The Four C's of Coaching
By: Nancy Friedman, The Telephone Doctor
This story originally appeared in The Friendly Voice newsletter published by the Telephone Doctor, a customer service training company located in St. Louis Mo. For more information, e-mail info@telephonedoctor.com.
What better time to help our employees than now? Everyone seems to need a little TLC rather than being beaten down. If your employees aren't doing what you need or want them to do, there are only two reasons for that. They either don't want to or they don't know how. Our 4 C's of Coaching DVD can help you determine which it is and how to help them which in turn will help your company and your customers.
When most people think of the word "COACH," they imagine someone on the sidelines screaming at their players to do a better job. That may be true in sports situations, but in the business world, a coach needs to have a completely different approach in order to help employees improve performance.
Let's have a look at the role of a manager/coach and how that integrates with employee development. Where does traditional training come in? How does training relate to coaching? And what are the differences between training, coaching and counseling?
The process starts with training. That's the first step. Let's say you're training a group. What usually happens is most of the group understands, learns and benefits from the information you've taught. Unfortunately, not everyone "gets it." What do we do about that small percentage of employees - often good, conscientious people - who may need personalized attention after training? Those are the ones who need coaching.
Remember that coaching is strategically guiding someone into improving performance. It's analyzing feedback to see the areas where the training hasn't taken hold.
Is remedial training needed? That's where the coaching comes in. These are the people who need one-on-one customized help to develop their skills. OK, we've talked about training and coaching. Where does counseling come in?
Counseling is helping someone explore, and possibly resolve, personal problems. Counseling is utilized if, for whatever reason, the employee isn't performing. It's for that special situation when training and coaching haven't worked, where the employee is not willing, or is unable, to do the job. Especially if there is some distraction that is not job related.
We're going to give you the Telephone Doctor® Four Step Model for effective coaching in a call center or business environment. We call it the 4 C's of Coaching.
The 4 C's are:
1. Concurrence
2. Content
3. Commitment
4. Congratulations or Continuation
Let's cover them one by one:
Concurrence: It's critical. Unless you and the trainee agree (concur) that there is a gap and they commit to the improvement that's needed, you won't be able to coach to your full capacity for effectiveness. We need to achieve concurrence. Both you and the employee need to concur there is an issue. Once that's done, we can go on to the content.
Content: Next, identify the content that needs to be improved. What needs to be done? What are some of the issues involved? Normally where coaching is needed, it's either due to the fact that the employee doesn't know how to do the job (they just don't 'get it') or doesn't want to do the job. You need to find out which it is. The coach and the employee need to agree on the content, the issue and the problem. Only then can they make a commitment to solve it.
Commitment: The coach and the trainee need to agree. They can then make a commitment to solve the problem. Normally we're working with an intelligent, conscientious employee who wants to do a good job. With some coaching, the job will be done right.
Congratulations or Continuation: Once you and your team member have found the content that needs to be corrected, you give them the instruction on how to do it right and there is commitment it will be done. Lastly, it's time for CONGRATULATIONS. Let them know they've done a good job. This is critical. It's most important you don't leave that part out. If more work is needed, we cycle back through with continuation. Figure out what work is needed to reach the congratulations step.
Much coaching takes place to fill a perceived need. You find out that there's a gap in the performance of an employee, and then plan a coaching approach that should improve the performance of that employee. It's nice and orderly to be able to think about what you're going to do. Formulate your plan and decide when you're going to do your coaching.
To be most effective, coaching should be done in private; especially when it becomes an on the spot type of coaching. It's important to remember to never embarrass the employee. That's not coaching, that's just being mean!
For more information, visit: http://www.telephonedoctor.com/contact.asp?OPT=FC.