Are Your Employees Ready

To Be Trained & Coached?

Presented by:

Tim Hagen

President of Sales Progress (A Training Reinforcement Partner Company)

&

Training Magazine

Introduction This white paper reveals so much. We cannot train or coach employees if they are not present or at least we need to be honest with their managers, success will not be as successful unless some things improve. We are going to introduce a concept called “Foundational Principles” which we believe are those attributes, if improved, can accelerate the success of training and coaching. We look forward to your feedback, as well as insight as to how you used this information to help your organization.

Thanks,

Tim Hagen

Creator of the Progress Coaching Training System™ and

Coaching Investment Assessment

Special Message: click here

What Is Coaching? Coaching is the ability of a leader/manager to provide employees the choice to perform better. Unlike managing, where an employee is told what they need to do to improve their performance, coaching helps guide the employee to what they need to do to improve their performance. Coaching is also the ability to inspire and motivate employees to improve knowledge, increase skills, and alter behaviors to be more positive in their performance at work.

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According to CNN.com, coaching is "... part of the standard leadership development training for elite executives and talented up-and-comers at IBM, Motorola, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and Hewlett Packard. These companies are discreetly giving their best prospects what star athletes have long had: a trusted adviser to help reach their goals."

Why Coaching? The greatest opportunity for any organization is to have managers who coach rather than manage. Managers assume their weekly staff meetings or one-on-one meetings with employees classify as coaching. They are not substitutes for coaching. Coaches drive performance for individual and team growth.

We need to coach to drive employees’ performance. Employees need coaching to ensure they have the knowledge to know and understand their role, possess the skill to be able to perform a desired expertise, and demonstrate the behavior to execute a task consistently without fear or anxiety. Employees don’t arbitrarily get better because their manager tells them to. They don’t improve their attitudes just because management requests they change their attitude.

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How Do We Coach?

Coaching requires having a perspective of who the employee is, what their advantages are, and what areas require specific coaching. A coach’s goal is to gain a deeper understanding of the employee, as well as learn specific approaches to successfully provide a roadmap to coach the employee to greater performance.

The coach needs a representation of who the employee is and how to go about coaching them with greater understanding. Yet too often, coaching programs are entered into without great knowledge of the employee being coached.

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"I never cease to be amazed at the power of the coaching process to draw out the skills or talent that was previously hidden within an individual, and which invariably finds a way to solve a problem previously thought unsolvable." John Russell Managing Director Harley-Davidson Europe Ltd.

The Numbers

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To learn more about employees, Sales Progress & Training Magazine surveyed 500+ managers to discover attributes to make an employee perform at their optimal level. Attitude was the top attribute (64%) with willingness to invest time in their own learning coming in second (43%).

ANSWER CHOICES RESPONSES

Their attitude 64.66% 333

Their ability to receive feedback 23.30% 120

Their ability to create relationships internally 15.53% 80

Their ability to engage and connect with their manager 17.67% 91

Their learning style and ability 8.16% 42

Their willingness to invest time into their own learning 43.69% 225

Their confidence in pursuing new tasks or skills 30.10% 155

TOTAL RESPONDENTS: 515

Attitude

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Mark Murphy, author of Hiring for Attitude and founder/CEO of Leadership IQ, a provider of research and leadership training, conducted research on 20,000 new hires. Of these, 46% failed within 18 months. More surprising than the failure rate was the fact that when new hires failed, 89% of the time it was for an attitude issue and only 11% of the time for lack of skill. The attitude deficits that doomed these failed hires included a lack of coachability, low levels of emotional intelligence, motivation and temperament.

“We can change skill levels through training, but we can’t change attitude.”

Herb Kelleher, former Southwest Airlines CEO

The Numbers

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Managers were also asked what the two most important things a manager must have to coach and develop their employees successfully. The ability to understand what motivates each employee was the top result (45%) and the ability to ask good open-ended questions was next (41%).

ANSWER CHOICES RESPONSES

The ability and commitment to engage 35.92% 185

The ability to understand what motivates each employee 45.63% 235

The ability to produce constructive feedback that is received well 35.73% 184

The ability to ask good open ended questions that develop deeper employee understanding

41.36% 213

The ability to develop strong relationships 15.15% 78

The ability to instill confidence in employees 26.99% 139

TOTAL RESPONDENTS: 515

Motivation In a study conducted by Teresa Amabile, professor at Harvard Business School, 600 managers were asked what they thought was the number one thing that motivated people. The resounding response was recognition, but they were wrong!

Employees then were asked to document their emotions and feelings as they related to motivation, and 76% reported PROGRESS as the number one attribute that motivated them. This indicates a disconnect between employee motivation and a leader’s ability to drive effort and facilitate doses of “progress” that truly motivate.

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prog·ress : movement forward or toward a place : the process of improving or developing something over a period of time

Learner Acceptance of Training & Coaching

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Coaching is about helping employees perform better on a daily basis. A core objective of coaching employees is to create conditions that promote better performance. Every interaction you have with an employee is an opportunity to coach, and it is how you handle the situation that determines whether an employee will continue to want to engage with you. The manager and employee need to work together. The manager needs to coach, and the employee must be accepting of coaching for it to resonate. Yet what often occurs is having an employee who does not want or feel they need coaching. Together, the manager and employee need to set expectations, define the desired results, and create mutually beneficial goals. Working together helps to build engagement and team cohesiveness. Some of the keys to successful coaching include: Creating an understanding of the desired performance improvement. Structuring a coaching program that is consistently scheduled. Promoting the simulation or practice of the desired performance. Recognizing and rewarding effort because results will only be attained when effort is put forth.

The Question

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Employee misconceptions regarding the purpose and nature of coaching can impact attitudes. Lack of understanding about the fruits of coaching can provoke unfounded apprehension among employees, says Gary Cohen, president of CO2 Partners, a leadership development firm. They often believe that coaching either reflects badly on job performance or is appropriate only for fast-tracking high-potential employees. Yet when organizations receive coaching validation as employees succeed, coaching can become a tool that spreads throughout the company. Coaching is used to drive performance so it benefits the company, its leaders, and most importantly, the employees. As employees succeed, attitudes toward learning and coaching improve. The question becomes: “How do we learn about our employees, so we can coach them as individuals?”

Student attitudes on learning affect their outlook toward learning throughout life. Prospective adult students in the UK were polled. Those who responded with enthusiasm toward continuing education were primarily skilled employees. Those responding negatively to continued education had experienced only basic education and did not desire further education. Their attitude affected not only their amount of education but their desire for further education.

Continental Research poll

The Solution - Employee Assessment

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Assessing employees’ personal attributes in specific areas gives an idea of where the individual excels or may need to improve. It is our core belief employees need to possess or improve in Foundational Principles in order for coaching and training to be ultimately successful. Our Coaching Investment Assessment (CIA) has been designed to help trainers, managers, and coaches strengthen their team members’ performance levels.

The CIA does NOT offer a score that is considered good or bad, rather, it’s a representation of who the employee is and how to go about approaching and coaching them with greater understanding of who they are.

The following core foundational principles have been identified through our research: 1. Learning Styles 2. Feedback 3. Confidence 4. Attitude 5. Engagement 6. Self-Development 7. Relationships 8. Motivation 9. Connectivity

Foundational Principle Definitions 1. Learning Styles – This section defines what the employee feels is their best to way learn.

In essence, we ascertain if they are an independent learner or collaborative learner or highly collaborative learner.

2. Feedback – This ascertains their ability and comfort with receiving and giving feedback.

3. Confidence – This depicts their level of confidence in themselves, as well as how it applies to specific circumstances.

4. Attitude - This defines their attitude level and mentality to overcome challenges.

5. Motivation – This defines their ability to motivate themselves, as well as their attitude level.

6. Engagement - This depicts their engagement to their boss, team, and organization.

7. Connectivity – This depicts their personal connection to their job.

8. Self-Development – This defines their level of commitment to educating themselves.

9. Relationships – This defines their outlook on relationships and their value on career development.

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The Coaching Investment Foundational Development & Awareness

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Targeted Skill &

Performance Development

Learning Style

Relationships

Attitude

Feedback

Motivation

Self-Development

Confidence

Foundational Skills

Engagement

Connectivity

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To define Foundational Principles, let’s look at a training or coaching case study. If you have a customer service rep who needs to handle customer complaints more energetically and professionally but possesses a negative attitude toward training and coaching, you need alternatives. Utilizing the information provided by the CIA, a coach can work with the employee with a greater level of knowledge as to how to approach and coach this employee.

The CIA playbook provides specific activities, questions, and learning projects in each of the assessment categories based on their personal scores assisting a manager or trainer in the development and application of coaching strategies. This guide can be used by a training leader or the employee’s direct manager. It also includes a resource section with suggested resources such as books and links to articles and white papers. This will provide you with material to give your team members for self-directed learning activities outside of the training sections.

For More Information on this Coaching Assessment System:

http://www.salesprogress.com/cia

The Solution - Employee Assessment

The Solution - Employee Assessment

“Examples”

If a manager better understood who their employees were, their strengths, as well as their foundational challenges, they’d be in a better position to assist the employee. For example, a person who is very hesitant or even nervous to receive constructive feedback should be approached and coached differently than an employee who relishes such feedback.

A second example might be a person's learning style. If they like to work in a group setting and learn collaboratively, putting this person solely in self-paced learning could frustrate the employee.

Lastly, what if an employee has a very low score in the area of confidence and the manager forces them to perform a task first before people in a group setting? This employee could be affected for months, if not years.

For More Information: http://www.salesprogress.com/cia

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Summary

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The goal of coaching is to increase the ability of a leader/manager to provide employees the choice to perform better. The CIA provides a perspective of who the employee is, what their advantages are, and what areas will require specific coaching. The goal is to create a deeper understanding of the employee, as well as learn specific approaches that will successfully provide leaders a roadmap to coach the employee to greater performance.

“Using coaching instead of sending executives and managers to seminars two or three times a year can be more beneficial to ongoing career development, not to mention less expensive…” – PC Week

www.trainingmag.com Link to Training Magazine’s Coaching Session: click here

www.salesprogress.com

Thank you to Training Magazine for helping us produce this research!

Would you like to learn more about your employees’ coachability and

approachability?

About Tim Hagen Tim Hagen founded Sales Progress, a Training Reinforcement Partner Company, in 1997. His entrepreneurial career began in college, leading to positions in sales, sales management, and sales training for small and large corporations, and eventually ownership of several training companies. He possesses a unique combination of hands-on experience, academics, and innovative insight to solve the industry’s most common challenges. Tim holds a bachelor’s degree in Adult Education and Training from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.

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Connect with Tim

Phone: 262-377-5655 Website: http://www.salesprogress.com/

Email: tim@salesprogress.com Blog: http://www.salesprogress.com/coaching-leadership/

For more information please visit us at: www.salesprogress.com