Speed Coaching

Speed Coaching
I think I'm missing out. I'm guessing a lot of managers,
who could benefit from developing good coaching skills,
self-select and decide not to attend my training. I'm
further guessing that this may be because their perception
of coaching involves two cosy chairs facing each other,
soft lighting and a couple of hours spare to really get
stuck into some deep rooted psychological cause behind
certain difficulties that occur at work.

It is easy to understand where this view comes from and the
coaching profession doesn't help because it welcomes and
indeed encourages this perception; it makes it seem as if
coaching must ALWAYS occur at this level to be helpful, but
it doesn't. A trained Life or Executive coach may well work
at this depth to bring about the significant and permanent
change for which they have presumably been hired but the
coaching manager is less concerned with causing tearful
epiphanies and more concerned with restoring focus and
improving performance on the job. This can be done far
quicker.

Most coaching is supported by a questioning framework. I
devised the coaching ARROW and although this comes with a
wide range of sample questions, it can be boiled down to
five:

A - Aims - What do you want?
R - Reality - What's happening now?
R - Reflection - How big is the gap?
O - Options - What could you do?
W - Way Forward - What will you do?

These five simple questions give us an opportunity to coach
at great speed. They will not, on their own, create
fundamental change or improvement but they will create
focus and mobility. These being, in my view, the desired
outcomes of any coaching conversation in a work context.
Imagine you wanted to add a little coaching to a
conversation with a colleague who was about to make an
important business pitch. Asking 'What do you want?' could
really get them focused on a positive outcome and ready to
bring it about. It's not dissimilar to an athlete mentally
rehearsing the race in their mind as they settle into the
blocks. Imagine, talking to another colleague who had just
returned from a meeting that had gone spectacularly well,
but they were unsure why. Exploring 'What's happening now?'
immediately afterwards could really bring some insight and
learning to bear.

When our team members become used to being coached in this
way, they often come with Aims, Reality, Reflection and
Options already thought through. They just want to check
things out with us and get some 'permission' from us for
the way forward.

I think of this technique as Martini coaching: 'Anytime.
Anyplace. Anywhere' I have taught the technique to managers
who hardly ever see their team, but can still do some good
coaching around the coffee machine, in the lift or on a car
journey. Another tip is to have the questions to hand on a
small piece of paper so that you can self-coach before you
settle down to tackle an important task. G o ahead and
order the cosy chairs and soft lighting for the major
conversations, but there's plenty of coaching that can be
done in the meantime.

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Matt Somers is a coaching practitioner of many years'
experience. He works with a host of clients in North East
England where his firm is based and throughout the UK and
Europe. Matt understands that people are working with their
true potential locked away. He shows how coaching provides
a simple yet elegant key to this lock. For a bumper load of
coaching tips and tricks - including FREE resources - visit
http://www.mattsomers.com