May 13, 2010

Letter from the Editor

I’m back on a high! I just returned from San Francisco. Being in sunny 65-degree California is enough to make me high, but that isn’t the only reason for my excitement.

I presented Coaching for Talent Development and Employee Engagement at the International Society for Performance Improvement Conference. The 90-minute presentation was prefaced by a Bagel Barrel burst whereby I was able to impart 20-minutes worth of information about coaching to three sets of interested bagel eaters. Wild!

If there’s anything that resembles an elevator pitch about coaching, it was those Bagel Barrel mini-presentations! What can you say about coaching in 20 minutes? Well, I tried to convey:

• Coaching is training on the cheap. When training budgets are being slashed, the responsibility falls on the manager or supervisor. Let’s equip him or her with some skills to make the work easier – and more effective.

• Coaching is the best way to engage people. During these economic challenging times, people are looking to their supervisor and manager for direction, guidance, an ear. Coaching helps build a relationship that will outlast bad times.

• Coaching is the best way to develop talent and performance. Focusing on strengths as well as areas for improvement, coaches and employees tailor development for each person.

• Yes coaching takes time, but not much. Coaching – the way we define it and teach it – fosters independence and appropriate risk taking. Without independent, courageous employees, managers spend all their time solving problems and making decisions that others could make.

• Coaching isn’t for everyone. I’m always asked, “What do we do if the employee doesn’t want to be coached?” And the answer is always somewhat unsatisfying to the asker: DON’T COACH THAT EMPLOYEE! Some people work just fine without your meddling. If they don’t perform, use corrective action. While you’re worrying about that one person who doesn’t want coaching, there are five silently waiting for you to approach THEM!

• Coaching is a conversation. But just as some people are great conversationalists and others aren’t, some people – those who follow a simple but effective model like Entelechy’s – are better coaches and end up with better performing people than others.

While the Bagel Barrel was fun, it was hard to tell whether people got enough of a taste of coaching to sustain them.

The workshop, on the other hand, offers me a chance to demonstrate Entelechy’s coaching model and to invite the attendees to collectively act as my coach. In short, the attendees experience what I can only call a catharsis – a transformational “I GET IT!”

In fact, one person approached me after the workshop and exclaimed, “This workshop MADE the conference for me!” (I heard Marshall Goldsmith and the other keynotes and I participated in some of the other activities, which made me feel especially proud of this person's reaction to my little workshop.)

If you’d like me to come and speak at your conference – from keynote to workshop – or to your organization, please let me know. I guarantee your participants will learn a lot!

Terry

The Need for Coaching

The Management Consultancies Association (MCA) published a report in 2008 called Getting More From The Same. This report is essentially a managers’ guide to delivering productivity improvements. The MCA report outlines six “critical success factors for improving productivity by changing employee behaviour” including: get support from senior management; involve frontline managers; measure the correct things; communicate the business case; give managers the skills they need; and appreciate that it will take time. 

The MCA – which focuses on a British clientele – found that almost half of British businesses have identified the main reason for a lack of productivity improvement as their failure to engage and motivate employees. 

Towers and Perrin reported in their 2007-2008 Global Workforce Study that while 21% of the 90,000 respondents were engaged in their work, a full 38% are partly or fully disengaged. No surprise, they also found that “companies with the highest levels of employee engagement achieve better financial results and are more successful in retaining their most valued employees than companies with lower levels of engagement.”

How does Towers and Perrin suggest closing what they term “the engagement gap?” Here are their top insights:

1. The organization is the most powerful influencer of employee engagement.

2. There is no single “right model” for a high-performance culture; the most effective approach depends on an organization’s strategic priorities.

3. Employees are eager to invest more of themselves to help the company succeed, but want to understand what’s in it for them.

4. Senior leaders need to make the leap to a more inspirational and engaging style of leadership to help drive higher engagement.

5. Companies need to understand their employees as well as they understand their customers to design a work environment and experience that will drive higher engagement and performance.

Companies need to understand their employees as well as they understand their customers. Think of all we do to gather and mine customer data in an effort to eke just one nugget of information that might give us an edge over our competitors. CRM systems, trend analysis, buying patterns, and other tools have been implemented to enable companies to build relationships with their customers – loyal, buying relationships.

Why shouldn’t we invest as much in our employees?

And like in most industries with sales functions, the responsibility of “getting to know the customer” lies with the account executive/sales rep/customer service rep. Who is the “account rep” for our employees? I would politely suggest that it’s their immediate manager or supervisor. They’re the ones who are closest to the “account” (i.e., the employee).

And just like successful sales/customer service reps, managers need to know how to build relationships with employees, identify their needs, and position our company’s benefits against those needs.

Solving the Problem Does NOT Equal Coaching

In conducting a performance needs assessment for a company as part of our customization of a sales coaching workshop, we heard from several interviewees who said that many of their managers didn’t have time to coach, they were too busy dealing with problems created by their sales reps – from inappropriate credits, to unenthusiastic customer visits, to poorly drafted customer communiqués. 

We asked these interviewees if ALL managers on their staff were consumed with fire-fighting. No, they stated, only those who were stellar sales professionals promoted to the role of sales manager.

Ah ha! What are great sales people good at? Identifying and solving problems! Simply giving them a new title of sales manager doesn’t change their skill set. They were promoted based on their ability to solve problems! Now when THEIR sales people come to them with problems, these sales-reps-disguising-as-sales-managers will do what they do best: roll up their sleeves and solve that problem. Head on. Alone.

As Marshall Goldsmith asserts in the title of his best-selling book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, the very skills that got you to the position you’re at may be those that hurt you most in your new role. This couldn’t be truer in the case of our client: what makes for a successful sales rep – independent-thinking, a bit arrogant/cocky/self-assured, driven by intrinsic motivators – work against you as a sales manager whose strengths need to be in helping OTHERS succeed, looking at what motivates others, and knowing when NOT to jump in and solve problems. 

According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), Europe’s largest HR development professional body with over 135,000 members, “engagement can result when an employee has job autonomy, support and coaching, feedback, opportunities to learn and develop, task variety and responsibility.”

Support, in CIPD’s definition, comes when managers and supervisors help their employees develop the skill and the confidence to solve their own problems and overcome challenges on their own. 

Coaching is the tool to help managers do just that!

Coaching for TD&EE: Three Solution Packages

Entelechy’s new coaching website (www.coachyouremployees.com) features our Coaching Solution Packages, three versions of Entelechy’s comprehensive coaching program designed to meet your specific organization’s needs:

Gold Solution (Cultural Change) — designed for the company looking to realize the benefits of implementing a coaching culture throughout the organization.

Silver Solution (Competency Development) — designed for the company looking to develop coaching as a management competency throughout the organization.

Bronze Solution (Skill Enhancement) — designed for the company looking to initiate coaching into the managerial skillset.

We created three versions of the Coaching for Talent Development and Employee Engagement solution because our clients asked for them. Some clients simply want to enhance the skills of their managers and supervisors (the Bronze Solution) whereas other clients wish to make coaching a key cultural element (Gold Solution). Still other clients wanted something in the middle.

You can review case studies of other organizations that have initiated coaching programs to learn of their challenges and how they used coaching – and Entelechy – to address them by visiting http://www.coachyouremployees.com/coaching/casestudies.htm. 

We’ll continue adding features and tools that will help you, the manager and supervisor (and those who support them) develop and engage your employees.

Now is the time to equip your front-line managers with the tools they need to succeed – and help your organization survive today’s economic challenges and prepare for tomorrow’s recovery. Contact Entelechy at 603-424-1237 or info@unlockit.com for more information on Coaching for Talent Development and Employee Engagement and give your managers the tools they need to lead their employees through the inevitable changes they face with the economy’s recovery.