In this week, we're turning our attention to developing and refining our coaching practice. The first milestone of the course was very conceptual. It was sort of about the behind the scenes for you and your team as it relates to coaching, reflecting on your thinking the expectations that you have, the philosophy that you have. Now, what we really want to do is look at how does this all get executed and put into practice. So, those elements that we talked about as it relates to really having a powerful practice are the things we want to make sure that we revisit here. We want to make sure that we revisit what you've decided to do as far as your practice. Remember that your consistency in coaching and how frequently you meet with your team has everything to do with the cadence of your business. So, if you have a very fast-paced business, then you might want to be meeting with your team members every week or once every two weeks. If the projects that you work on, if the work that you do has a longer shelf life or conclusion time, then you might only need to be meeting with your team members once a month. Frankly, as you're rolling out your coaching practice, once a month is fine. If every manager on the planet met with their direct reports once a month, one-on-one, I honestly think we could change the world and we could generate tons more revenue because we would be so much more involved with our team and our team's performance, and nothing would get off-balance, things would get addressed right away. Within 30 days, you can typically write the ship. But if you let things go for a quarter or for six months or frankly for a year, in many cases, that's just too late. At that point, you've lost a ton of productivity and a ton of revenue as a result, right? So, we first want to identify, what is this practice? How frequently do you want to meet with your team? Then, we want to have a coaching agenda, right? What are those things that you want to add to the conversations that you have with your team every time you meet? We gave you a sample of an agenda, right? We asked you to reflect on that. There are some typical things that should always be, I think, included in an agenda. Action items, project updates, benchmarks, KPI for the role, as transparent as we can make progress on those KPIs, support that they may need from you, any personal development that they're doing, all of these items should be able to be put on that agenda. Remember the goal here is that initially, you will manage that agenda, but over time, we want them to come to you with that agenda prepared and they're ready for their one-on-one, right? That time with you is for them, so while you're in the initial practice of getting things going, it takes some time for them to get the process down and what we're doing in these meetings. But over time, what we want is for them to have as much ownership for that meeting and come as prepared to that meeting as you would, right? It shouldn't be more work for you in the long run. Having coaching meetings should be a meeting that they prepare for and come to talk with you about, not just you doing all the work and they show up, right? So, we want to make sure that we have an established practice. We want to make sure that we have an established agenda. Then, we also want to make sure that we're really comfortable with our coaching algebra and how to help diagnose performance issues as it relates to what we see in this practice. If we have a consistent practice, then we can see performance if it starts to slip or if people are doing really well, right? So, we want to remember our coaching algebra tool. We want to remember that this is how we diagnose what's going on especially when there's a performance gap. So, remember those three key questions. Does my employee know what to do and they just don't want to do it? Does my employee not know what to do but they are willing to learn? Then, does my employee not know what to do and they don't want to learn, right? Based on our answer to those three questions, we will determine how we best need to move forward to coach. Do we need to coach skill set and do skills transfer, just helping someone learn a new skill? Or do we need to coach mindset which is really helping someone understand their thinking and how that's preventing their performance, right? Understand that how they're thinking is truly influencing the outcomes that they're getting, the results that they're getting. Are they willing to accept responsibility for their current performance? Then, we have the employee performance continuum. Those three different ways that we want to determine what to do. We have high performers that need coaching and ongoing development. We have steady performers that need coaching and ongoing development and support. Then, we have low performers who we invest in as much as we can until we realize there's not any movement and then we manage that performance, right? That's when the disciplinary action or performance management process comes into place. So, those are the three performance areas we have to do the diagnostic work through coaching algebra to be able to know which is the best one to help us move forward. What we would also like to see from you in this milestone, are your plans for a high-performing employee, a consistently-performing employee, and a low-performing employee? How will you go about coaching and developing and managing those three types of employees within your organization? So, we want to see your current practices. We want to see your coaching agenda. We want to see your coaching plans for four individuals in your organization based on those different types of employees, high-performing, consistently-performing and low-performing employees. Those will be your assignments for this milestone. Once you've completed those assignments, you should be ready for the last milestone which is actually having and recording a coaching conversation with someone. I'll see you there.
