Case Summary week 3

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Good Coaches Find Balance Tips to apply coaching in the workplace By Joan Lloyd

E very manager is supposed to be a coach these days. Also, if you’ve ever taken on the challenge of a coaching job—from little league to adult volleyball—you know it’s not easy.

You’ve got to balance a lot of factors at once. For example, the desire to win needs to be balanced with having fun and letting everyone play. Your new coach- ing role at work isn’t much different. Corporate goals must be met while helping everyone participate and stay challenged on the job.

But even though the word coaching is thrown around a lot, I’ve found that few people are able to actually define what coaching really means when you apply it to the workplace. For instance, most bosses err on one side of the spectrum or the other. They say, “Just do it right. Figure it out for yourself,” or, “Here’s a list of everything you’re doing wrong. Now fix it.”

If you were on an athletic team and heard that “coaching” would it help your performance?

Coaching Techniques I’ve studied master coaches as a part of my work in

organizational change and leadership development. I’ve watched them and analyzed their techniques. Then, I’ve worked with them asked them to coach me—to see if their techniques made a difference in my performance. They did.

Here are a few ideas to try with your employees. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t catch on right away—these master level techniques take a while to learn.

1. Identify what I call the “performance gap” between employees’ current performance and the desired performance. Here’s an example: “What Linda’s doing is taking the customer’s order. What I’d like her to be doing is taking the order and then cross- selling other products.”

Once the gap has been identified, the master coach begins to closely observe and analyze the behavior patterns that are contributing to the gap.

For instance, in a retail store the manager might observe a new sales representative working with a customer and study the way she greets the cus- tomer, suggests products, and other behaviors.

2. Pick out and isolate one thing in the performance gap and create a “drill” for the person to practice. Etch the new behaviors one at a time.

Master coaches don’t try to close the performance gap all at once. They know that the gap is made up of numerous little skills that need to be isolated and improved. Sometimes coaches even work on the isolated behavior to an  extreme  in order to put a spotlight on it. Then, when the new skill has been learned, they ask the performer to refine it down to where it can be integrated into the whole process. This is a technique I learned from Jerry Warren, master coach for the Professional Ski Instructors of America and member of the U.S. Demonstration Team.

An example of this is the golfer who practices swing- ing the club with only the left hand to create a new mental “groove” to etch the sensation of letting the left hand lead. Once the groove is made, the golfer can go back to a two handed swing. Similarly, the retail sales rep could isolate and practice a new sug- gestive selling technique until she is ready to inte- grate it into her whole approach.

3. Use the Warren learning model: See, feel, understand.

Most of us just coach by explaining things to the learner. Unfortunately, most of us aren’t audi- tory learners. Instead, try to combine talking with showing and doing.

See, Feel, Understand Approach In the See, Feel Understand approach to coaching,

first show the person what the performance looks like when it’s done correctly. Either demonstrate it your- self or ask someone else to do it. Employees will see what correct performance looks like. Together with the learner, analyze the good performance and isolate one thing to practice.

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try it out for themselves while the coach watches. The coach looks for anything that is even close to “right” and reinforces it with comments such as, “That’s the idea!” Master coaches don’t wait until it’s perfect to praise. They know that self-esteem is a powerful factor in learning. If they constantly say, “No, that’s not quite right,” the energy for learning drains quickly.

Understanding comes when the performer starts using the skill on their own and internalizes it. When they can describe what they’re doing and  why,  they have integrated the new behavior.

Here’s an example of a leader who used this approach recently with his construction foremen who needed to learn public relations skills with residents who lived near a new construction site: He took a small group of foremen with him to visit five homeowners.

First, he did all the talking and answered all the questions. After each visit, he asked employees to ana- lyze what he did to isolate what made it work.

Then, he asked each employee to take different parts of the presentation. As they walked between

houses, they gave each other feedback and further refined their skills.

Next, he asked employees to divide up the remain- ing homeowners and do presentations on their own. Then, they got together periodically to discuss how it was going and to share approaches.

In Summary These coaching tactics make people love learning.

They will willingly try new behaviors without prodding from you. With effective coaching, employees will experience progress and will feel like winners with the self-confidence to pursue more. And isn’t that what “continuous improvement” is all about? ■

Reader’s ResourceReader’s Resource Joan Lloyd is a Milwaukee-based executive coach and organizational and leadership development strategist. She is known for her ability to help lead- ers and their teams achieve measurable, lasting improvements.

For more information, call (414) 354-9500, email info@joanlloyd.com, or visit JoanLloyd.com.

To gauge the adequacy of health care coverage for working-age U.S. adults, the Commonwealth Fund survey relies on three measures:

• Whether individuals have insurance;

• If they have insurance, whether they have experi- enced a gap in coverage in the prior year; and

• Whether high out-of-pocket health care costs and deductibles are causing them to be underinsured, despite having continuous coverage.

For those experiencing financial difficulty due to medical bills and debt, 30% were underinsured, 47% had a coverage gap, and 40% were uninsured. Furthermore, Commonwealth Fund researchers note another troubling finding: “The greatest deteriora- tion in the quality and comprehensiveness of cover- age has occurred among people in employer plans.” Also, more than half of Americans—or 158 million people—gain coverage through what now are often inadequate employer-based health plans. Among the survey highlights:

• 45% of U.S. adults ages 19 to 64 are inadequately insured, nearly the same as in 2010.

• Fewer adults are insured today when compared with 2010, although the duration of coverage gaps people experience has shortened significantly.

• Attempts by the Trump administration and a Republican-led Congress to weaken the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act failed, as the 2018 adult uninsured remains statistically unchanged from 2016.

• More insured Americans are underinsured now than in 2010, with the greatest increase occurring among those in employer plans.

• People who are underinsured or spend any time uninsured report cost-related problems getting care and difficulty paying medical bills at higher rates than those with continuous, adequate coverage.

• Federal and state governments could enact polices to extend the Affordable Care Act’s health cover- age gains and improve the cost protection pro- vided by individual market and employer plans.

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