Coaching

How Coaching Has Helped Me—And How It Can Help You

/ Ken Blanchard

I’ve talked a lot about how leaders can help people succeed through day-to-day coaching. In fact, our company recently offered a webinar called The Manager Who Can Coach: Bringing Coaching Skills into Your Organization, which you can view here.  

For my blog today, I wanted to share how coaching has helped me to be successful in various aspects of my life—and how it can help you. While some of these people didn’t have the formal title of “coach,” they had experience in the areas where I needed help.

A coach can give you what you can’t give yourself and provide the direction and support you need to succeed.

As a youth I had a great example of what coaching could do for me with my basketball coach, Paul Ryan. Paul coached me to focus on my strengths—in my case, my big hands and outside jump shot. While I wasn’t much of a runner, people nicknamed me “Hot Hands” because I was an excellent shooter.

A coach can help you set the goals that matter to you and keep you accountable as you move toward them.

Later in life, my affinity for food combined with my busy career made it difficult for me to keep my weight under control. When I finally decided to get serious about getting into shape, Tim Kearin, my coauthor on Fit at Last, became my primary fitness coach. We used SLII® to figure out the kind of leadership style I needed to get healthy. I now know that I need ongoing coaching and support to keep me accountable with my diet and exercise, so I work with a fitness coach on a regular basis. This is how I “keep my commitment to my commitment.”

A coach can improve your skills and deepen your knowledge.

I was never a great student. My first intellectual coach was my brilliant sister, Sandy, who taught me good study habits. In college I found coaches who guided my academic career. During graduate school at Colgate University, Warren Ramshaw coached me to find a major that really captured my interest. Later, Don McCarty helped me get accepted into the doctoral program at Cornell and coached me as I pursued my PhD.

As a writer, I also consider the dozens of coauthors I’ve had over the years to be my intellectual coaches. Every one of them exposed me to new learning and helped me drill down into subjects that interested me.

A coach can clarify next steps, ask smart questions, and keep you moving forward toward your goals.

In the late 1970s a group of presidents who were members of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) encouraged my wife Margie and me to start our own company. We were flattered by their high opinion of us, but in those days we couldn’t even balance our own checkbook! Fortunately, five of those presidents became our business coaches and helped us get our company going.

Twenty-five years ago, we began using professional advisors for our family business. We wanted to make sure the business didn’t mess up our family—and vice versa! An advisor meets with us once a quarter, giving us invaluable coaching.

A coach can help you gain self-knowledge and improve your relationships.

One of my weaknesses is that I’m a pleaser and tend to say “yes” too often. That’s why it’s important for me to work with a coach to look at what I’m doing and help me set priorities that align with my purpose.

My wife Margie and I are always looking for ways to improve our relationship and how we communicate with each other, so we’ve worked with several relationship coaches over the years. The key to a good marriage is being open to learning.

When we met Norman Vincent Peale and his wife, Ruth, in the 1980s, we learned how important it is to be a team when you’re married. We observed that they each had their strength areas and didn’t try to tell the other one what to do. Every morning Norman and Ruth would take a two-mile walk together, holding hands, but they wouldn’t talk. They called it their “alone time together.” When it came to the teamwork of marriage, Norman and Ruth were great coaches for us.

A coach can give you perspective and someone to confide in.

After seeing how badly my old church treated a pastor who protested the Vietnam War back in the 1960s, I turned my back on my spiritual side. Fortunately for me, I found a great spiritual coach in Norman Vincent Peale when we got together to write The Power of Ethical Management. Norman gave me a broader perspective and helped me get back onto my spiritual path. Since then, I’ve had several great spiritual coaches, including Bob Buford, coauthor of Half-Time and founder of The Leadership Network, Phil Hodges, my long-time friend and coauthor, and Bill Hybels, former senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church.

Take Advantage of Coaching

If you’re avoiding doing something just because you’ve never done it before, a coach can help you with that.

If you’re stuck in any area of your life, a coach can help you identify what’s stopping you and find ways around your roadblocks.

Take a look at your life. Where are you now—and where do you want to be? Where do you need more direction and support? Be honest with yourself about the areas where you’re not able to succeed on your own, and find a coach to help you with them.

To get the most out of a coaching relationship, you’ll need to be honest with your coach about what’s happening and where you need help. You’ll also need more than one session. Coaching is most effective when you meet regularly over an agreed-upon period of time.

My final advice is to let go of your pride and stop struggling on your own. Go get yourself a coach!

When Is it Time for a Career Coaching Conversation?

/ Ken Blanchard

My wife, Margie, says managers have three roles—doing their own job, working with people to help them develop and accomplish their current goals, and talking with people about their career aspirations.

The third role Margie cites is one that is often either forgotten or squeezed in at the end of an annual performance review meeting. As a manager, why would you want to talk with your people about their career aspirations? It’s not necessarily because you have a promotion in your back pocket. It’s because you care about them and want to know where they see themselves in one, three, or five years—where they would like to be in their career.

Career coaching is an organizational strategy that retains high performers and increases bench strength over time. Why? Because people get energized when their manager wants to talk about their future—it shows them their manager is interested in them and it makes them more willing to share their thoughts and plans.

Several signals can indicate that it’s time to start having career conversations with a direct report:

  • When they continually exceed expectations
  • When they ask for more responsibility
  • When they bring up the topic of their career aspirations
  • When they have mastered the basics of their current role

Some managers are hesitant to have career coaching conversations with a valued team member because they fear losing the person to another department or organization. But consider this: research from world-renowned coaching expert Marshall Goldsmith shows that one of the most common reasons people leave a company is because nobody asked them to stay. Look at each coaching conversation as an opportunity to let your direct report know how much you appreciate them and their work.

Another reason managers are hesitant is because they don’t have a potential promotion to offer or a good idea of new opportunities in the organization.  The idea is to have the conversation without thinking either of you have an answer—yet.  One of the questions you could ask is What are two or three positions in this organization that might be of interest to you in the future?  The person’s reply may give you clues about their general interest or intent. It may even lead to a conversation about how they can find out more about those positions.

Managers, I urge you to sit down and discuss career aspirations at least two or three times a year with each of your direct reports. A regularly scheduled one-on-one meeting is a perfect time to bring up this topic.

People need their managers to be interested in their future as well as their present—and career coaching conversations are a great opportunity to show your direct reports you really care.

Coaching—the Most Essential Part of Performance Management

/ Ken Blanchard / 4 Comments

Performance management has three elements—planning, day-to-day coaching, and evaluation. When I ask managers which of these elements takes the most time, they almost always say evaluation. Sometimes I hear long statements full of frustration about the forms, activities, and deadlines involved in the evaluation process. It makes me realize that people are putting the emphasis on the process—not the performance. And that is where many managers make the wrong choice.

Effective managers should spend most of their time on day-to-day coaching. Let’s take a closer look.

As a leader, it’s true that you have to spend time up front to set clear goals. Once you’ve completed that part, however, your job is to be there to coach your employees and help them accomplish those goals. I think of it as turning the traditional hierarchical pyramid upside down so that you work for your people. You are there to help them.

If you spend most of your time coaching your people and helping them succeed, what do you think happens when it is time for the evaluation? You get to celebrate accomplishments! When you help your people win, you win, your department wins, and ultimately your organization wins. That’s why I say coaching is the most essential part of performance management.

Coaching: The Key to Being an Effective Manager

/ Ken Blanchard

Why is it important to use coaching skills if you want to be an effective manager? Because when people get the coaching they need, they perform better. Managers who provide day-to-day coaching have more effective teams, grow and retain their key people, and experience higher productivity overall. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Over the years when I’ve asked people to describe their best boss ever, they often say it was a manager who helped them be successful in their role through coaching. It is important to set clear goals with your people, but it is critical to then use coaching skills such as

  • asking what they need from you to reach their goals,
  • listening with the intent to learn, and
  • working closely together to solve problems.

Coaching is the key to building a trusting work environment and improving the competency of your staff. Remember, your most important job as a manager is to help your people succeed.

In the short video below I share a story of how, as a college professor, I used coaching skills to help students get an A in my course.

Please give coaching a try. I know when you make coaching a priority, you’ll help your staff improve performance levels.

 

One Simple Strategy to Be More Effective as a Manager

/ Ken Blanchard / 7 Comments

The Dysfunctionally Connected WorkplacePeople often ask me how they can be more effective as a manager. One approach I recommend is to meet one-on-one with each of your direct reports for 15 to 30 minutes at least once every two weeks.

Having one-on-one meetings is a simple strategy and just plain common sense—but it’s not common practice, according to polling we conducted together with Training magazine earlier this year. When we asked people what they wanted out of their one-on-ones with their immediate supervisor, we discovered managers aren’t making time to meet with their direct reports on a regular basis—and when they do meet, they aren’t using the time effectively. (See infographic.) Continue reading →