This article by our Founder and CEO, Chris Pollinger as published by Inman News shares insights on how performance coaching is the key to unlock your team’s potential.
The right coaching with your team moves the needle. First, it taps the incredible power of each person’s built in engine to accomplish with helping them identify their “why.” It then moves into addressing the how, what when and where on an individual level. Lastly, identifies and intentionally fills in the skills gap in order for each member of your team to achieve. When you want results, you need to put your coach hat on. Here are the three keys to unlocking your team’s potential.
The first key to performance coaching is motivation coaching.
Motivation coaching focuses on improving the efforts of individuals and the team. Setting vision, goals and objectives are key. Each person on the team has one wildly important goal (WIG) and metric to focus on which will change their lives. Each person’s WIG contributes to the overall teams’ goals. Everyone needs to understand not only what you want to achieve, but more importantly, why you want to achieve it. They need to believe their contribution is essential to the greater whole. They must connect on a visceral level to the feeling they will have when the objectives are met. When the heart and soul are in alignment with the importance of their performance, you will have tapped into motivation coaching.
The first key to performance coaching is consultive coaching.
Consultive coaching finds strategies for achieving team goals. The rubber meets the road when you have the strategy, tactics and execution of your team’s plan. The intellect of the mind meets the heart’s drive. Each person needs a plan to achieve their WIG. They need to know the how, what, when and where of achieving their goal. The secret to consultive coaching is the essence of individualization. If you think about sports, everyone on the field is playing the same game but each position has a different job. How each person completes their job so they fit into the greater scheme of things will define your team’s efficiency. Synergy beats out the natural chaos which lives when everyone is doing the same thing.
The first key to performance coaching is educational coaching.
Educational coaching improves the skills of team members. Celebrate each person’s strengths. Focus them where they accel and round out the skills they need to be great. Skill building needs to be a constant within your team. Do not stop at a simple intellectually transfer of knowledge. Make each person demonstrate by doing what their strengths are. If you want to concrete the skill, make them teach it to someone else. There should be at least a couple hours a week dedicated to skill improvement for each person in sales on the team. Do this in small groups. Have them role play together. Yes, they will not like it. But nothing will improve your team’s performance faster than the transparent accountability role playing in front of a group will bring. Remember, this is an area where the leader should always go first and set the example.
We are all collectively focusing on rebuilding and engaging in the new normal. We have pivoted and restructured. Now, we are looking at boosting results. Our goal now is to minimize what is being left on the table in the form of each person’s unused potential. First, to help each person tap their motivation. Second, to give each person the strategies and tactics to accomplish their plan. Lastly, to close the gap and build each person skill level. As leaders, we win when we help others win. If you want to unlock your team’s potential, add the three keys to performance coaching to your leadership skills.
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