Coaching Skills

By: Ken Phillips

Have you ever had a situation where you or a colleague repeatedly talked with an employee about improving his or her performance — and nothing changed? Or, the changes made were only temporary? If so, you might be wondering: What went wrong? How come the employee doesn’t get it? The answer likely rests with the fact that you failed to get the employee to recognize and agree that he or she needs to improve and change — a critical yet often poorly executed step in the coaching process.

Coaching is a technique that can be used by people at all organizational levels, senior leaders through first-line supervisors, as well as team leaders. It also is just as applicable in traditionally managed organizations as it is in those structured around teams. However, much confusion exists over what coaching is and isn’t. I define coaching as an interpersonal process between a manager and an employee in which the manager helps the employee redirect his or her behavior or performance while maintaining mutual trust. Coaching differs from feedback, although feedback is part of the coaching process. Feedback is given by a manager in response to a specific event or situation; coaching focuses on a pattern of behavior. Examples include missing several deadlines in a short time period despite being reminded that meeting deadlines are important, continuing to arrive late for work after being told tardiness is not acceptable and continuing to interrupt others despite receiving feedback that such behavior isn’t appropriate.

Coaching is not chewing out, taking to task, or threatening employees to try to improve their performance. Those tactics can work, but the results often are worse than the original problem. Specifically, employees become outwardly submissive and inwardly rebellious and do nothing more or less than what’s asked.

In general, a coaching meeting should take place only after an employee clearly understands what is expected, and has received feedback at least once that his or her performance is not what it could or should be. However, in some cases, certain significant events may trigger a coaching meeting, before they develop into a pattern of behavior. For example, a manufacturer I worked with decided that any safety violation — no matter how minor — would be addressed in a coaching discussion and, if significant enough, could lead directly to formal discipline.

The Coaching Process

Coaching involves these elements:

• A two-way dialogue

• A series of interdependent steps or objectives

• Specific coaching skills

• Mutual satisfaction

The coaching process has two primary areas of focus: helping an employee recognize the need to improve his or her performance and developing an employee’s commitment to taking steps to improve performance permanently. Here are the main steps in the coaching process:

1. Build interpersonal trust.

2. Open the discussion.

3. Agree on the issue.

4. Consider possible solutions.

5. Agree on an action plan.

6. Manage excuses.

7. Close the meeting.

While all of these steps are important, the most critical one is getting an employee to recognize and agree that there’s a need to improve his or her performance (Step 3). Moreover, the step is equally important whether an employee has a specific performance problem or he or she is an average performer who could do even better. Without an agreement, there’s little likelihood that any improvement will occur, or that it will be permanent.

By Sally Starbuck Stamp

While the original meaning of “coach” was a horse drawn carriage, British sports teams in the 1800s began to utilize “coaches” to assist with the training and development of individual athletes and teams. Subsequently, coaching of professional sports teams around the world evolved into what is now a highly visible, highly controversial, and highly compensated career choice. In the United States, even non-sports fans recognize the names of NFL and NBA coaches who are regularly featured in the news and command salaries that rival those of seasoned players.

What can we learn from this type of team coaching that relates to organization team coaching? What are some process elements that are universal and worthy of replication? What are some areas of coaching practices that should be challenged when applied to organizational effectiveness? And why would we want to invest scarce resources (money, time, talent) in team coaching when, just as in sports, there is no guarantee of a win?

Organizational Teaming

As authors Kathleen Ryan and Geoff Bellman discovered in their research of extraordinary groups, most work is done in teams in both organizations and communities. And while the “players” and “game” are ever changing, organizational teaming involves the same combining of individual talents and skills into a collective that is stronger as a whole than the sum of the parts.

Just as sports team coaches must consider the differing gifts of team members and determine ways to maximize performance of both individuals and the team, organizations must create and sustain teams that embrace differences – even when the team members are not recruited. In the current work environment, team member differences extend beyond skills and abilities to include different locations, different hours of work, and different degrees of commitment and engagement.

Team coaching is really all about facilitating the development of relationships that increases the likelihood of desired change. Noted author and organization coach Margaret Wheatley speaks to the importance of relationships when she says: “In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles and positions.”

Team Coaching Benefits

In teams of any kind, team members benefit from guidance in developing these critical relationships. On the field, in the board room, around the operating table, or at the construction site, team coaching can help team members:

• Clarify shared purpose
• Truly appreciate differences
• Understand the stages of team or group development
• Engage in open and honest dialogue
• Experience learning and growth
• Define and celebrate success

Master coach Adria Trowhill of Posi-TRAK Coaching and Consulting maintains that team coaching takes place in conversations. She sees it as a collaborative process where individual team members are regarded as creative and resourceful. She would likely suggest that sports team coaching models of command and control are best left in the locker room.

So if work is done in teams comprised of individual contributors who must establish some consensus around where they are and where they want to go, what does a team coach offer:

• Active listening/observing of the team process
• Maintenance of a safe environment where all voices are heard and respected
• Powerful questioning to provoke exploration of choices
• Direct communication including timely and relevant feedback
• Encouragement of individual and team accountability
• Reminders to focus on possibilities rather than limitations
• Knowledge of process improvement and team dynamics.

Why should you consider team coaching? It’s a legitimate development process that benefits individuals, teams and the organization and it allows team members to experience teaming that is effective, satisfying, and fun. It’s also a way to “play the game” where the scoreboard is not about win/loss as much as how the teaming experience was truly positive and transformational.

Why Team Coaching? The Real Question is Why Not??

If you find that your team experience is not what you wish it could be, think about what’s at stake if things don’t change. Consider assessing the current team using the Extraordinary Teams Inventory (ETI).  Use this objective data to help get hard to discuss matters on the table as well as to understand areas of team strength and areas for improvement.

Also consider engaging a team coach to help guide the team experience. A team coach can help get undiscussables talked about in a neutral way that both values and helps to replace dysfunctional behavior that has served people at one time, but no longer serves them.

For more information about Team Coaching using the Extraordinary Teams model and training package and the ETI, contact HRDQ. Additional information, resources, and support for developing extraordinary teams can be found at www.extraordinaryteams.us.

By Bill Treasurer

I once coached a professional named Bob who was considering three separate job offers. All were well known companies, but one was of particular renown. Its name carried a certain pedigree that eclipsed the others. Bob had settled his mind on one of the lesser offers, rationalizing that this particular job most resembled the roles that he had had in the past—roles that no longer challenged him, as he had mentioned in the course of earlier discussions.

Sensing there was more to it, I asked him to describe his impressions about the more prominent company. He said that many of the people who worked there had Ivy League degrees (which he didn’t) and/or graduate degrees (which he had). Although they had offered him the job, he said that he was afraid he wouldn’t cut it. I now understood that the issue wasn’t about skill compatibility; it was about Bob’s personal insecurities, it was about his fear. I probed further, “Bob, what exactly are you afraid of?” He thought for a second and said, “I guess I am afraid that everyone will be smarter than me, that my ideas won’t be valued. If that happens, they’ll fire me.”

Directed by Bob’s answer, I asked him another, more courage-provoking, question: If fear weren’t an issue, which job would you choose? Without hesitation he selected the one he was most afraid of.

As Bob’s story illustrates, fear often indicates something about yourself that you are avoiding. Left unaddressed, life will bombard you with a litany of opportunities to confront these “issues” until you finally resolve them. Each time you avoid the issue, you stuff it further into your psyche. But knowing that dealing with the issue represents your growth, your psyche throws the issue back up until you finally confront it, as if to say, if you don’t learn the lesson, you have to repeat the class.

Through coaching, Bob was able to see that not only did the job he was afraid of represent an opportunity to gain experience working in a world-class organization, but it also represented an ideal opportunity to explore and, more importantly, to overcome his deep-rooted feelings of low self-worth. But to benefit from both opportunities, he would have to muster up the courage to be courageous and to face his fear. Ultimately he did. He chose the opportunity he was most afraid of.

Any risk situation has a grand continuum: You are either moving in the direction of your courage or moving in the direction of your cowardice. When you face your fears, your Courage Capability expands, enlarging your capacity for dealing with future fears. In this way, demonstrating courage is itself a form of encouragement in that it fills you with greater levels of courage. Fortified with more courage, you are then capable of facing more fearful situations. For example, as a young professional you might find it petrifying to give a presentation to ten people. However, as you progress in your career and gain more experience with public speaking, you are able to comfortably address larger and larger audiences. In this example, the number of additional audience members reflects the degree of expansion of your Courage Capability.

Of course the opposite is also true. In situations where you allow fear to prevent yourself from having something you want, you enlarge your Cowardice Capability. And the more cowardice you exhibit, the more it grows because cowardice feeds on the diminishment of courage. On a certain level, this is also quantifiable. For example, the person who is afraid to take the risk of asking for a raise can calculate his cowardice as the difference between his current salary and the adjusted salary he feels he deserves but is too afraid to ask for (assuming, of course, that he would have gotten the raise).

People don’t like using the word coward. They look for softer, less offensive terms. But just because we don’t like the word doesn’t mean cowardice isn’t real. Cowardice is as real as courage. One exists in relation to the other. Furthermore, just as there have been times in your life when you’ve been courageous, the chances are, at some point in your life you’ve been a coward as well. Most acts of cowardice, however, go unnoticed and remain concealed within the confines of your heart. Cowardice comes in compromising your principles, in allowing your boundaries to be crossed, in failing to demonstrate personal fidelity, and in not taking a stand for what you believe in. You could spend your whole life being a coward and no one would know it but you.

Having the courage to be courageous means backing up courageous actions with a courageous attitude. It means holding a clear picture of yourself being courageous and continuously asking yourself, how would the courageous person I want to become act in this fearful situation that I am faced with today? It means first believing in the virtue of courage and then acting in a courageous manner.

When it comes to courage, you have to believe it to be it.

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 Watch the free webinar: 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.