coaching session the manager should set the stage and determine why the coaching is necessary, then specifically define the opportunity or issue, then analyze the options and possible outcomes, and finally develop an action plan.

A manager needs to build trust with their employee at the beginning of the coaching process. They should ask open-ended questions to determine the best way to approach the issues and the ways in which the team member should be trained. Different employees may require different approaches. The manager should gather as much knowledge as possible about the situation in order to decide how to proceed.

How to Improve Coaching Skills

Coaching can be made simpler with some additional help. HRDQ is hosting a webinar titled “How to Say It: Coaching Conversations” on Oct. 30. During the webinar attendees will learn a four-step strategy for developing more effective coaching conversations. This strategy works with coaching scenarios like performance improvement, career development, specific skill development and overall team performance.

We are excited to announce our upcoming webinar!

Event Date: 5/17/2018 (2:00 pm EDT- 3:00 pm EDT)

Coaching team members is one of the most under-valued responsibilities of managers. It’s something they feel they do simply by talking with a team member and asking how he or she is doing in their job and giving appropriate “Atta-boys” or “Atta-girls.” Of course, this is very important and it’s sometimes referred to as “emotional nutrition.” However, it’s not coaching in the sense of skill-building and professional development for the employee.

True coaching is one of the most powerful methods of motivating employees, broadening and improving their skills and increasing their retention. It requires a separate set of skills that positions managers as teachers, advisors, and career counselors.

Participants will learn

• What coaches really do
• How to set good performance standards and goals with employees
• How to communicate more effectively using Personality Styles at Work™
• Directive vs. non-directive coaching- which approach to use and when
• The most important principles of adult learning principles
• Methods of skill-based teaching

Save your seat! 

With a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a Master’s degree in Safety Engineering and decades of managing people and processes, Geoff Nichols has a wide and deep background to draw from in helping his training and coaching clients. In his approach to management, training and coaching, he emphasizes the need to use situational leadership and the ability to flex to work colleagues’ and team members’ communication needs in order to be more successful in any job.

Business training has been Geoff’s passion for nearly all of his career. After 20 years of executive experience in Human Resources, training and operations management, he founded his own training and consulting business and has conducted over 1,200 public and private workshops. He has trained more than 30,000 people in a wide range of management and leadership topics. And he has written over 600 customized training programs for hundreds of clients- from large and small businesses to federal and state government agencies to healthcare and non-profit organizations.

Geoff has also written a book titled, “Taking the Step Up to Supervision” and numerous articles in national publications on supervision and management. He has trained throughout the U.S. and in Canada, Puerto Rico, the U.K. and Mainland China.