Sustaining Results

Sustaining Results

Some leaders find it confusing when it comes to sustaining their team’s results.

The key to sustaining your results is providing effective, trust-focused, regular coaching at every level. Simple statement … yet its application is often where corporate leaders miss the sustaining effects of any training program.

Actually, if you provide effective, trust-focused, regular coaching at every level, you can expect to not only sustain your team’s results but to continually see them improve. Well executed coaching with your training is the secret of effective leadership and the best way to improve training.

Let’s look at the statement in detail. This will help you discover the secret to sustaining your training investment. Here it is again:

The key to sustaining your results is providing effective, trust-focused, regular coaching at every level.

There are four components that are important to you as a leader:

• Effective Coaching
• Trust-Focused Coaching
• Regular Coaching
• Coaching at Every Level

Let’s take them one at a time.

Effective Coaching

Too often corporate leaders say they are coaching when they are not. They are actually doing statistical or performance reviews but they are not actually coaching. Effective coaching would mean the leaders are spending time with their team members focused on:

• Helping them improve their thinking
• What they can ask, say or do better next time
• Specific situations not ideas
• Leveraging their strengths

Effective coaching is not about reviewing results or downloading information. Effective coaching is about you helping your team members reflect on what they have done and help them think through better alternatives for next time. It’s about shifting the thinking behind their behaviors.

Trust-Focused Coaching

You may be wondering why is trust so important to coaching and sustainability. Our research indicates when team members trust their manager their performance improves. Also when your team members trust you, they will tell you what is really going on (sooner) so you can help them to do better (sooner).

And if that’s not motivating enough, our trust research also indicates that if team members trust their manager, they will look for ways to improve the client experience. Trust-focused coaching is pivotal to your improving your team’s performance and more.

What’s your trust-building coaching strategy?

Regular Coaching

Many organizations think coaching is either a quarterly activity or an activity only when someone is performing poorly. Think again. If you want sustainable results, your team needs regular coaching to match their learning needs.

An easy way to ensure you are coaching regularly is to book it into your schedule. One of the most successful sales directors I know has his sales coaching booked into his schedule a year in advance. Impressive. It doesn’t mean he can’t reschedule his sales team coaching. It just means his team can count on him making their success a priority (a nice trust-building strategy).

Coaching at Every Level

When we go into a corporation to deliver a training program, we build into the program coaching at every level. We include managers, directors and the vice president. Why? Because if you have a crack in the coaching structure, the team below them suffers.

Imagine what it would be like if a branch is cut off in a tree. All the limbs off that branch die.

Similar is true for coaching. Since coaching is about shifting your team’s thinking, not having coaching at every level will cause the leader’s team to be deprived of improved thinking and, in turn, better performance. This then takes away from the sustainability of your results in the system.

Each one of these four components is essential to sustaining your results. Take a look at what you are doing with your coaching to see if you have all four in your coaching program: effective coaching, trust-focused coaching, regular coaching and coaching at every level.