Coaching Specific Types of Employees
Coaching for Behavioral Change
A lot of what we are learning in this module deals directly with coaching difficult people. As a coach, you need to know how to directly coach these types of people, and you need to know how to teach those you are coaching how to do the same.
For this discussion, please respond to the following:
- Tell us about a time where you dealt directly with someone that needed behavioral change.
- Did you feel prepared to coach the person through the needed change?
- After watching the video above, apply the process that Marshall Goldsmith taught to your situation and tell us how using that approach would have impacted your situation.
- Be sure to reply to your peers’ situations and offer specific ideas that might help in their own approach.
Visit the Leadership Channel within Skillsoft via the Trident Online Library and view the following video:
M/F: Male/Female Speaker
M: Coaching for behavioral change. How can you help another person achieve a positive, long-term change in interpersonal behavior? I’m going to give you some techniques that always work if three conditions exist. One, the issue is behavioral, it’s not intellectual, technical or functional. Two, the person is willing to try. And three, they are going to be given a fair chance. If these three conditions exist, what I am going to teach you always works. If these three conditions do not exist, don’t use this tool. And I’ve got some good news. In 70% of all requests for coaching, the issue is behavioral, the person is willing to try, and they will be given a fair chance. Try this technique. What are the steps?
Step one, help the person identify the one area or two areas for behavioral change that you’d like to see, such as becoming a better listener, such as giving more positive recognition, being more positive. And you know what? Very important, this needs to be an interpersonal behavior, something their coworkers can see. After you and the person agree on what is the identified behavior or the two identified behaviors, then identify who are the key stakeholders in the best position to observe; is the person doing a great job at demonstrating this specific behavior?
The next step is to have this person follow up with each of their coworkers on a regular basis in a way that sounds like this. “You know, one thing I’d like to do is be a great listener. I can’t change the past. I can change the future. If you had two ideas for the future to help me be a great listener, what might they be?” Whatever the person hears, have them sit there, take notes, shut up and say thank you. They can’t argue or critique other people’s remarks, just write them down. Make sure the person doesn’t over-promise. Teach the person to say, “You know, I can’t promise to change everything everyone says; I’m just going to promise to listen to everybody, to think about what everybody tells me, and do what I can.”
Let’s say the person has—oh—six coworkers that they’re following up with. Then what you do as their manager is, after they’ve discussed this with the six coworkers, they talk to you. And you know what you say? “What have you learned? Tell me what have you learned, and tell me what are you going to do about it?” Then you give the person your ideas and tell them not to judge or critique your ideas either, just shut up and listen to your ideas. After they have your ideas and all the other people’s ideas, then say, “All right. Let’s lay out a plan. Exactly what are you going to do to follow up on what you’ve learned?”
Then the next month, you recycle the process. Very simple. They go back to each person again and say, “Last month I said I wanted to be a great listener. Based on my behavior last month, give me an idea or two for next month.” They get data; you quickly follow up with them. They get data; you quickly follow up with them.
In anywhere from five, six, seven months, you can do a mini survey learning process, and here at Targeted Learning, we have a mini survey process, I think you’re going to find is very simple. You can identify what are the behaviors, has the person gotten better on those specific behaviors? Most importantly, not just as judged by you as their manager, but as judged by the important people around them. What I think you’re going to love about this process as a coach, it takes all that pressure away from you for having to be the authority figure, from you to having to be right all the time. Then your job as a coach becomes facilitating a learning process where you’re helping the person learn from everyone around him, everyone around her.
The other thing, I think you’re going to find this process is fun to execute. It’s positive, it’s simple, it’s focused, it’s fast, and most important, it works.
[END RECORDING]
Coaching Specific Types of Employees
Tell us about a time where you dealt directly with someone that needed behavioral change.
When I was in the Army I had a soldier who always wanted to fight other soldier to solve issues. Such caused chaos and he lost friends due to the cruel behavior. Further, the soldier was chaotic and did not even fighting the old soldiers. As a friend, I confronted him and attempted to culminate him into changing his attitude. I expressed the risks of such behavior to the colleague including losing the job or even losing his or colleague’s’ life in case of a thorough fight (McConnell, 2018). I counselled him about the ways to manage his tempers.
Did you feel prepared to coach the person through the needed change?
I did feel that I was prepared to deal with this soldier because I was from the same environment that he was from, so I understood him and dealt with other like this in the past. The soldier was a close friend and felt prepared to coach him when relaxed and having fun time together. Although such behavior is usually triggered by hot tempers I knew that friendly counselling would help greatly to manage the behavior when solving issues (McConnell, 2018).
After watching the video above, apply the process that Marshall Goldsmith taught to your situation and tell us how using that approach would have impacted your situation.
The video informed of the steps for coaching process. Firstly, I will involve the soldier to assess the desired behavior in solving issues. I will guide the soldier in the approaches to solve issues and follow up to determine potential improvements (Goldsmith, 2015). I will also initiate an agreement with the soldier on the areas that need change. I will also help the soldier to develop positive behaviors through repeated attempts to handle disputes (Goldsmith, 2015). Goldsmith’s approach is impactful in the sense that it initiates a process for behavioral change, since the soldier will need sufficient time to develop a positive change.
Be sure to reply to your peers’ situations and offer specific ideas that might help in their own approach.
While fights have negative results such as injuries, I will guide him though some anger management tips to help control the bad tempers which activate the fighting moods. For instance, I will advise him to take a nature walk away from the person who aggravated him to help release the tempers (McConnell, 2018). I will also advise him to hold grudges because they can easily activate the anger and end up fighting.
References
Goldsmith, M. (2015). Coaching for Behavioral Change. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9-VOHw9lCc
McConnell, C. R. (2018). Interpersonal Competence in the Management of People. The health care manager, 37(4), 358-367. https://journals.lww.com/healthcaremanagerjournal/FullText/2018/10000/Interpersonal_Competence_in_the_Management_of.12.aspx