What would happen if we truly coached this employee? What if we asked the employee what was causing them to be late to work? The employee might share that they hit the snooze button too many times and therefore wake up late. What if the manager asked the employee to identify the obstacles in their way and what could they do to remove them to be able to arrive at work on time? The employee might say their obstacle is that their alarm clock is too close to the bed and they don’t have to get out of bed to hit the snooze button. It is easy to go back to sleep. What if the employee thought about how they could overcome this obstacle? They might say that they could move their clock across the room and then they would have to get out of bed to turn it off. They would likely stay up and not return to bed. How would this conversation differ from the manager’s original conversation?
The manager would know that the employee knew what they needed to do to arrive to work on time. The employee would know something they could put in to action in order to arrive to work on time. When the employee prepared to go to bed that evening, they would likely move their alarm clock across the room instead of going to bed frustrated and stressed that they had to wake up on time or they would lose their job. Instead of feeling that their boss was just going through the process, they might feel that their boss was trying to help and mentor them. They would have a little more confidence because they received real guidance from their manager through coaching. The employee would have something to work with, a chance to succeed.
Coaches are fully aware that knowing what to do is not the same as knowing how to do it.
(Dr. Richard Curwin)
Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance.
(Proverbs 1:5, English Standard Version)
What is coaching?
Coaching can be defined in various ways. It has been described as:
unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is “helping them to learn rather than teaching them,
(Gallwey, 1975).
It is
a process that enables learning and development to occur and thus performance to improve, (Parsloe, 1999);
a flexible process
whereby an individual, through direct discussion and guided activity, helps a colleague to learn to solve a problem or to do a task better than would be otherwise the case,
(Megginson and Baydell, 1979).
It is about creating a supportive environment in which to challenge and develop critical thinking skills,
(Guest, 1999).
Coaching to teach?
Good coaches make great teachers
(Dr. Richard Curwin).
Coaching is a form of teaching and development. It can be planned or it can be impromptu. Real coaching means changing someone’s behavior. How do people change? They change through practice, through repetition, and through self-reflection in a steady progress over time approach. They require immediate feedback and individualized instruction at a point in time when they truly need it.
Most leaders want to help their employees to become better problem-solvers, to be collaborative and to think critically. In order for this to happen, leaders need to refrain from their natural tendency to provide their employees with the answers or solutions to their problems. Instead, they should ask probing open-ended questions to help them reflect and analyze their situation.
Many leaders try to change their employee’s behavior by providing incentives, threats, contracts, consequences, or punishments. These techniques are 100% useless in changing someone’s behavior unless they know how to do something else.
How many employees are blamed for poor performance when they never really understood the process or the answer to begin with? How many managers have you heard say, “I tell my employee the same thing over and over again and they don’t seem to get it?” What is the typical response? “I have to jump in and do everything myself,” managers complain.
Let’s look at a very simple example. If an employee asks his manager what three times five is, he will nearly always receive the response from his manager of 15. After a few days, the employee doesn’t remember the answer so they go back to the manager again to find out what three times five is. Again, the manager will provide the answer of 15. This will happen again and again. Unless the employee memorizes that three times five is 15, they will always have to ask their manager what the answer is. A couple things have occurred in this scenario. The manager has only “told” the employee what the answer is. They have not “taught” the employee. They took the easy way out. The employee is left to memorize the information they received. Bottom line is they don’t understand how to solve the problem.
What if the manager used a coaching technique to teach the employee what three times five is? When the employee asks the manager what three times five is, the manager could ask the employee some of the following questions:
Sure, it would take longer to go through a series of questions like these than to just give the employee the answer of 15. But, what would happen here? The employee would feel good about themselves, confident that they knew how to solve the problem. They would feel empowered to solve the problem and wouldn’t come back to the manager over and over again. Better yet, they would feel engaged in what they were doing, feel more satisfied performing their job duties, and will likely increase their work performance. This will ultimately impact the company’s bottom line in a positive way. The manager, on the other hand, would feel more confident in knowing that the employee knew how to solve the problem. This confidence leads to trust and empowerment. The manager is relieved of the burden to provide the answer or to perform the work required. When we use coaching to help people learn something we are creating a win-win situation.