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Coaching is spontaneous, one-on-one training. Providing immediate, specific feedback and correction is an important tool managers use to improve performance. Furthermore, as a motivational tool, it offers you an opportunity to give personal attention and recognition to your employees, and to gain their participation in advancing growth and achievement. In addition, it establishes you, the supervisor, as an expert model and, if done effectively, acknowledges the differences between one individual employee and another.
For all these reasons, supervisors should become fully conscious of the importance of coaching to their jobs and cultivate techniques to advance their effectiveness.
Background for the trainer
Who needs coaching?
Everyone benefits from the attention of coaching.
- Weak performers build necessary skills to meet standards.
- Average performers are better motivated to go for stretch goals.
- Top performers are affirmed by the recognition, encouraged to grow into more responsible positions, and/or shown that their contribution is not taken for granted.
Two notes of caution:
- Avoid appearing to play favorites, coaching only the most promising employees.
- Avoid appearing to pick on certain individuals, making it seem that only the most inept persons are singled out for direction.
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Training Objectives
Design your content so that at the end of training, trainees will be able to:
- Characterize the key elements of coaching.
- Understand its advantages in the workplace.
- Apply several effective techniques in coaching situations.
Key Training Content
What is coaching, and what does it mean in the workplace?
[Training suggestion: You might ask trainees at the start to think of an experience they had in which they were coached and to identify the qualities that made it work. The following points, common to all forms of coaching, should be brought out.]
- Personal, one-on-one training or teaching
- Spontaneous, informal
- Adapts to the immediate situation
- Usually targeted to a specific task or assignment
- Interactive—suggests a concerned, friendly, caring interest
- Offers encouragement and support
How is coaching an important part of a supervisor’s job?
Discuss the following points. Coaching:
- Helps improve performance by providing immediate feedback and correction
- Enhances employee’s motivation to :
- Give personal attention (a form of recognition)
- Participate actively in the learning process
- Achieve, with specific help
- Grow
- Conveys supervisor’s commitment to employees and to the quality of work
- Reinforces role of supervisor as expert
What are the core elements of effective coaching?
Go over each of these elements with trainees.
- Effective coaching is immediate, that is, as close to the time of need as possible.
- It’s best to coach while memory of a problem or situation is fresh or when employee is in need of guidance.
- Motivation for learning is highest at time of greatest need. (This is the theory behind “just-in-time” training.)
- Recognition for achievement or improvement is most appreciated closest to the event.
- Effective coaching is specific.
- Because it’s immediate, it responds to a particular situation and individual.
- Praise, correction, and encouragement should be detailed and exact to be helpful.
- Specific direction optimizes the advantage of personal attention.
- Specifics show you care about the person and about the details of how work is done.
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- Effective coaching is informal and spontaneous.
- The moment of need or opportunity for on-the-spot training can’t be predicted. Instruction gains in credibility because it’s not “canned” or prepared. Employee feels like a real person.
- Since it’s done as needed, it is task- or outcome-oriented and has a practical, everyday quality.
- Effective coaching is interactive.
- Supervisor doesn’t describe or lecture, but shows and advises.
- Supervisor makes sure employee understands by questioning and requesting employee to demonstrate back.
- The focus on the task or problem allows for collaborative problem solving.
Coaching can be easily suited to the personality and different learning preferences of the employee, such as…
- Being told
- Being shown
- Doing while being directed
- Figuring out alone after need or problem is identified
- Reading print, studying diagrams, etc.
- Being told versus being asked
- Step-by-step direction versus given a problem to solve or outcome to achieve
- Needing encouragement and reassurance versus needing firmness and authority
What are some of the techniques of informal, interactive training?
The key techniques of successful coaching include the following:
- Direct observation of behavior or specific facts
- Openness (Doesn’t rush to judgment or criticism. These cut off communication.)
- Questioning—to determine the problem and if employee understands
- Listening and showing that employee has been correctly understood
- Affirmation of the employee’s feelings and point of view
- Clarification; helping to identify the true nature of the problem
- Collaborative problem solving
Wrap-Up
Recap the training session by stating that on-the-job coaching is a powerful performance motivator and a highly effective training tool. Conclude by asking for and answering final questions.
In tomorrow’s Advisor, we’ll hear from one expert about three steps you can follow to measure the impact of your coaching program.
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