Turn Your Managers Into High-Growth Coaches With These 4 Steps

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Business Coaching|Turn Your Managers Into High-Growth Coaches With These 4 Steps Through our decades of business research, we’ve discovered that nothing elevates performance more than coaching. Any organization, division, or team can implement a coaching process that leads to greater growth and increased revenue. Of course, putting such a system in place requires thoughtful planning. Here are four steps to establishing a coaching process that is teachable, measurable, and leads to the creation of more high-growth coaches:

Step 1: Measure

Growth in coaching, growth in individuals, growth in outcomes, and growth in sales—these areas are what businesses are looking for when they embark on a process for improving the execution of coaching within their organizations. That is why measurement is the essential first step in our four-step coaching process.

The most important way that you can measure coaching acumen and execution is by surveying team members. By asking them about the consistency and effectiveness of the coaching they receive, you will better understand your organization’s current coaching environment. This not only helps you establish a baseline of performance, but also allows you to tailor your coaching process to better meet your needs.

Most organizations do not measure coaching, so they have no idea whether it’s already occurring or how well it’s being received by team members. Having this information will give you clarity about your company’s current coaching effectiveness and how it needs to improve.

Step 2: Educate and Train

In today’s business environment, continual development—giving up old skills and learning new ones—is absolutely critical to individual and organizational growth.

Unfortunately, too many companies view education and training as stand-alone events that will single-handedly provide what is needed to create behavior change and growth outcomes. But often, despite what is learned at an educational event, that knowledge is not applied and change is not implemented.

The education process must begin with building the coaches’ understanding of the importance of coaching. Coaches aren’t going to change their coaching behavior unless they emotionally buy in to the need to do so. It’s important that training and education is not a PowerPoint-and-quiz type of event, because you are trying to get coaches to give up their preconceived notions and make changes in the way they coach.

Step 3: Implement

It is easy to say, “Go forth and execute,” but, by default, most coaches return to old habits and behaviors. The best way to combat this tendency is to create a collaborative implementation environment that is driven by bringing together people who are trying to improve their coaching behavior. We refer to these gatherings as implementation huddles. The focus of these huddles is on the continued sharing of best coaching practices and open discussion of the challenges to overcome.

Implementation huddles provide coaches the ability to collaborate with one another about what is working and not working. They also create accountability for implementing the coaching activities, because it’s difficult for coaches to participate if they have not done the work. Moreover, they reinforce the importance of the coaching process.

Step 4: Track and Analyze

What would happen if doctors followed evidenced-based medicine best practices only 54 percent of the time? What if engineers provided bridge designs that met only 54 percent of the safety standards they were supposed to meet?

In most companies we’ve studied, coaches are doing only 54 percent of the necessary coaching activities. Further, when they are coaching their team members, 45 percent of coaches are falling short of the coaching quality standards they need to achieve in order to hit their performance goals.

By measuring coaching quantity and coaching quality, we have become acutely aware that most coaches don’t know how their actions and behaviors affect the growth of their teams. They don’t know what to do, how often to do it, or how to do it well. Because the vast majority of coaches in the business world don’t have the data and information they need, they have been underperforming for decades.

Analysis of this kind of coaching information not only allows a story to emerge but also solves a long-standing performance improvement mystery that, up to this point, has never been understood. That is, organizations would see different performance levels from teams, but the only data they could examine to explain this difference was on frontline performers. This information may answer the question in some cases, but without measurement of coach performance, there was a huge unknown variable.

We saw the impact of the coach when we analyzed data across sales departments of our client organizations. Forty-five percent of managers fell below necessary coaching quality standards to hit their sales number. When we considered the average sales goals of these coaches, this translated to $4.3 million left on the table due to inadequate coaching.

When it comes to creating high-growth coaches, these four steps, while independent, are inextricably linked. You cannot do just one of them and expect change. Simply put, if you want to build a high-growth culture, it takes consistent execution of the entire four-step process.

About the Authors

Bill Eckstrom, co-author of The Coaching Effect: What Great Leaders Do to Increase Sales, Enhance Performance, and Sustain Growth, is the founder of EcSell Institute, a research-based organization that works with leaders internationally to help them better understand, measure, and elevate coaching’s impact on performance. Bill was invited to the TEDx stage in 2017, and his talk “Why Comfort Will Ruin Your Life” was the fastest-growing TEDx Talk in the history of the event when it was released. To learn more, visit: www.ecsellinstitute.com

Sarah Wirth, co-author of The Coaching Effect: What Great Leaders Do to Increase Sales, Enhance Performance, and Sustain Growth, is vice president of client services at EcSell Institute. She has twenty years of experience in employee assessment, leadership development, sales executive coaching, and customer service. She has advised executives from across the globe, consulting with such organizations as Mercedes-Benz, Estee Lauder, Ritz-Carlton, The Cheesecake Factory, and many more. To learn more, visit: www.ecsellinstitute.com

5 Must-Haves for Successful Compliance Training

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Compliance training is critical for the success of an organization. It informs and educates employees on the laws, policies, and regulations that will have an impact on their jobs. It covers areas like anti-harassment, workplace safety, and diversity, among others. So, what makes compliance training successful? Keep on reading and we’ll list down some of the must-haves.

User-Friendly Software

Gone are the days when compliance training was conducted in an in-classroom setting. We are living in a digital age, and hence, training programs are also digital. That said, one of the most important things to keep in mind with such digital compliance training programs is to use the right software. Learners will be able to access training and reading materials online. They can even access compliance blogs, videos, and audio files that can help improve their knowledge.

Looking for a user-friendly enterprise solution and software that can be utilized for compliance training? While the options will be diverse, one that should be on your radar is True Office Learning.

Consistent and Long-Term Implementation

One of the most important for compliance training is for it to be consistent. Meaning, it should not be a one-time thing. Rather, it should be a long-term endeavor. It should be conducted several times to make sure that it will stick. The training should also be regularly refreshed, which will make it possible to reflect the changing policies.

Strong Leadership

To create a culture of compliance and to ensure the success of the compliance training programs, it is important to have strong leadership that is involved. Take note that compliance should be a function from the top to the bottom. Meaning, even the CEO must be part of the compliance training. Plus, the management should have the budget and the tools that are necessary to carry out the compliance training. It should be seen as a valuable investment.

Engaging and Effective Approach

The goal is to implement compliance training in such a way that it will not bore the participants. If it is monotonous, it will be ineffective when it comes to skill and knowledge retention. With this, think of the different ways to make training fun and entertaining. If you are using training software to teach compliance to the employees, it should have a user-friendly interface and culture of gamification must be infused.

Customized to the Needs of the Business

A successful compliance training program is tailor-fitted to the specific needs of the organization and the participants. There is no one-size-fits-all strategy that will work for all the users. Having a customized approach to compliance training starts with the need to determine the target audience to be able to identify what will work best for them. The specific goals of the organization will also have an effect on the way the training will be conducted.

In sum, as discussed above, successful compliance training must have a user-friendly software, long-term implementation, strong and supportive leadership, engaging approach, and tailor-fitted to the needs of the organization.

Eliminating Procrastination from Your Company

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Productivity| Eliminating Procrastination from Your CompanyIf you have an employee that procrastinates, hopefully, you will have spotted the signs. They always have something else they must do first, or they will do what you are asking tomorrow. They may say they just do not have the time, or that they will do it in half an hours.

You want your employees to be as productive as possible, but there have always been procrastinators in most workforces. They can unsettle the other members of staff and generally make your workforce unhappy. If you have someone like this in your workplace, how can you deal with the problem to eliminate it?

Have A Chat With Them

The first thing to do is to try and find out why they are behaving this way. Have an informal but direct chat with them and ask the question. It could be that they have a personal problem, or that they do not know how to do what you are asking but are afraid to admit it. The answer could be any one of a hundred things, and most times it can be problems that are easily solved, especially if the issue is work-related.

How To Deal With A Procrastinator

Being forceful is often the wrong way to deal with this type of situation. Forcing the person to meet deadlines won’t work either, and usually, logic does not enter the equation.

It seems that it is much more effective if you use a bit of cunning with your employees. Chat to them about deadlines as though they do not matter too much, and get involved with the job they are doing. Your personal involvement can make a big difference, as generally. they are concerned about letting you down.

According to research, this is the best way to deal with procrastinators, as it becomes a habit for them and having their boss around much of the times breaks them out of their normal routine.

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Productivity| Eliminating Procrastination from Your CompanyRemove Distractions

This should apply to all your employees, but even more so to those that procrastinate. If you have large windows overlooking a busy street, have blinds installed to block out the daily lives of those walking by. If you want to know how to block websites on a Mac – Setapp has the answer. This would stop them playing games or looking at social media on your systems, and should reduce the amount of time spent on these things during working hours.

Anything that distracts employees from their work should be removed, and then they will become more productive.

Hold Them Responsible

If you hold each person is held responsible for the job they should be doing, and a deadline is missed because one person procrastinates, the other staff members will not be too pleased and will try to make sure that it does not happen again. Sometimes, pressure from their workmates will do more good than anything a boss or manager can say.

If you have done everything you can to prevent the procrastinating and it carries on, there may come a time when you have to say enough is enough and in fairness to your other employees, replace that member of staff.

The Effective Guide to Leadership Development Programme

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Articles |Leadership Development|The Effective Guide to Leadership Development ProgrammeWhat is a Leadership Development Program?

Leadership development refers to specific programs utilized by organizations, in order to train or coach an employee(s) about effective leadership requirements. These programs focus on improving the skill-set and attitudes of the individual or group of individuals.

Why is leadership development important?

The productivity of a workforce is largely dependent on the capability of its leaders. The importance of leadership development programs are manifold and are crucial to the development of organizations. These include:

  • Effective leadership development program helps people to execute and identify improvement strategies which will increase the productivity of valued resources and organizational success.
  • The more a company focuses on internal leadership development, the easier it is to achieve specific organizational objectives and goals such as, strategy change, reorganization, and cultural transformations among others.
  • Leadership development has been shown to help people become more open to constructive feedback and develop self-awareness, clarify behavioural patterns that may hinder job effectiveness, and also identify strengths and personal development needs.
  • Through proper coaching, a leader’s ability to assimilate is heightened, and a high-potential leader is developed. Thus, creating a highly effective manager who will undoubtedly assure success in new assignments.
  • In the long-run, having leaders that can foster a positive culture will provide a big impact on the organization.

StrategyDriven Talent Management Articles |Leadership Development|The Effective Guide to Leadership Development ProgrammeTwo Approaches to Learning about Leadership Development

There are two major approaches to leadership development and training programs which are individual or Self-directed approach and collective or other-directed approach. It’s essential that you learn and understand the approaches you can implement in improving your leadership development.

Formal vs. Informal training

Formal approaches are well structured, organized, pre-planned and forward-looking in order to achieve a specific outcome. While informal approaches are the knowledge you gain while on the job, carrying out your various day-to-day activities, reading a book or having discussions with a friend or colleague.

Regardless of the approach, that is, informal or informal, it is vital to capture and recognize that learning is a continuous process. You can’t just read a book or two and claim to know all about effective leadership.

If you are to become a great leader, then you need to learn to learn, and continue on the pathways to leadership development. The tip for continuously learning is to develop the ability to reflect on your past experiences as well as the experiences of others.

Individual or Self-directed Vs. Collective or Other-directed training

Individual development has been the targeted approach for a while now. Just as the name implies, it focuses on the development of a particular person or individual, solely to identify the person’s weaknesses and strengths, and in turn, train and improve his/her ability and trait.

This can be achieved through strategies like attending different seminars or workshops, reading books or other educational resources, one-on-one coaching, and questionnaires, among others.

The advantage of this approach is vast. The most important being undivided attention on the individual which will boost or speed up the individual’s skill and trait. However, this approach can be difficult to implement, costly and also send mixed messages within an organization.

Collective or Other-directed approach

A more recent approach is the collective approach, which focuses on training a group of people rather than an individual. This approach is easier to implement and can also produce powerful results in terms of leadership succession.

However, due to a lack of focus on individual skill-set, people may end up learning skills that do not fit their personalities or personal values or end up developing skills they already have.

Guidance for constructing a leadership development Program

  • Communicate your vision by outlining the qualities and skills required to occupy specific leadership positions in your organizations.
  • Set SMART organizational goals
  • Implement realistic and achievable solutions

Focus on the outcomes by monitoring the performance of the leader at every step of the way, through a regular meeting.

Tips for personal leadership development

  1. Strategic thinking
    Have a broader business perspective. Learn to ‘think outside the box’ and see the big picture. Also learn to understand the ‘why’ and not just the ‘how’.
  2. Coaching
    Learn to direct and guide your team rather than always telling them what to do.
  3. Financial Shrewdness
    Fine-tune your financial literacy to better understand and interpret the company’s financial statements.
  4. Active Listening
    Tone up your ability to pay more attention and demonstrate that you value what other team members have to say.
  5. Industry, competitive and customer knowledge
    Understand what your customers need, have a vast knowledge of the industry you are in and know your competitors.
  6. Point balance
    Leaders need to know how to balance their strengths and use them when needed and to ‘put a leash’ on them when they are not appropriate. Strengths overused can easily turn into weaknesses.
  7. Time management
    Manage your time appropriately and learn to prioritize. Make a step-by-step plan for resolving tasks and avoid seemingly unproductive ventures and focus more on value added activities.
  8. Talent management
    Have a succession plan for your position, fill all positions with ‘A players’ and do not be afraid to let go of toxic employees. Refine your ability to hire, promote, delegate, assess and promote your staff.
  9. Leadership Presence and Effective Communication
    Learn the ability to ‘command attention’, communicate with people whose styles and perspectives may differ from your own and also respect their perspectives. Utilize available technology to improve internal communications and collaborate virtually.
  10. Integrity Building
    Inspire your employees to be people of unquestionable integrity when you stick to your values and core beliefs, do not make unreasonable demands of your team nor make false promises.
  11. Change Management
    Learn to summon others to change, instigate changes, be flexible to change, bring needed changes to light, drive company-wide inspiration and motivation to change, and also set the parameters for developing a culture of change within the organization.
  12. Develop an effective collaboration with employees.
  13. Conflict and confrontational management
  14. Cross functional knowledge and perspective including the ability to network across boundaries

A Happy Workforce is a Productive Workforce

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Workforce Productivity | A Happy Workforce is a Productive WorkforceThis is quite an obvious thing to say, but it’s surprising how easy it is to forget when your mind is on other aspects of running your business. The happiness of your employees should be one of your priorities because, without them, your business is likely to fail. When was the last time you asked them how happy they are?

Unfortunately, taking your employees happiness for granted is easy to do, but it’s not the most sensible course of action. If your team feel valued and are contributing to something great, they’re more likely to put the effort in.

If you find your staff members are less than happy, take note of the following tips to help you turn it around.

Praise Good Work

If one of your team does something good, make sure they receive praise. It’s human nature to enjoy receiving recognition for a job done well, and all it takes is a simple “thanks for your hard work.”

Reward Hard Work

This tip is going to take a little monetary investment, but your business will be amply rewarded. If there’s a member of your team who has been regularly going above and beyond what is required of them, then it deserves to be rewarded. You don’t have to break the bank to do so, but time off in lieu, a bottle of wine, treating the team to cakes on Monday or a Friday lunchtime meal out will make your team feel valued. If they feel their hard work is being valued, they’re more likely to want to repeat the effort.

Train Them In Sattelite Skills

Sattelite skills are skills that are part of your usual skills package but may not be practiced in the day-to-day. They are lateral capabilities that provide someone with the capacity to widen their professional abilities and help them work together with other professionals more readily. For instance, helping your programmers train in UX/UI development can help them more readily program with interfaces in mind. This can work up to the very top of a field, such as doctors, nurses and other medical or clinical professionals gaining experience in aesthetics training. This shows your willingness to invest in the career of your staff, while providing them a plethora of directions to improve in.

Show that You Care

When employees feel they are cared about, productivity increases. How do you show that you care about them? You need to ask how they are and ask how they feel about working for you. Take the time to find out more about them, whether it’s professionally or personally. You could consider introducing an employee survey platform to help gather the answers you need; you can visit Inpulse.com to find out more. Often, a simple “how are you” is enough to make an employee feel valued.

Take Time Out from the Daily Routine

It’s possible to make the workplace a happier one by planning fun things to do away from the office. Take your employees out for the day and have some fun. If your employees feel you’re doing something nice for them, they’re guaranteed to be happier.

Encourage Community Minded Attitudes

Build a sense of workplace community by encouraging people to greet each. Lead by example, and others are sure to follow. What’s more, make sure all company executives and managers do the same.

Foster Personal Career Goals

It might seem like something selfish you’re encouraging, but when each employee has their own personal career goals, it’s going to keep their minds focused. Rather than getting involved in or stressed about office politics and workplace stress, they’ll have something better to think about.

It’s possible to have a happy workplace as long as you take the time to make it so. If your employee survey highlights the fact that there are people in your organization who aren’t happy, try the tips above, and you’ll be making a difference.