What is Coaching?
According to the Chartered Institute of Professional Development, coaching is:
“Developing a person’s skills and knowledge so that their job performance improves, hopefully leading to the achievement of organisational objectives. It targets high performance and improvement at work, although it may also have an impact on an individual’s private life. It usually lasts for a short period and focuses on specific skills and goals.”
Essentially a coach is someone who prepares, develops, leads, inspires and enables employees to reach peak performance and achieve their goals.
Leadership and coaching go hand-in-hand. As a leader, you want your employees to achieve their goals, as this enables you to achieve yours and the business to achieve theirs.
What does Coaching Look Like?
Coaching has the following characteristics:
Sessions are generally structured, short meetings on a regular basis;
It is short-term (sometimes time pressured in nature) and usually focused on a specific developmental area;
Action orientated with focus on improving performance to achieve specific, immediate goals;
Action plans are generally broken down into steps;
Addresses the gap between desired performance and actual performance; and
Provides feedback and measurement on performance, including strengths and weaknesses.
What is Coaching On the Go?
Whilst the most effective form of coaching is a collaborative approach that involves openness, communication, reflection and action, sometimes it is necessary to deal with issues quickly.
There will be times where leaders will need to coach an employee on a behaviour and/or attitude, which is urgent in nature. Dealing with these issues ‘on the go’, without interrupting the normal workflow or other team members is an important step in leadership.
This is where the Coaching On the Go Model comes in. It can be used in one of two ways:
In collaboration with the employee – where you work through each step together, coming up with responses that both parties agree on; or
Used as a way for leaders to think through the issue and come up with a suitable solution to assist the employee to improve performance. The model can then be used as a way to discuss the issue with the employee, and lead them to the desired outcome.
The Steps of the Coaching On the Go Model:
There are four steps to the Coaching On the Go Model, these are:
Identify the Current Issue or Problem: In this step, either the leader or employee would describe the current issue or problem, ensuring that specific examples are used.It is better for the employee to describe the issue or problem, however at times they may not even be aware of the problem.
Describe the Desired Outcome: This step involves identifying what the desired outcome is – what would it look like and feel like if the issue or problem was resolved?
List the Obstacles: This step involves identifying all the possible obstacles between the current situation and the desired outcome.Obstacles could be as a result of attitudinal, skill-based, behavioural or environmental matters, and could be on the part of the employee, colleagues, leaders or customers.
Identify Ways to Overcome Obstacles: In this step, the leader and employee would think of all the ways that they could overcome each obstacle.They would then choose the best course of action and devise an action plan including time frames.
An Example in Action:
Scenario: One of your senior team members approaches you one day to talk about Michelle, a fairly new employee who is not pulling her weight in the team.
Your team typically works cohesively together to complete their tasks, sharing the workload among them. Michelle however does half as much work as any of the other team members, and appears to have a lot of downtime where she could be helping more. Other employees are starting to get frustrated because they are doing more work to cover the work that Michelle should be doing.
Step 1 – Identify the Current Issue or Problem:
Michelle is not being a team player/pulling her weight in her work duties.
Step 2 – Describe the Desired Outcome:
For Michelle to be doing her fair share of the work and the team to be working cohesively together.
Step 3 – List the Obstacles:
Lack of training;
Unaware of the job expectations;
Lack of team bonding; and
Michelle’s attitude.
Step 4 – Identify Ways to Overcome the Obstacles:
Lack of training – Provide more training for Michelle, buddy her up with another team member to learn on the job.
Unaware of the job expectations – Clarify the job expectations, particularly around teamwork and shared workload.
Lack of team bonding – Buddy Michelle up with another team member to learn on the job and develop relationships, do some team building exercises with team.
Michelle’s attitude – Speak to Michelle about the shared workload and being a part of the team to determine her attitude to this and address as required.
The Coaching On the Go Model allows you to work through an issue in a logical step-by-step sequence, which can be thought through quickly and implemented immediately.
About PDI Solutions
PDI Solutions can work with organisations to develop and deliver training solutions tailored to your particular organisation around leadership, team building or any other professional development. Contact us today for a free consultation at info@pdisolutions.com.au or visit our website at pdisolutions.com.au
