Leadership Laboratory

Leadership Lab: Management Competencies

Situational Awareness Advice for Security Managers - February 4th, 2008
Tenet Nosce - January 29th, 2008
Using Key Competencies to Manage Career Development and Direction - May 30th, 2008
The Meeting before the Meeting - September 17th, 2008
Leadership in a Technical Role - September 17th, 2008
Motivation Mistakes Inexperienced Leaders Make and How to Avoid Making Them - March 10th, 2008
Improve the performance of a project with a good start - January 11th, 2008
Project Management for Security Managers: Develop a Plan - January 29th, 2008
Resolving Performance Issues Caused by Lack of Skill or Ability - December 24th, 2007
Living Life on Purpose - Personal Branding - Updated September 6th, 2007
Positional and Personal Authority - Updated September 6th, 2007
Cross-training: A Case Study - July 27th, 2007
How to "Pushback" - July 17th, 2007
Should I Apply for this Middle Management Position? - Updated June 13th, 2007
Groups in Conflict: How to Manage their Relationship - June 8th, 2007
Creating the Next Generation of Cyber Security Leaders - May 8th, 2007
How To Budget Time - February 8th, 2007
The Security Manager and Business Situational Awareness - January 29th, 2007
How to Address Shortcomings in Employee Evaluations - January 1st, 2007
Conducting an Exit Interview - March 22nd, 2007
Measuring Employee Performance - November 14th, 2006
Coaching to Improve Performance - March 12th, 2007

Coaching to Improve Performance

March 12th, 2007
By Stephen Northcutt


A coach is a person who enables clients to master specific skills, knowledges and develop abilities. Like counselors and mentor, coaches offer prescriptive advice, error analysis, expert opinions and "how to" guidance.1 Coaching is one of the keys to business execution. If an otherwise skilled employee is struggling with a particular skill or ability, coaching can help them get over the hump. There are seven primary benefits a coach passes on to the client.2

Encourage Life Long Learning and that is Healthy!

Many people get comfortable with their abilities and cease to learn, or more commonly do all of their learning down one narrow subject area, i.e. willing to learn more about selling, but don't learn organizational skills. A coach can encourage and also help them get started to build new frames of references for learning in new areas. Success can lead to a greater willingness to continue life long learning. Consider this example from a life long learning blog about reading: Consider reading a book from your area of business. There are many great books related to your industry. Test drive one of them. Next, it's time to expand to a business book that pushes the envelope a bit more than might be comfortable. Consider a book on creative thinking, or even an author whose ideas are in direct opposition to your own.3

Promote Self Esteem

A coach gives the client an opportunity to associate with positive, supportive people. When you are surrounded by negative people who constantly put you and your ideas down, your self-esteem is lowered. On the other hand, when you are accepted and encouraged, you feel better about yourself in the best possible environment to raise your self-esteem.4

Learn Goal Setting

The majority of people seem to drift through life. A coach encourages a client to set goals and determine the steps to achieve those goals. A great coach goes beyond helping establish business or sports goals and also encourages life goals or major objectives. Major goals can be specific or broad in scope, but they must always lead directly towards the Objective they support. They must also always have a deadline. A date you plan to accomplish the major goal by, a realistic date that not only motivates you into action but also ensures progress towards your Objective.5

Here are some of our favorite tips for setting goals from mindtools:6

Encourage and Model Teamwork

"Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results." -Andrew Carnegie

A coach knows the importance of teamwork and models the behavior of teamwork and takes advantage of opportunities to get people to work together. A big part of this is getting people to work on plans together. One of the most important job satisfiers for people is that their opinion is considered important.7 If you can get the clients to plan together, you can get them to execute the plan together.

Develop Time Management Skills

A good coach knows what the time wasters are and tries to focus the client on the shortcuts, the organizational skills to do the job. One industry that teaches this very well is food service. Great chefs teach their clients to do it right and know the speed will come later. This is one area where a coach may use negative coaching (Don't do that, that is the wrong way. No, listen and try to get it this time), because if the client gets comfortable with the time wasters they may never be able to increase their performance. A good coach helps the client rank activities using something like the MSC method8 to sort tasks into urgent and important:

Learn About Dealing with Adversity

Stuff happens! The question is what we do when it happens. Adversity builds character. The challenges we face teach us resourcefulness, self-reliance, courage, patience, perseverance, and self-discipline; and, struggles makes us heroic, for heroes and heroines are made by scaling mountains, not molehills.9 A coach knows that the client can only improve if they face adversity and therefore coaches are thankful for adversity and considers them opportunities for growth. We found this on the web, it seems like a nice way to view adversity: The PPPP program. First, don't PANIC, for all it does is immobilize you. To escape the clutches of fear, PLAN. That is, ask yourself what steps can be taken to improve the situation. Next, break down those steps into smaller tasks that are easier to carry out. Set a completion date for each task. Finally, work your plan by carrying out the action steps. As you do so, you will start making PROGESS. Keep building on your progress until you reach the level of PROSPERITY you desire.10

Have Fun with the Task at Hand

Stuff happens, but there are rich moments too. A coach knows how to savor the moment, as the Wide World of Sports put it, the thrill of success and the agony of defeat. If the client has been cast into their role properly, they should be having a great time. A coach reinforces this (Isn't this great?, Life is good indeed, it doesn't get better than this).

Summary

A Work Foundation's survey of human resource and personnel specialists reported the top three main benefits of coaching to the organization as:11

Coaching helps employees trying to master a particular skill or ability get over the hump. Coaching is an important leadership skill. In our leadership course, we ask students to think about a coach that they still remember and to reflect on at least one of their coaching techniques. This would be a good exercise for you to go through right now to remember a coach that made an impact in your life. As a coach, you help your clients master specific skills, knowledges and develop abilities. To do this, you balance positive and negative reinforcement, offer prescriptive advice, error analysis, expert opinions and "how to" guidance.

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaching ( modified definition )
2 http://www.y-coach.com/involve.html
3 http://blogbusinessworld.blogspot.com/2007/01/lifelong-learning-read-for-success.html
4 http://www.self-esteem-nase.org/Self-esteem-booster.shtml
5 http://www.goal-setting-guide.com/goal-planning.html
6 http://www.mindtools.com/page6.html
7 http://isc.sans.org/poll.html?pollid=100&results=Y&
8 http://www.sans.edu/resources/leadershiplab/budgetTime.php
9 http://personal-development.com/chuck/adversity2.htm
10 http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=39216032
11 http://www.abetterperspective.com/Benefits_of_Coaching.htm