Training People – continued

Chapter 6 – Skills of a good coach.

Bev had arranged to meet Brian today to discuss the progress of the new consultant, Mandy, who had been with Brilliant Travel for some weeks now.   Bev was interested in finding out this information but, more importantly, she was keen to hear from Brian about some of the tactics he had used to coach Mandy.   Since Brian had been given responsibility to coach and mentor new consultants in the agency, Bev had observed a real change in Brian’s behaviour.

‘So, Brian – I’d like to spend this meeting discussing Mandy’s progress, but before we do that, I’m interested to hear how you set about preparing to mentor and coach her in the Brilliant Travel way!’ 

Brian looked uncomfortable for a moment and Bev wondered whether she’d been a bit premature in assuming that he’d changed his old, secretive ways.   Then, Brian made eye contact with her. 

‘Well, Bev, I have to say that when you suggested I should be responsible for looking after new staff, I was kind of annoyed.  I had enough to do looking after my clients and thought you were just trying to dump more crap on me.   Then when you said you’d pay for me to go on a coaching course, I thought “Why not – it’ll look good on my resume and I’m planning a move soon anyway”.   Anyway, to cut a long story short, I found the course really interesting and couldn’t wait to get back and try out the new stuff I’d learned.’ 

Bev, was quite unaware of these facts but was concentrating hard on not letting it show.  ‘Ah – OK.   So what in particular did you learn?   What does it take to be a good workplace coach?’ 

Brian continued ‘ I realised from the course that I wasn’t the best listener in the world.   I was always just waiting for the other person to finish talking so I could jump in with an answer.   Never had the time to listen properly and wasn’t really interested anyway.   The first thing we learned on the course was that, to be a good coach you’ve got to be able to listen properly.   Pretty hard for a bloke to do, eh?’ 

‘I imagine it would be’ said Bev, trying not to smile. 

‘I’ve gone on all these sales courses when they’ve talked about effective listening, but I never realised what it actually meant till we were forced to role play on the coaching course.   It was pretty challenging.   My partner was this counsellor who listens all day in her job and she told me exactly what she thought of my listening skills.   That seriously ticked me off, but when I thought about it later, I realised that I’m not too great at it.   Sally’s always saying the same thing’    

Sally was Brian’s wife.   Bev had met her a couple of times and could imagine her saying exactly that to Brian! 

‘So what have you done to improve your listening skills?’ 

‘You know Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”?’    

Bev nodded vigorously – it was one of her favourite books. 

‘I think it’s Habit 5 – seek first to understand then be understood.   He talks about empathy and the importance of using listening to really get into the other person’s life.   I read it and it blew me away – it made me realise how useless most of us are at really listening properly.   I read the chapter once, then re-read it then started practising on Sally. 

That confused her a bit, I can tell you, after years of saying I don’t listen to her.   Anyway, it worked well, so I tried it on some of my clients and, of course, on Mandy.   I’ve a long way to go and sometimes I forget and go back to my old habits, but it’ll become easier as time goes on.   You should read it – it’s certainly helped me’ 

Bev chose not to take that as an insult of her listening skills and instead made a note to go home that night and re-read Habit 5.    

At that moment an important client of Brian’s came in which meant the meeting was put on hold for a couple of hours. 

Next week – what process did Brian use to coach Mandy.