If you haven't included coaching in your training plan, consider making a New Year's resolution to learn about the effectiveness and freshness of training your employees through coaching.
Coaching is spontaneous, one-on-one training. This form of training provides immediate, specific feedback and correction. Here's a primer.
What is coaching and what does it mean in the workplace?
- Personal, one-on-one training or teaching
- Spontaneous, informal
- Adapts to the immediate situation
- Usually targeted to a specific task or assignment
- Interactive-suggests a concerned, friendly, caring interest
- Offers encouragement and support
How is coaching an important part of a supervisor's job?
- Helps performance by providing immediate feedback and correction
- Enhances an employee's motivation to improve by:
-Giving personal attention (a form of recognition)
-Allowing employees to participate actively in the learning process
-Providing the means to achievement with specific help
-Enhancing an employee's growth - Conveys supervisor's commitment to individual and quality of work
- Reinforces role of supervisor as expert
What are the core elements of effective coaching?
- Effective coaching is immediate—that is, as close to the time of need as possible.
-Best to coach while memory of a problem or situation is fresh or when employee is in need of guidance.
-Motivation for learning is highest at time of greatest need. (Note: This is the theory behind "just-in-time" training.)
-Recognition for achievement or improvement is most appreciated closest to the event. - Effective coaching is specific.
-Because it's immediate, it responds to a particular situation and individual.
-Praise, correction, and encouragement should be detailed and exact to be helpful.
-Specific direction optimizes the advantage of personal attention.
-Specifics show you care about the person and about the details of how work is done. - Effective coaching is informal and spontaneous.
-Moment of need or opportunity for on-the-spot training can't be predicted. Instruction gains in credibility because it's not "canned" or prepared. Employee feels like a real person.
-Since it's done as needed, it's task- or outcome-oriented—has a practical, everyday quality. - Effective coaching is interactive.
-Supervisor doesn't describe or lecture; shows and advises.
-Supervisor makes sure employee understands by questioning and requesting employee to demonstrate back.
-The focus on the task or problem allows for collaborative problem solving.
Coaching can be easily suited to the personality and different learning preferences of the employee, such as...
- Being told
- Being shown
- Doing while being directed
- Figuring out alone after need or problem is identified
- Reading print, studying diagrams, etc.
- Being told versus being asked
- Step-by-step direction versus being given a problem to solve or outcome to achieve
- Needing encouragement, reassurance versus needing firmness and authority
What are some of the techniques of informal, interactive training?
- Direct observation of behavior or specific facts
- Openness (Doesn't rush to judgment or criticism. These cut off communication.)
- Questioning to determine the problem and if employee understands
- Listening and showing that employee has been correctly understood
- Affirmation of the employee's feelings and point of view
- Clarification, helping to identify the true nature of the problem
- Collaborative problem solving
Who needs coaching?
- Everyone benefits from the attention of coaching.
-Weak performers build necessary skills to meet standards.
-Average performers are better motivated to go for stretch goals.
-Top performers are affirmed by the recognition, encouraged to grow into more responsible positions, and/or shown that their contribution is not taken for granted.
Two final notes of caution:
- Avoid appearing to play favorites, coaching only the most promising employees.
- Avoid appearing to pick on certain individuals, making it seem that only the most inept persons are singled out for direction.
Why It Matters
- Coaching keeps your employees on the worksite and not in a classroom.
- Coaching helps build a teamwork atmosphere in the workplace.
- Coaching builds confidence because employees have immediate feedback and correction on the job.
Thanks to Chris Kilbourne / Safety Daily Advisor BLR / BLR Business & Legal Reports
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