As a co-founder and executive at a company in the coaching industry, I find it exceptional that there are so many different perspectives and misunderstandings on what effective coaching is. Our work focuses on creating a coaching culture that intersects with assessments, coaches, and the businesses that companies serve. Therefore, this gives us a unique perspective on the industry.
The word coaching is loaded and often connected to sports in a non-business context. That professional football coach you see screaming at their players often comes to mind. This is not what we are talking about at all. Sure there may be some great analogies in sports, but in a work context, a good coach is a sherpa or a wise sage.
I recently even had a Sales Executive at a large HR tech company ask me what the difference was between Coaching, Mentoring, and Performance Management (this is a topic for a post on a different day) – needless to say, these all serve very other purposes but the result can often be the same… personal and professional development.
Learn more about the differences between coaching, mentoring, and consulting here.
TYPES OF COACHING IN HISTORY
Historically, coaching in a business context has been seen as something negative. Ask someone over 55 what they think of workplace coaching and they likely will talk about how they or someone they know was “coached out” of a previous job. This is a relic of corporate America in the ’80s, the Jack Welch era focused on reducing the “bottom 20%” of workers that were under-performers.
This mindset has rightfully shifted and will continue to shift significantly as our workforce gets younger and younger. Millennials and Gen-Z expect the same level of support in their work (especially in that first job) that they experienced throughout school. Their formative years were full of coaching from sports (often even AAU or travel teams) and career development that were there for every step of the journey. But then they graduated college, started their first job, were handed a piece of technology, and told “good luck”. This support vacuum has led to an increased demand for life coaching, personal development coaching, professional coaching, business coaching, and leadership coaching to fill the void.
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INVEST SMARTLY IN COACHING PROCESSES
Coaching has also typically been the exclusive domain of top executives (C-Suite or the next level down) in organizations. Typically only about 5% of an organization was “eligible” for such a perk. This is mainly because of the cost. Executive coaching can be expensive and often charge an hourly rate. Paying that cost for frontline workers was hard to justify to CFOs. Today’s tight labor market and changing distributed or remote workforce means employee engagement is key and perhaps we are at least willing to consider expanding access to coaching to the top 10% today.
As I pitch to investors I often get the question, ‘what is coaching trying to solve?’ Put another way, ‘who is paying for coaching conversations and why would someone engage a coach?’ Typically coaching hasn’t been purchased in any centralized way. Managers and leaders (especially in larger, more global companies) often find people they trust in their local regions and start working with them, paying for it directly from their cost center budgets or out of their pocket. There are currently 65,000 of these independent coaches in the US, which could be closer to 135,000 globally. Cloverleaf provides Automated Coaching™ to the entire organization for less than the cost of providing coaching to the top 5-10%.
Learn about Automated Coaching™ for a thriving workplace here.
IMPORTANCE OF SUCCESSFUL COACHING
But back to the original question – ‘what is coaching trying to solve?’ In short, all of the soft skill development and interpersonal challenges arise in a business context. This can look like a lot of things depending on the person, team, or organization. Some examples include conflict (either conflict between team members or conflict between a manager and their direct report), poor cross-functional collaboration (us vs them mentality between departments or divisions), and ineffective communication.
There are no silver bullets for these types of business challenges. No simple SaaS tool (at least before Cloverleaf) could help solve these often more complex and personal challenges. This leads us back to a business coach. Finding an advisor was the only or simplest problem-solving for effective communication and employee well-being. Coaching relationships could be independent of these interpersonal challenges and provide possible solutions for difficult work relationships.
Businesses in the United States typically spend more than $13 billion per year on coaching sessions with these people to bring solutions. Which brings us to the next point – how are we certain they are bringing solutions or as a CFO might ask – ‘what is the ROI on coaching?’ Most studies demonstrate a return of 4-7 times the cost of coaching. While it can be hard to calculate a return on investment in people, we know that good leaders translate into measurable growth in employee performance.
Learn more about the importance of coaching in the workplace here.
In short, the benefits of coaching bring a positive impact on your company culture. These competencies generate a significant ROI by improving leadership development and overall work performance. Are you ready to get your team started with Automated Coaching™?
To realize your goals in the New Year, focus on goal pursuit, not goal setting.
Researchers have conducted tens of thousands of experiments on goal setting, illustrating that things like difficulty and specificity are associated with better outcomes. Goal setting, however, is only half the battle. And arguably, it’s the easy half. Without proper “goal pursuit,” the well-set goal will never actually be achieved.
It’s that time of year to set the agenda for the upcoming year. To ensure your goals are actually achieved, consider self-reflecting on each of the goal pursuit dimensions described below.
But first, consider taking my free, validated, and theoretically grounded assessment, “The Right Way To Pursue Your Goals.” This 12-question assessment will automatically generate your scores and a comparison to your peers.
Before discussing goal pursuit, it’s important to clarify the first step—goal setting—of which there are two primary frameworks.
First is SMART goals, which stand for specific (S), measurable (M), actionable (A), realistic (R), and time-bound (T). The focus of the SMART framework is making goals clear, objective, and reasonable. The premise is that clarity is associated with action.
Second is FAST goals, which stands for frequently discussed (F), ambitious (A), specific (S), and transparent (T). The FAST framework is relatively new and builds upon the weakness of the SMART framework. Namely, that individuals are embedded within collective systems such as teams or organizations.
If goal setting is the beginning, goal pursuit is everything in-between the beginning and the end. Once a goal has been set, there are four behavioral approaches that should be pursued that increase the likelihood of goal achievement.
Recognize that Goal Pursuit Involve Dynamic Iteration
Frequent Reevaluation. Organizational change is inevitable. Sometimes it’s drastic and sudden (e.g., the pandemic) and sometimes it’s subtle and incremental (e.g., small mistakes over time). It’s also possible that personal circumstances or interests change over time. While it’s important to stick with your goals, it’s also important to update them based upon your circumstances. It’s pointless to accomplish a goal if it’s no longer relevant or fulfilling.
Pinpoint Successes and Failures. Consider what challenges you’ve overcome and what obstacles remain. Such reflection will ensure that you are efficiently refocusing your efforts and coming up with new strategies for goal attainment.
Create Systems. Create systems that make dynamic interaction part of your routine. For example, schedule time on your calendar for yourself or meeting with others, or add the goal reevaluation process to part of your daily or weekly task list. This reevaluation schedule should be commensurate with the timing of the goals (e.g., daily for short-term goals, monthly for annual goals, etc.).
Free Playbook For Creating An Engaging Employee Experience even During Challenging Times
- What The Future Workplace Looks Like
- How To Activate Emotional Intelligence Within Your Team
- Factors Of Employee Motivation
- Strategies For Employee Engagement
- A Hybrid Work Model For Collaboration, Flexibility, & Fulfillment
- The Power Of Coaching In The Workplace
- How To Reduce The Impact Of Labour Turnover
Allow for Goal Pursuit Transparency
Tell Somebody. You’re much more likely to stick with your goals when you verbalize them to friends, family, or colleagues. But go beyond the one-and-done goal reveal. When working with others, don’t “bury the lead.” Begin conversations by clearly explaining your goals and how the initiative at hand plays into those goals.
Network Accountability. Use guilt to your advantage. Nobody enjoys letting others down. To increase your odds of sticking with something, figure out how to create some degree of interdependence between your goals and the goals of others. This forced accountability will inevitably lead to ongoing conversations about how to properly pursue the goals together.
Know Your Why. It’s not enough to simply have a goal. You need to be able to clearly explain why the goal is important to you. Along the way, there will be many people out there that chip away at your ability to stick with your goal. It is in those moments where you need to be able to clearly articulate your why.
Embrace a Multi-Goal Mentality
Reconcile Competing Goals. A glaring flaw of goal-setting frameworks is that they only consider one goal at a time. This is unrealistic. We typically have a list of several goals, some short-term and some long-term, some straightforward and some complex, and some work-related and some personal. It is therefore important to evaluate when and where conflicts manifest. In some cases, it will be necessary to choose one over another. In other cases, it’ll be necessary to make compromises.
Goal Prioritization. Once we recognize the reality of having multiple, competing goals, it is necessary to continually reprioritize goals. Perhaps certain goals should get priority because they are more urgent or because they are tied to other important factors like our well-being or security. Additionally, these goal reprioritization decisions shouldn’t be tied to how we’re feeling in that moment. Instead, these decisions should be based on values and/or higher-order goals.
Time Allocation. We get done what we spend time on. The same rules we follow with respect to time management can be integrated with goal pursuit. The tendency is to spend time focusing on easier, short-term goals. What we should be doing, however, is constantly evaluating our time expenditure on all of our goals, and regularly recalibrating to ensure we first satisfy our highest priority goals.
Make Goal Pursuit Learning-Focused, Not Performance-Focused
Learning First, Performance Second. Focusing on objective outcomes is great. But sometimes we focus on the end-goal without considering how we get there. If the goal is relatively difficult, by definition, we don’t yet have all of the ingredients for achieving the goal. Thus, the focus should be on learning, not performing.
New Knowledge or Skills. It’s important to uncover what exactly we need to learn in order to obtain our goal. The first common category is knowledge, which entails the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. The second is skills, which entails proficiencies obtained through training or experience. Obtaining knowledge comes from asking the right questions from the right sources. Obtaining skills comes from seeking out opportunities to practice the behaviors of interest.
Breaking Down the Process. Efficient goal pursuit entails breaking down goals into sub-goals, steps, or components. Sub-goals are smaller goals that accumulate as a larger end-goal. Step-based goals work like a Gantt chart, showing you what you need to do first, second, third, etc. to progress towards the end-goal. Component-based goals have an interactive effect such that the end-goal will only be achieved if several components are simultaneously achieved.
Keep in mind that goal setting is important, but it will only take you so far. To achieve your goals in the New Year, it’s important to focus on the process of goal pursuit.
Visit www.scottdust.com for more free resources for human capital enthusiasts, including a free e-book titled “A Field Guide to Human Capital Assessments.”
Whether you want to get a new client started out successfully, or continue to sustain your current clientele, it’s important to have the right coaching skills to help them thrive. Therefore, we want to help you in your effective coaching journey by providing a list of the do’s and don’ts of coaching in the workplace.
DO: ASK OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS
One of our best coaching tips is that asking “yes” and “no” questions will not lead anywhere. If your client does not expand on what they are saying, the conversation may end too quickly and provide no meaningful context to work off or toward goals.
Good example: Ask: what do you find challenging about that? This leaves the conversation open for your coachee to speak on challenges and to expand as much as possible. This also may draw out more than one answer.
Bad example: Ask: do you think that is challenging because of your schedule? Your client may respond yes or no and leave the conversation there. They also may feel as though you are leading them to an answer, causing them to answer favorably. This does not leave room for them to discover problems or solutions on their own.
DO: Build Trust
Without a solid foundation of trust, your client will likely not speak freely about issues and areas of improvement, which will have an impact on their well-being and overall job satisfaction.
Good example: During coaching conversations, be an active listener, ask questions, be empathetic, don’t judge, and focus on your client (meaning don’t get distracted – no one likes meeting with someone who gets distracted by everything in the background and doesn’t make eye contact).
Bad example: Don’t pry into their client’s personal life (unless they want to), and don’t socialize (this could be unprofessional and make you seem like you’re always available).
DO: KNOW THAT EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT
Every person may need to be coached in a slightly different way. This is a learning process. Remember to be flexible and to tailor your approach so you don’t scare them off or underwhelm them. Using Cloverleaf for Coaches as a tool will prepare you with their preferred style of work, communication, conflict, etc.
Good example: A good coach takes time to learn how new clients work, as they will likely all be different.
Bad example: Jump in with the same attitude every time, as this will be accepted differently by different clients.
DON’T: TELL THEM WHAT TO DO
You are not your client, so when they ask you what you would do, know how to change the direction, and act as a leader, don’t just give out directions.
Good example:
Client: “My manager told me to do x task, but that’s not in my job description, so I didn’t do it. Now we have a meeting on Monday. What would you do?”
Coach: “Well, let’s dive deeper into this first. Why do you feel…?”
Bad example:
Client: “My manager told me to do x task, but that’s not in my job description, so I didn’t do it. Now we have a meeting on Monday. What would you do?”
Coach: “I would have done…”
DON’T: TALK MORE THAN YOUR CLIENT DOES
Your coachee should never feel like they are in a lecture or being talked at. So make sure you are asking questions to guide the coaching sessions, but they should also be talking most of the time. Be an active listener and ask follow-up questions. This will allow them to be comfortable with you and reveal underlying issues they are having.
DON’T: TALK ABOUT CLIENTS WITHOUT PERMISSION
You should never be talking about Sally’s work issues with Ryan to mentor him on what he is going through, that’s not right. But, you can pull the same coaching tools from different experiences and use them across clients.
Keep in mind this serves solely as a methodology in your backpack. If a client goes through a certain issue that you feel would serve as a good example, ASK them for permission before you do. If they say no, respect their boundaries.
In summary, remember that to be a great coach you need to ask open-ended questions, build trust, and recognize that everyone is unique.
HELP YOUR LEADERS MOVE FROM A BOSS TO COACH!
Inside you'll learn:
- Strategies for developing essential leadership skills within your managers
- Best practices for communicating and coaching your team
- Insight for navigating conflict and change
- Practical ideas for enhancing teamwork and motivating team members
