A single decision transforms the act of coaching from a time drain to a hugely positive bottom line gain.
The ability to coach others is a required skill of today’s manager yet it is the most underutilized skill by most managers. The biggest complaint we hear from managers regarding coaching is the amount of time they perceive is required. Even when managers do coach, research has shown they confuse coaching and training. Here is the difference between the two:
Coaching = 75% guiding + 25% directing
Training = 25% guiding + 75% directing
In practice, most managers are actually training when they think they are coaching, and this primarily arises from the fact that they try to use a one-size-fits-all approach to coaching. We’ve discovered the most effective coaches make one decision that dramatically increases their success rate – they coach employees according to their employee type. This approach ensures employees receive a personalized level of coaching which leads to huge increases in productivity, employee engagement, and retention. The chart below summarizes the approach:
The secret to effective coaching is to develop other coaches throughout your team. By doing so, this dramatically reduces a manager’s time commitment to the process while creating the infrastructure to enable the achievement of exceptional results from the process. One huge caveat – we consistently observe another pitfall of coaching in organizations. There is an assumption that anyone with good technical skills of a job can coach others. This is an erroneous assumption, and it leads to the same mistake as we mentioned before – people mostly directing (training) and not guiding (coaching). Good coaching is less dependent on technical skills as it requires excellent communication skills, particularly strong skills in asking questions and listening. Think of how many people you know who ask really effective questions and listen extremely well. Now you know why people need to be trained in the art of effective coaching. The organizations that win and consistently win in the marketplace will also win the war for talent because they will be known for developing their talent by having a culture of coaching.
In future articles we will reveal additional best practices and tactics we teach managers that transform them into the most sought after coaches in their organizations.
The Floor is Yours
What additional tips and strategies for effective coaching for performance have you used? Please share them in the comments below.
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