Coaching Conversations

 “A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you always knew you could be.”

– Tom Landry, Dallas Cowboys Coach

This article series is about learning how to serve well as leaders and create high-performing organizations. We are relying on the over 40 years of wisdom and experience of Ken Blanchard and his associates as we go. 

In his work, Blanchard lays out four keys to serving well as a leader. They are:

• Set your sights on the right target and vision. 
• Treat customers right. 
• Treat your people right.
• Have the right kind of leadership. 

This week we will continue learning about how to “treat your people right” and focus on how to create a coaching culture. Coaching cultures build trust. Trust creates “psychological safety” that drives engagement. Engaged teams deliver better outcomes. Gallup research has showed that engaged workplaces experience 41% lower absenteeism, 20% more sales and 21% greater productivity. 

Blanchard defines coaching as:

“A deliberate process using focused conversations to create an environment that results in accelerated performance and development.”

Coaching shifts leaders from a focus on managing performance to promoting the development of their team. That development and growth drives the performance desired. Coaching leaders see development as means to transform team members into the performers the organization needs. The best organizations know that growing leaders is the only path to sustained success. Coaching is the way the best grow leaders. 

There are four applications to internal coaching. They are performance coaching, development coaching, career coaching and learning coaching. 

Performance Coaching

In performance coaching, the conversations are focused on bringing a previous good performer back from recent poor outcomes. These are some of the hardest conversations a leader can have, but they are some of the most beneficial to the organization and the team member. 

Performance coaches must clearly state the problem and paint a clear, objective picture of the outcome desired and required. Root cause analysis can help find the reasons for the poor outcomes and lead to the changes required. On-going conversations will review leading indicators to make sure the change is occurring with encouragement and advice along the way. 

Development Coaching

Team members are more energized, encouraged and engaged when their leaders keep their development in mind. Development coaching helps team members that are performing well growing and expanding their capabilities. The coach listens to find out what development opportunities the team member is interested in, provides feedback to keep them focused on their strengths and then helps them find the right opportunities to expand their skills and abilities. 

Career Coaching

Career coaching retains talent and increases bench strength over time. People love talking about the future they want to build. Career coaching helps them find opportunities in the organization that allows them meet their personal goals while help the organization achieve its goals. 

Most people leave organizations because no one asked them to stay. Keeping great people may require moving them within the organization. This can be time consuming for managers, but is much better for the organization than loosing good people. 

Coaching to Support Learning

Great people love to learn and grow. Training can be a great tool for this. The biggest problem with training is the “learning-doing gap.” Coaching to support learning lessens this gap by having conversations about what was learned and setting goals for implementing the training in the employee’s work. Setting regular conversations with concrete goals cements the learning, grows the individual and increases the capacities of the organization. 

The right coaching conversations keep great people on your team and grow the organization’s capacity to meet and exceed it’s goals. Next week, we’ll dive into how to make coaching a part of your organization’s culture.

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