Notes on: Becoming a Better Coach: Beyond the Basics

'Becoming a Better Coach: Beyond the Basics' is excerpted from 'Performance Management: Measure and Improve the Effectiveness of Your Employees' published by Harvard Business School Press.

Conserve Time and Energy

Coaching is an investment that takes time up front and pays off in the long-run, but often managers are stuck in coaching moments that they do not have time for. It is important to be aware of the amount of time you allocate to coaching so your time and energy is not depleted trying to manage your other tasks as well.

Know When to Coach and When Not to Coach

Some situations do not warrant the investment of coaching and should be handled differently, this could be due to the value of the problem at hand, or sometimes the skillset of the employee.

Delegate When Possible

Delegating the task of coaching to other managers has three benefits:

1. It conserves your time and energy

2. It provides personal development to the other manager

3. It helps the person who needs coaching with their problem

Create the Right Climate

It is important for all levels of management to create a climate conducive to learning. Here are three ways to create the right climate:

1. Build mutual trust

2. Hold each other accountable for results

3. Motivate to learn and grow

Build Mutual Trust

You can build trust in multiple ways:

• Show compassion for other peoples well-being and success by treating them like a person instead of just an employee and checking in on them.

• Show expertise in a subject.

• Show your actions are consistent with your words.

• Always respect a persons confidentiality and boundaries.

Accountability for Results

Someone who does not feel accountable for results will not be open to coaching.

Motivation to Learn and Improve

Here are some common workplace motivations that encourage people to learn and improve:

• Mastering a skill will enable open doors to opportunities that depend on that skill in the future

• Improved productivity can lead to increased pay / bonuses

• A person feels their job is in danger if they do not improve

• Peer pressure

• An employee is feeling stagnant and needs change

Avoid These Common Mistakes

Most managers are not trained coaches and tend to make some of the following mistakes:

• Talking too much. Coaching is a collaborative activity and talking too much means not listening enough and in order to be an effective coach you need to give your coachee a chance to express themselves.

• Failing to listen. Listening means digesting and understanding what they are saying and not just merely hearing their words.

• Losing control of your emotions. This destroys the trust you need to build and shows you are not on control. The only time emotion should be used is to show empathy.

• Directing someone towards something they are not emotional prepared for. A coach should sometimes push people outside their comfort zones, but encouragement can become overwhelming and demotivating for someone who is emotionally not prepared for a task.

Be a Good Role Model

The best way to effectively coach someone is by modelling the behaviour you want them to display. It is important to set and display the standards of behaviour and performance you want your coachees to adopt.

The Challenge of Team Coaching

You can be part of a permanent team, like a department, or you can be part of a temporary team that was put together for a project. In either case, there must be a team leader who coaches the others and sometimes that includes team members who may even be more senior. As a team leader, here are some tasks you can coach your team on:

• Get back on track when they are having performance problems

• Maximize individual strengths

• Overcome personal obstacles

• Achieve new skills and competencies

• Prepare for new responsibilities

• Manage themselves more effectively

In all coaching situations, but especially when you are coaching someone who is not a direct report, mutual agreement is important and the coachee want to do better and must welcome your help.

Summing Up

• Be selective on when to coach. Sometimes it may be better to delegate the coaching to another manager.

• Create a climate with mutual trust, accountability for results, and the motivation to learn and grow.

• Avoid talking too much, failing to listen, losing control of your emotions, and failing to emotionally prepare the coachee.

• With non-direct reports and team leaders should focus on areas they can help.

• It takes practise to become a good coach.