nerdleader

Last week we reviewed three key tasks you can focus on to improve your approach to coaching others. The first task is to set yourself up for coaching success by fomenting a positive, trustworthy attitude and creating a bearing that others will want to learn from. The second task is to build a baseline and plan by identifying where your trainee wants to go and what it takes to get there. The third task is to do the work of coaching by training, reinforcing, measuring, and iterating on skill development.

This week we will look at a recent example where I have had an opportunity to put the above into practice. Over my career I have trained and coached others in several areas, from sports, to technology skills, to soft skills and attitude. And as a father I get to do coaching, motivation, and attitude adjustments daily! This particular example comes from a fast-paced, dynamic work environment full of interesting personalities and challenges.

I once had an employee with a negative outlook and casual approach to communication. They had tremendous technology skills, they brought a good approach to their day-to-day tasks, and they were respected by their own team (a position not shared by other teams), but by starting from a position of negativity they did not properly handle setbacks. We all need a mulligan occasionally, but their foundation was not where it needed to be, and they were consistently leaving a bad impression on others through their interactions. By building additional rapport, I learned two main important items:

1. Their home life was affecting their day to day performance
2. The work that peers and stakeholders were doing was not up to this employee’s mostly reasonable standards

The high-level goal was for the employee to be able to communicate with others in a positive fashion. After developing a coaching attitude and bearing, our coaching excellence model notes that we should determine the required skills to accomplish this task, what the trainee’s current strengths and proficiencies are, and what areas to focus on. Per this model, here was my analysis:

• Required skills/attributes: empathy for others, compartmentalization, conciseness, professional bearing
• Current strengths: high intelligence and motivation, deep understanding of technology, strong desire for excellence
• Areas of improvement: communication clarity and perspective

The Venn diagram between “required skills” and “current strengths” did not quite overlap as much as one might want. Nevertheless, I felt I could leverage their problem-solving skills and desire for excellence to create a plan to improve clarity and perspective. This would lead to improved relations with other teams and a feedback loop of success, teamwork, and results. Here is what we put into practice:

1. Teach – I worked with my employee to understand the heart of the message they were trying to communicate and to better anticipate how the receiver was going to understand the message. One exercise we would perform was a type of “5 whys” exercise where we would answer the question “why did you say that?” (aka “what were you trying to communicate by saying this?”) until we reached the core of the message. Additionally, I also had the opportunity to discuss one of my favorite topics, communication theory, to help them to better understand message encoding and decoding in communications.
2. Reinforce – We met occasionally to discuss emails, phone calls, etc., and perform “5 whys” analyses to determine different ways of encoding messages. I would also perform hallway meetings subsequent to difficult interactions to offer perspective on how others may be receiving messages, and to reinforce the roles that others were playing within the organization. In this way I could reinforce that others are performing their duties with requirements and constraints that were appropriate but out of the employee’s line of sight.
3. Observe – I had the luxury of being on calls, chats, and emails where I could directly observe the messages, tone of voice, and reaction to what was said.
4. Measure – The measurements I was able to make were quantitative in nature. Firstly, I was able to observe direct reactions to communications and I could evaluate if the messages were decoded properly and if the conversations were moving forward or moving in circles. Secondly, as their line manager I was receiving feedback about their performance and could evaluate this feedback in tone and nature.

The result of our diving deep on communication and perspective was a sharp drop in the amount of feedback I received about this employee and a sharp uptick in public appreciation of their work and affirmation of their approach. They became our top product owner measured by delivery velocity and remained a valuable part of the team.

In these articles on coaching we have investigated a framework for coaching success. This framework consists of:

1. Setting yourself up for coaching success by being the kind of person that others would want to learn from
2. Building a baseline and a plan by identifying the goal(s), what strengths are required to successfully achieve the goal(s), what strengths and proficiencies your trainee currently has, and what the gaps and opportunities are
3. Iterating on skill improvement by teaching new concepts and routines, reinforcing your teachings through regular practice and review, observing the skills in practice, and measuring the outcomes
4. By utilizing this framework you can generate demonstrable improvement within your team and repetitive success within your own careers.