If you can see it (or listen to it), you can coach on it.
You can coach your team members on pretty much anything.
To give you some focus and move towards results-based outcomes I recommend that you focus your coaching efforts on your team members’ observable behaviours and actions.
What I mean is simply that if you can observe, or see or hear, a behaviour or action then you can coach on it.
In previous articles I wrote about actions and behaviours driving results and outcomes.
If you want to change your team members’ results and outcomes then it’s their actions and behaviours you should be focusing your coaching efforts on.
And to effectively coach on an action or behaviour it's logical to actually observe the action or behaviour rather than make assumptions on their quality.
If you don’t observe it, how do you really know how well your adviser or any other team member is performing the task?
Of course, you could ask them, but then it's only their view of their performance that you’ll have, and while it might very well be an honest view, it is limited in perspective.
Or, you could judge the success of the actions and behaviours by the results and outcomes they deliver. That is not necessarily wrong, but if you measure success only by outcomes you could be missing opportunities for improvement. Or, and this can be a real and long-term problem, you could be seeing “good” results coming from “poor” or undesirable behaviours.
So, just because a team member is getting the required results doesn’t mean they are acting or behaving as well as they could be, or even appropriately.
Finding the opportunity to regularly observe your advisers and other people you lead and manage in action is critical.
It doesn’t matter what it is that they do; if it’s an action or behaviour you can observe it (or listen to it) and use your observations as the basis of your coaching conversation.
List the specific actions and behaviours you can observe with your team members. Consider when and how you can make these observations.
The GROW Adviser and Leadership Capability programs cover this topic in more detail and help build a robust understanding and exceptional leadership and engagement skills.
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