Today we discuss the fine art of Coaching. Most managers probably think they do a fine job coaching their teams, but guess what? You probably have several misconceptions about coaching that prevent you from getting the absolute best out of your team. Today, we discuss coaching at length and present a coaching model that you can start using today to improve your coaching abilities. It’s both easier and takes less time than you think.

To improve your understanding of the Coaching Model we discuss on the podcast, download and print the Manager Tools Coaching Card prior to listening to the podcast.

Today we continue our discussion on Coaching. Now, if you haven’t listened to last weeks show where we introduced the coaching model, I strongly suggest you go back and listen to that show first. Also, if you haven’t downloaded and read the Manager Tools Coaching Card yet, please do so. You may just want to print it so you have it available during the podcast. It will assist you greatly in following the coaching example we present today.

We got a great email recently from a listener asking about how to develop one of the managers in their company. The mail went something like this: “hey guys, love manager tools, really like the usability of the recommendations. But need some help. One of our guys has some management responsibilities, and we’d like to help him get better. Wonder if you can recommend some sort of comprehensive coaching program, with some resources or books that we can get him involved in.”

Well, if you’ve ever thought that about one of your managers, or maybe even yourself, this cast is for you. What we’re going to do is present you an abbreviated version of the manager-tools development philosophy, and then give you some coaching examples that would fit within it. Now, we say the word “philosophy with great trepidation. It’s one of those big words that books on management fill themselves up with, but that don’t really help folks like you and us get any better at what we do. So maybe we ought to say this: we’re going to tell you exactly how we develop people, and give you one example to get you started. More examples in a future podcast, as well as the inclusion of development plans.

Ever since our podcast on the Manager Tools Development Model, we’ve continued to receive a number of questions on a key component of the process — the coaching model. In particular, folks are having a difficult time on coaching employees on some of the “softer” skills. So for the next two shows, we’re revisiting our friend, the coaching model. In addition to getting into an example of a soft-skill coaching challenge, we also talk a bit about what we mean by “behavior” — what is it exactly (of course, we have a model for that as well), and how do we use it within the coaching model.

Remember: In addition to our normal feedback email address, you can now leave audio feedback for us on our new voice mailbox. You can reach us at (206) 202-7376. Please note on your message if you don’t want us to use your audio feedback “on air”!

Today, we cover the second of two shows on “Coaching Revisited”. If you haven’t listened to last week’s show, we encourage you to do so. This one picks right up where we left off last week.

Ok, let’s get this out of the way … this is not *really* a show about how to fire people. Rather, today we discuss how to take a poor performer and turn them into a good performer. And when, despite your best efforts, you are not successful in helping the person turn around, how to be in a position where you can fire the person. You may not feel good about it (that’s ok, you shouldn’t!), but you will be confident in your decision and be able to put your head down on your pillow and sleep at night.

There are six steps:

1. Feedback
2. Systemic Feedback
3. One on One Performance Discussion
4. Coaching
5. Formal Performane Discussion and Notification
6. Coaching Within Your Corporate Process

We’ll review these steps at a high-level today, and come back to them with more detail and some examples over the next couple of podcasts.

If you’re one of our many listeners who come to the website each week to download the show, try subscribing. Simply go to iTunes, download the iTunes player, and then click on the iTunes subscription button on the left side of this web page. It’s quick, it’s easy, and you’ll have the convenience of having the Manager Tools podcast downloaded AUTOMATICALLY each week. Give it a try!

Last week, we covered at a high-level the Late Stage Coaching model, or the process you go through when having to fire someone. As we noted then, and we’ll say again now, this process isn’t really a “how to fire someone”, but rather, how to develop someone. In most cases, if you follow this model, you NEVER get to the step where you have to fire someone. Now, isn’t that an experience we’d all like to avoid?

This week, we review the model in a bit more detail, with some detailed examples to better illustrate the process. The entire review was a bit long, so we broke it into 2 parts, the first of which we’ll cover today. We’ll follow-on with the second part next week.

Warning: For some of you, this show may sound repetitive. To some degree, it is. If you fully understand the model AND have implemented it, we beg your forgiveness. If you haven’t, however, listen on …

As we discuss at the end of the podcast, we’ve noted that although many of our listeners really would like to engage in more meaningful discussions on management topics, the blog doesn’t lend itself too well to the task. We’ve attempted to improve the situation by implementing discussion forums on our website. You can find the discussion forums here. We’d very much appreciate it if you would direct your questions and comments to the discussion forums rather than leaving them here on the blog or sending them to us via email. There are an awful lot of good conversations happening, particularly on email, that we would like to share with the broader Manager Tools community. If you have a particular challenge or question for us, it’s very likely that others do so as well … sharing your problems/questions on the discussion forum will allow all of us to benefit and learn!

Last week, in our detailed review of the Late Stage Coaching Model, we covered steps 1 and 2 (Feedback and Systemic Feedback) of the six steps. Today we review the last 4 steps.

As a reminder, the 6 steps of the Late Stage Coaching Model are:

1. Feedback - Key point here is one of FREQUENCY versus significance. Good adjusting feedback is relaxed, it’s professional, it’s simple, it’s respectful. But it is also DELIVERED.
2. Systemic Feedback- Systemic feedback is simply feedback about an employee failing to change behavior that they’ve agreed to work on. This is a critical and often overlooked escalation of your performance coaching, and has powerful implications. Effective Managers AVERT the need for performance coaching with this step ALL THE TIME.
3. One on One Performance Discussion - In this step you simply make YOUR agenda item during your weekly one-on-one their continued failure to perform. You talk about their performance, and review all the feedback and systemic feedback, and their lack of improvement. And you ask for their input. You’re doing FOUR things here.
   1. Reconfirming that they are performing below your standards.
   2. Creating a key documentation point.
   3. Asking for comments of ANY nature that might explain the performance issue.
   4. Asking again for ideas about how THEY can improve THEIR performance.
4. Coaching - It’s possible you never get to coaching, because the feedback, systemic feedback, and direct one-on-one discussion get the point across. We hope so, we BELIEVE so… until they don’t get it. And then we coach them.
5. Formal Performance Discussion and Notification - This discussion is similar to the first one. But now, you’re doing FIVE things.
   1. Reconfirming that they are performing below your standards.
   2. Creating a key documentation point.
   3. Asking for comments of ANY nature that might explain the performance issue.
   4. Asking again for ideas about how THEY can improve THEIR performance.
   5. And finally, Notifying them about the implications of continued failure to improve.
6. Coaching Within Your Corporate Process - We can’t tell you what it is; it’s different in every company. You coach them using the MT coaching model, modifying it to allow for your organization’s final steps or system. If you’ve followed the process we’ve described, you’ll be in a great position to comply with whatever processes exist in your company prior to finally letting someone go.

As we’ve said repeatedly, you use this model ALL THE TIME, not just when you have someone you intend to let go. 99 times out of 100, behavior changes and you never get to step 6.

Questions or comments? Chat with us about them in the Discussion Forums.

Thanks to everyone participating on the Discussion Forums … we’re all learning!

One of the greatest parts of being a manager is coaching your directs … even if, we’d guess, you don’t do it nearly often enough. But you know if you’re one of our thousands of regular listeners that with the coaching model, we recommend you coach every member of your team ALWAYS. The reason we recommend this is that most managers think that coaching means TRAINING, which it doesn’t. For the hundredth time: any manager, with the Manager Tools Coaching Model, can coach ALL of their directs at ALL times, for the most part DURING their weekly One on Ones. [If this intrigues you listen to the Coaching Casts, starting here.]

Okay, but what about when you really do need to be the trainer? What about when you come up with a list of resources for when one of your team has to present to senior execs, or when one needs to learn how to run a meeting, or even overcome an objection in a sales call… and you, the manager, really are the most obvious and best resource?

Easy: you become the Trainer. It’s not common - it ought to be somewhat rare, to be honest. [There’s always someone else to ask to help!] But when you ARE the Trainer, how do you do it?

Four Steps, described in detail in this Cast: How to Do Simple Training.

This cast describes the role of Coaching in the Management Trinity, and makes a KEY recommendation regarding development of directs and performance management.

This week, we cover the Coaching Model’s inclusion in the Management Trinity. It’s BY FAR the least used of the Trinity. That’s too bad, because it only takes 5 minutes a week per direct to coach them. FIVE MINUTES A WEEK! Who would want to go to their boss and say, “I didn’t coach my people this YEAR, because over the course of the year it would have taken me 4 hours, and I didn’t want to spend that much time on it.”

Not if you worked for us. At least, not for long.