Do you have a manager on your team who is technically competent but just not performing as expected? Odds are that source of the problem can be found in personal characteristics or problems in interpersonal relationships. Working closely with the person’s manager, we zero in on what needs improvement and develop a collaborative strategy to help this person make the changes required to be more successful. Remote Coaching by telephone or internet videoconference provides you with a cost-effect solution. WebEx is a very useful tool for this kind of work. Assuming you have a web cam, both the participant and I can be seen very clearly on screen as we talk. The technology has improved such that videocast images are smoothly transmitted without the “jerkiness” associated with earlier applications of videoconference technologies. I am also able to post graphics that I have designed for use in coaching, resulting in greater impact than just using a telephone by itself. Bringing in an outside resource can result in a considerable investment of time and resources, especially when you add travel and housing expenses. This may be out of reach for you in today’s economic climate. Beside, recent research on developing the personal and social competencies associated with EQ has demonstrated that a one or two day training event won’t get the job done. Meaningful personal changes required to developing better leaders and people who can work more effectively as team members takes repeated contact over a longer period of time. A current project with a Fortune 500 Company has demonstrated that I can provide more cost-effective services in certain situations. In this project, I have been coaching high-potential employees by telephone, working with people in over fifteen countries in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Working with the employees and their managers, we have created developmental action plans for the manager and employee to track over the next three years. This experience has led me to create an approach to coaching that can be done by telephone or internet video conference at a far lower cost than on-site development. It is helpful to remember that no one gets up in the morning with the conscious intent to irritate their manager and peers and undermine the effectiveness and morale of their direct reports. The reason people do just that is that they lack self-awareness of certain personal traits or patterns of communication that may be painfully obvious to those who have to work with them. But lacking insight, they continue to do things - or fail to do things - that undermine their effectiveness. That is why the first step in coaching is to help someone develop more insight into themselves and how certain habits might be resulting unintended consequences. If you need an organizational assessment and a broader approach to management and team development, I can provide that service but clearly, working by phone or internet videoconference would be clearly inappropriate. But your needs may be very easily addressed if you are looking for a coach for yourself or one or two of your managers. This is how it works. When is eCoaching Appropriate? 1. Management coaching for yourself. You may want some assistance in handling some aspects of your role more effectively, such as how to deal with performance management when an employee is not responding to your feedback. Or you might like to polish your abililty to handle challenging conversations and conflict more comfortably and effectively. 2. High-potential employee coaching for succession planning. You may be in need to developing someone to replace a key manager or executive you know is about to retire or otherwise leave your organization. You might have a candidate in mind who has all the technical skills and knowledge required to do the job but you may wonder if he or she has the ability to step into that level of leadership. I can help you gauge the candidate’s leadership capabilities, provide you with an assessment of his or her strengths and developmental needs, and provide a series of coaching sessions to prepare them to play a greater role as a leader. One potential outcome is that I may help you avoid the mistake of promoting a great contributor into a position for which he or she is not capable of performing at the level required. Promotions are critical. A mistake can take you months to discover and attempt to resolve. And sometimes the only option is to replace the person with someone more suited to leadership. In the meanwhile, a good deal of damage has been done to your company and the people who reported to this person. 3. Developmental coaching. You may have an employee or manager who is in a critical position in your company. They have all the knowledge and skills required to do the job but they lack the social abilities to necessary for them to work well with customers or with other members of your company’s team. At the end of the assessment phase of the process, I can tell you whether or not this person is a good candidate for coaching. I will not waste your money and time coaching someone who is not likely to respond appropriately. Armed with that information, you can then decide to live with the situation as it is, replace the person, or have me provide coaching with very clear deliverables in a short amount of time so that both of us can know whether or not the person is making sufficient progress. How eCoaching Works Preferred Connection The telephone works just fine but today’s technology offers a better solution. If you own a Macintosh, we can connect using Apple’s phenomenal video and audio streaming capabilities. If you own a PC, we can still connect visually using Skype’s video capabilities. The telephone works well but coaching is much more engaging if we are able to see each other as we talk. 1. Our first call. The first call is designed to determine your situation is appropriate for eCoaching. I will not take on a project unless I am satisfied that I can meet or exceed your expectations. If we decide not to proceed, the consultation costs you nothing. If we do proceed, this call represents the first billable time. 2. First call with the person being coached. Before proceeding, I want to first speak with the person you’ve selected for coaching. The purpose of this call is allow me to assess the person’s personal commitment to the process. If I get a sense that the person is doing this only to meet your expectations but is not personally committed to the process by the end of the call, I will call you before proceeding and prepare you for a conversation with this person to make clear how important this coaching is and that you are expecting him or her to see this as an opportunity to be embraced rather than resisted. If you and I are both satisfied that the person is ready to take coaching seriously, we take the next steps. 3. Pre-Coaching assessments. The Simmons EQ Profile. See the description of this tool in other sections of this website. The Simmons Employee FeeIings Inventory. This provides an in-depth assessment of the person as perceived by his or her direct reports. See the description of this tool in other sections of this website. Note the number of items in which the person will be evaluated as a leader by those taking part in the assessment. Custom-Tailored Rating Scales. If of benefit to the process, we can collaborate on creating scales on which the employee will rate him or herself and you will provide ratings on the same scales. I will then combine your ratings and the person’s self-ratings in a format that make it easy for the two of you to compare and discuss differences in perceptions. 4. Review of assessment materials with you. Before speaking with the employee, you and I will review the materials collected and reach agreement on a plan of action. 5. Review of assessment materials with the employee. I will review all materials and information I’ve gathered up to this point, including your assessment of the employee, the seriousness of the situation, and the need for change. I will provide him or her with a Personal Development Planning Workbook. This is designed to provide the employee with the opportunity for self-reflection and a number of exercises. One of the exercises calls for you and the employee to meet to identify people the employee should meet with individually to ask for behaviorally specific feedback regarding how others perceive him or her. These conversations need to be carefully structured but can generate the kind of specifics that help the person expand their self-awareness by seeing themselves through the eyes of other people. 6. Creation of a developmental action plan. We then schedule a three-way call involving me, yourself, and the employee. Reviewing the work done in the workbook and the feedback gathered from fellow employees, we will create a series of specific steps for the employee to take to leverage strengths and address developmental needs. There are a number of potential steps to include in the action plan. These have to be carefully selected and sequenced to maximize the impact of the coaching. Research has shown that if you try to make too many changes at one time, performance deteriorates rather than improves. So we will target the most important improvements that will have the greatest impact for immediate attention. Action steps include readings as well as coaching from me on skills such as how to deal with conflict appropriately, manage the performance of direct reports, and build better working relationships on the job. 7. Periodic contact with you and the employee. We will design a plan of action that enables you and the employee to do most of the work. I do the best I can to keep my billable hours to a minimum, making these contact decisions with you as we proceed, continuously evaluating what is working and what needs more attention.
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Remote Coaching: Coaching via Telephone or Internet Video Conferencing A Cost-Effective Approach for Tough Economic Times