Today’s workforce doesn’t want to be trained. They want to be coached. But it’s not always easy for trainer-focused organizations to start coaching. There is no cookie-cutter approach. Where training can teach employees best practices, coaching can help employees be their best. Here are some tips that can help you bring back meaning to the workplace and skyrocket meaningful engagement.
It’s no secret that employees aren’t excited about your next meeting or mandatory training. You can see it on their face. You can see it in their shoulders. You can see it as they doom scroll on their cell phone. But you have important things to say. What do you do? If you want to have a greater impact, be a leader, and inspire employees to thrive, you must think beyond industry-standard training and start coaching.
How Do Organizations Practice Effective Coaching?
Think of the greatest trainers you’ve had. Were they training, or were they coaching? Isn’t it the same thing? Most definitely not. While there is a crossover between training and coaching, let’s discuss their differences by design.
By design, training is traditionally created to be one-size-fits-all because that’s the model. People come into a room, trained with the same information and tasked to apply it to their respective and varied roles. Some joke by calling these types of training the “flavor of the month.” Of course, circumstances vary, and some training is very serious, required, and even regulated.
In contrast, and by design, coaching picks up where training leaves off. Coaching is individualized, customized, and personalized. A person being coached is listened to, aligns personal meaning to work, and can ask questions in a safe and collaborative environment to become the best version of themselves at work.
What do you think of these poll results?
I did two informal polls where I asked people if they would rather do work they love with a toxic boss or do work they hate with a good boss. What do you think the overwhelming majority chose?
People would rather do work they hate than work for a bad boss.
I also asked if people would rather lose all their money or memories. What do you think people chose?
People would rather lose all their money than their memories
Think about that. Consider the implications in context.
Good leaders and life memories are more important than the work we love and the money we make.
This should inform you on how to live your life and how to treat others at work.
Now ask yourself, how are you showing up as you train others? As a toxic boss or a good boss? This isn’t fluff. This is essential to wellness, retainment, flourishing, and the bottom line.
You Know Employees Have Choices
The low switching costs in job change today are unprecedented. We know people want work-life flexibility and know they have a say in the matter. This is a good thing.
Four Principles of Effective Coaching
Realign your approach as a trainer to become a trusted advisor, mentor, and coach (and avoid becoming a toxic boss) with these four principles:
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Start With Yourself
Is your life and work in alignment? Or are you still working for a bad boss and missing out on all those memories you should be making?
Ultimately, your family is the one that suffers when you’re out “sacrificing” for them.
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Ask Better Questions, Get Better Answers
Are you asking meaningful questions? And are you listening?
Leaders lead with questions. Our lives are led by the questions we ask. Learn how to ask better questions to get better answers.
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Stop Managing Time; Start Prioritizing Attention
Are you more concerned with means than ends? Or worse, have you made it so means become ends unto themselves?
When you prioritize your attention, you can move from “time management” to “anti-time management” to provide a strategic approach that will enable you to fully embrace values-driven achievement of life’s and work’s highest priorities.
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Remember That It’s Not About You
When you’re training, are you more concerned about your presentation or the people?
Coaching is the most selfless level of professional help at work. It’s not about you at all. It’s all about them. 100 percent!
The people you coach will go on to do great things, and no one will ever know that you helped them get there–it will never show up in a report or on a PowerPoint.
Too often, the work we love is spoiled by bad leaders, covered up by training (to blanket the concerns), and individuals are left to office politics to figure it out. End this cycle!
Remember, the life we live is more important than the money we make.
Start integrating these timeless coaching principles and watch the magic happen!
