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What are the necessary outcomes of coaching and how do you ensure you achieve those outcomes?
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4 Answers
Coaching is a process focused at evaluating a problem or an opportunity and then taking action. Good coaching requires a trained coach and a person willing to be coached and then to take action. And coaching is all about the client dealing with her/his own challenges, not the coach!
So, the outcomes need to be voiced by the client, whatever it is they want to accomplish, and the coach's role to help move the client past obstacles to taking necessary actions, as well as to hold the client accountable. A good process model for a coaching engagement is the Deming Model: continuously Planning - Doing - Checking/Studying + Acting/Adjusting the plan
Generally I find that the "outcomes" are defined by the person being coached and their immediate manager. Every coaching engagement is different and while we follow an established process, the content varies.
Outcomes tend to be behaviorally based and results oriented. The client wants to change X behavior in order to achieve Y results. This is usually measured by the coachee, their manager and validated by an A/B comparison of a 360 degree feedback survey done at the beginning of the engagement and one done near the end.
The desired results within a specified time frame are the outcomes and require articulation and agreement before any engagement begins. As others have noted it is about results, but sometimes the failure to indicate a timeline can be detrimental to all concerned.
I understand what the other comments are driving at, and agree insofar as they go. However, coaching encompasses so much more than just assisting a person who asked for assistant to find an answer they already know. Don't get me wrong, that is one aspect of coaching, and an important one.
But how about when a management team hires a coach to work with a corporation at large? Or what about coaching your own teams? In those cases, those being coached in all likelihood did not ask for a coach, do not already know the answers, and often may not even know the issue.
In all cases, though, coaching involves paradigms, or deep beliefs.
The effective coach will not pound away at problems and solutions. The pinnacle of team performance is to have that team's members thinking alike, because if they are thinking alike, they will make decisions alike and take like actions. The effective coach, therefore, will lead the team into paradigm shifts; that is to say, changing the underlying beliefs so the desired decisions will become automated.
Think of it this way:
Beliefs lead to thoughts. Thoughts lead to reasoning. Reasoning leads to decisions. Decisions lead to actions.
Or, more succinctly, beliefs lead to actions.
We too often teach our people a list of if/then scenarios, known in the popular vernacular as procedures. However, what about the endless list of 'exceptions to the rule'? If instead our people can only be helped to think like us, insofar as daily work is concerned, most of those exceptions are pre-managed.
This does not preclude active and passionate discussion of issues in meetings, as each member brings their own unique knowledge and experiences into the equation regardless.
Together, let's put the fun back into work!
Belldon Colme
belldoncolme@gmail.com
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