Coaching Your Team to Victory

Coaching is best defined by Don Shula and Ken Blanchard in their book, Everyone’s a Coach. They indicate the qualities that inspire others to greatness:

Conviction driven: Never compromise your beliefs.

Overlearning: Practice until it’s perfect.

Audible-ready: Know when to change.

Consistency: Respond predictably to performance.

Honesty based: Walk your talk.

To be an effective performance coach, you need to use feedback on an ongoing basis to reinforce positive behaviors and to adjust actions that are not in accordance with the expectations of the organization. Coaching is not counseling. Coaching focuses on developing skills and knowledge, which helps the employee do his or her job. Counseling is used for changing behavior and can be corrective in nature.

One of the most important qualities that a performance coach must have is to be an effective communicator. Focusing on behaviors not the person, you need to verbally discuss those specific behaviors that you wish to reinforce. For example, a manager might say to an employee, “Good job!” while the performance coach will say, “Joe, good job assisting that customer with that tough order. I liked the way you kept your cool when she became so difficult.” That reinforces behavior that you wish to be repeated. On the other hand, if Joe didn’t handle the customer very well, a coach might say: “Joe, our company mission is to take care of all customers until they are completely satisfied. In the future I would like you to keep your cool regardless of how challenging the customer may be and stick with it until the customer walks away satisfied.” The key to this discussion is that it happens immediately and not days later.

When giving instructions, a performance coach trains team members effectively. The coach will explain what needs to be done and have the employee demonstrate the skill if necessary. Feedback should continuously be provided and the employee should be asked questions to insure understanding, and ongoing encouragement should be provided. Follow up is important. Coaches delegate effectively and don’t try to play the game all by themselves!

According to Everyone’s a Coach, “the real difference in coaching is about believing in someone and then taking action to help that person to be his or her best.” That means that an effective performance coach must trust in his or her staff AND the staff must trust the coach. If there is not a foundation of trust between the coach and staff member, coaching will simply not help. No team ever won the Super Bowl by not completely believing in and trusting their leader, their coach.

So, having trusting relationships with the team is the foundation of coaching for performance. Do you:

3 Admit mistakes?

3 Give credit to others?

3 Have a sense of humor?

3 Lead by example?

3 Have integrity?

3 Hire only qualified individuals?

Successful performance coaches have vision. It is easy for sports coaches because the goal is obvious: to win the Super Bowl, the pennant or cup. You as a performance coach must also have a vision of where you are going and then communicate that through your coaching discussions with your staff. This helps define the goals of the organization and provides a guideline for employee actions.

As Don Shula and Ken Blanchard say, “you can inspire anyone to be a winner.” It takes ongoing feedback communicated effectively by a coach who has the qualities needed to lead the team to victory. Your team can beat the competition when you become a performance coach.

Everyone’s a Coach: You Can Inspire Anyone to Be a Leader by Don Shula and Ken Blanchard is published by ZondervanPublishingHouse and HarperBusiness.

Libby Anderson is a human resource consultant and trainer. She can be reached via e-mail at edahrsvcs@aol.com.