TheProgressiveLifeCoach

Summary

The Basics of Performance Coaching

In sports and other areas, a coach helps individuals fulfill their potential so they can perform at their best. Coaching focuses on learning, not teaching, and covers “planning, problem solving, reviewing” and “skill development.” Just as a baby discovers how to walk independently, a coaching subject (called a “coachee”) learns to grow and achieve through self-actualization. Coaches are not necessarily experts in any particular field of business, but they must be experts in coaching itself, including its customs and methods.

“Good coaching is a skill, an art perhaps, that requires a depth of understanding and plenty of practice if it is to deliver its astonishing potential.”

A professional coach sets out to maximize each subject’s sense of personal potential to create a path to improved performance. A coach helps people learn to believe in themselves without reservation. Coaches don’t instruct as much as they treat people with humane concern to help them make the most of their innate capabilities. When managers coach their subordinates, they must adopt a different, more nurturing “communication style” than the usual in-the-office approach. Most managers wield authority somewhere on the spectrum between “dictators” and “persuaders,” but coaching works on a different scale. When acting as coaches, managers should ask questions that enable their subordinates to understand the tasks at hand more fully. Coaches help people consider pivotal issues and discover answers that can guide their future actions.

“Adopting a coaching ethos requires commitment, practice and some time before it flows naturally.”

If you are a manager, how do you know when to don your coaching hat? Look for an opportunity when a subordinate needs to learn something meaningful, when you both have time and when the quality of the result is particularly important. Today, employees expect – and may demand – more control over their own activities. With such increased involvement comes deeper responsibility. Coaching adapts well to this new paradigm by helping people enhance their performance, which makes them better able to take on added duties and accountability.

Awareness and Responsibility

Effective coaching works to increase people’s awareness and their “focused attention, concentration and clarity.” Awareness implies the ability and self-perception to separate the trivial from the critical. Great athletic coaches help their players become more physically aware so their bodies perform better. Superior business coaches help subjects build “mental and people awareness,” so they become more attuned and learn to direct their efforts where they are most relevant.

“The greatest barrier is the inability to give up what you have done before.”

Coaches must organize their professional methods to encourage heightened mental states, such as perceptiveness and responsibility. The coach is a facilitator and “awareness raiser,” not an instructor or problem solver. The ideal coach is “patient, detached, supportive, interested, [a] good listener, perceptive, aware, self-aware, attentive” and “retentive.” Yet, “technical expertise, knowledge, experience, credibility” and “authority” are less important. The coach doesn’t worry as much about teaching best practices as about enhancing each person’s potential to excel.

The Right Questions Lead to Viable Answers

Coaches help clients develop their capacities primarily by asking directed questions. To illustrate, consider the popular sports dictum: “Always keep your eye on the ball.” How can a baseball coach use this advice to help a player grow? Asking “Are you watching the ball?” will put a player on the defensive. “Why aren’t you watching the ball?” will increase that defensiveness. Now consider these alternatives: “Which way is the ball spinning as it comes toward you?” “Does it spin faster or slower after it bounces?” “How far is it from your opponent when you first see which way it is spinning?” Answering such coaching questions forces a ballplayer to focus on the ball. Useful queries are not judgmental; they are structured so that answering them creates a valuable “feedback loop” the coach can use to build the player’s accomplishments.

“Coaches are increasingly replacing or, at least, enhancing their old instructional style by focusing more on the person than the technique, on the potential rather than on the mistake.”

Coaches in the business world can use parallel probing questions: “What is the most difficult business situation for you?” “How will the price increase affect customers?” “What is your team’s biggest challenge?” Specific questions prompt specific responses. The coach doesn’t need the information in the answers. To the coach, the important thing about such questions is that they make respondents think about issues that matter, so that they become more aware and responsible. When you are coaching someone, form your questions around the words “what, when, who, how much” and “how many.” Ask about areas that interest the person you’re coaching. Heed the answers closely. Avoid leading questions, like, “Why on Earth did you do that?” As you coach, govern your tone of voice and body language. Focus on “listening, hearing, watching and understanding.”

The “GROW Formula”

Make your initial questions broad and then zero in on details. Think of looking at something normally, and then seeing it through a magnifying glass, and then through a microscope, gaining greater definition with each view. Coaching is the same. The coach must probe intently, using such questions as, “What would the consequences be?” “What criteria are you using?” “Imagine having a dialogue with the wisest person you know. What would he or she tell you to do?” Or, “What advice would you give a colleague in your situation?”

“We tend to get what we focus on. If we fear failure, we are focused on failure and that is what we get.”

To put your questions in the right sequence, use the GROWformula:

“Goal setting” – “What do you hope to accomplish?” is a typical goal-directed query. Contrast between “end goals,” like “I want to be sales director,” and “performance goals,” such as “I want to sell 100 widgets.” A person can control a performance goal, but not an end goal. Make goals “SMART” (“specific, measurable, agreed, realistic” and “time-phased”); “PURE” (“positively stated, understood, relevant” and “ethical”); and “CLEAR” (“challenging, legal, environmentally sound, appropriate” and “recorded”).
“Reality checking” – Goals that ignore present situations are unrealistic. People must be objective about what they want to accomplish. To provide a worthwhile reality-check, ask, “How much of this situation…is within your control?” Or, “What action have you taken?” Follow up by asking, “What were the effects of the action?” Many times, such probing questions can lead a person to a “Eureka!” moment.
“Options” – Explore many potential tactics. Don’t let people arbitrarily limit their choices. Have them create lists of options and examine the pros and cons of each one.
“What is to be done?” – This question, along with “When?” and “By whom?” as well as, “Do you have the will to do it?” comes up in the final stage of coaching, when the coach and subject “convert a discussion into a decision.” As coach, you might ask, “What are you going to do?” But, don’t ask, “What could you do?” That is too indecisive. Other good questions at this stage include: “When are you going to do it?” “Will this action meet your goal?” “What obstacles might you encounter?” And, “what other considerations exist?” The point is to have people commit to action. Ask them to rate, from “one to 10,” their degree of certitude about implementing the needed step. Expect inaction regarding any ratings below eight.

“Emotional intelligence is twice as important as mental acuity for success in the workplace.”

The “What is to be done?” step concludes the “coaching cycle.” Do not set performance bars for your coaching subjects. That is their job. The standards they set on their own invariably will be more ambitious than the standards you might suggest.

Effective coaching will raise people’s awareness, and help them learn, enjoy their achievements, and build responsibility and a drive to improve. Learning and enjoyment are essential components of higher accomplishment.

“The worst feedback is personal and judgmental; the most effective is subjective and descriptive.”

Active learning may also involve establishing “conscious competence,” where a coach provides continuous, nonjudgmental monitoring of a person’s actions. This creates an “input-feedback loop” to foster learning and self-actualization. For example, a manager might provide useful interrogatory feedback about an employee’s report by asking: “What is the essential purpose of your report?” “To what extent do you think this draft achieves that?” And, “what are the other points you feel need to be emphasized?” Such questions prompt people to be self-reliant and to review their own work objectively and meaningfully.

“Praise…tends to be sparingly offered and hungrily received in the workplace, where criticism abounds.”

Coaches also help people prepare for challenges. Using a kind of “anticipatory” planning called “feedforward,” a baseball pitching coach might tell a young player, “On the next pitch, I am going to ask you which part of the pitching movement feels the least comfortable to you.” This approach helps the trainee heed specific aspects of a future event and, thus, learn more from it. A business coach’s feedforward questions could include “What do you think the obstacles might be to achieving your goal?” or “Which element of this task bothers you the most?”

“As we become more self-aware, we are able to be more aware of others.”

You can extend these one-on-one coaching methods to work with teams of employees. First, a team must establish clear goals, ground rules and meeting schedules. Having the team members spend social or recreational time together, perhaps participating in sporting activities, can also help. Develop “buddy systems” so individuals can resolve minor issues outside of team meetings.

Barriers and Benefits

Some people do not like anything different, new or nontraditional, such as coaching. Indeed, many coaches’ most common concern is, “How do I coach resistant people?”

“Blame evokes defensiveness – defensiveness reduces awareness.”

As an advocate for coaching in your company, you might encounter these objections – and use these responses:

“Our company culture is against this kind of approach” – The traditionalist’s lament: “We never had coaching here before. Why should we need it now?” Well, until the 1980s, employees never had personal computers either. Organizations that culturally resist change cannot survive; change is today’s most pressing business constant.
“It’s just a new management gimmick” – Explain that anything that really optimizes performance is not a gimmick.
“I don’t have time to coach” – If you are so pressed for time, your direct reports aren’t giving you the support you need. Coach them so they can do more in the future.
“Our people want to be told what to do” – If so, your employees are in a dangerous rut. Coaching can help pull them out of it.
“People here will think I have gone nuts” – This will stop once performance improves.
“I won’t know what questions to ask” – Use the GROW formula, it will help.
“Why should I change things?” – Don’t you want better performance?

“So often it is when we let go of the need for control that we gain control.”

Coaching offers numerous organizational advantages, including these benefits:

“Improved performance and staff development” – Help people reach their goals.
“Improved learning” – Coaching puts learning into overdrive.
“Improved quality of life for individuals” – People who perform better are happier.
“More time for managers” – Coached employees will accept more responsibility.
“Better use of people, skills and resources” – Coaching will reveal just how capable your people are.
“Faster and more effective emergency response” – People who are afraid to accept responsibility tend to sit on their hands during crises, but responsible people act.
“Increased adaptability to change” – Companies with a “listening, learning, coaching culture” will be able to adapt best to changing business circumstances.
“Greater motivated staff” – Companies are now moving away from the old command-and-control paradigm to a new coaching style of management. The carrot-and-stick approach doesn’t work with today’s employees. Coaching motivates people to achieve more and helps prepare new leaders.
“Valuable life skill” – As coaching becomes more accepted, employers will increasingly recruit executives who can coach others effectively.

“You can make a man run, but you can’t make him run fast.”

Coaching has a bright future. Expect to see a greater emphasis on “transpersonal coaching,” which involves the spiritual side of life and subconscious, psychological fulfillment. This addresses modern life’s challenges, since the daily routine can seem to lack meaning and purpose. Coaches with compassion and emotional intelligence can help people adapt to stress. Indeed, coaches are “midwives at the birth of a new social order.” Coaches don’t have all the answers, by any means, but they fill an important role by helping individuals discover answers that work for them.

About the Author

John Whitmore is a legendary coach. His classic book on coaching has sold more than half a million copies in 22 languages. Whitmore started out as a professional racecar driver. His racing team won numerous prestigious championships in the 1960s.

Take Aways

Coaches help people improve their professional performance and their lives.
Those who receive coaching (“coachees”) experience self-actualization, which develops their skills and talents.
Coaching builds awareness and helps people become more responsible.
Effective coaches do not have to be specialists in the business fields where they coach. However, they do need to be expert coaches.
Managers must adopt nontraditional relationship styles when they coach their team.
Coach your employees when you have time, when they need to learn and when quality results are critical to your work.
Coaches do not teach. They help others learn through probing questions.
Coaches who ask such questions are not searching for information they can use to solve others’ problems; instead, they are urging respondents to think about issues.
Structure your questions to follow the “GROW formula” – inquire about “Goals,” check “Reality,” list “Options” and ask, “What is to be done, When [and] by Whom?”
As coaching becomes increasingly common, it will focus more on spiritual issues.