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The Essential Link between Training,
Coaching, and Monitoring
Mary Beth Ingram
"We need a Customer Service Training program!"
screams the Executive.
Scramble! Find, develop, write, create, or buy
another course to get better at Customer Service.
Put the whole staff, no the entire company through
the course. Done.
Training is expensive. No one even argues that
point. There are hard costs … investment
in training seminars for the trainer/facilitators
to be certified to conduct the courses or hiring
an outside firm to develop and deliver a custom
program; equipment for the classroom as inexpensive
as an easel and flipchart or as expensive as a
laptop with a Power Point presentation and a projection
system; workbooks or ancillary materials for participants
to remind them of the major concepts; etc. And
there are soft costs of which the biggest is time
away from the job and a resulting loss of productivity.
That alone has driven both the need and the flood
of purchasing of CBT, CDRom or web-enabled training.
The worst nightmare for your training
and HR department is to have a supervisor say,
"I need to sign Bill up again for your training
session. I don't think he got it the first time."
It's a safe bet that re-training isn't the answer.
More often than not, it's an absence of coaching
and monitoring that has sabotaged the training
investment and failed to produce the hoped-for
behavior change in a staff member. Yet
we continue to pour budget dollars into learning
programs hoping that the next program will work
better and finally produce the results we are
looking for.
If we step back and look at adults for a moment, we will find
that the learning process is indeed a 'process' and
not an 'event'. Classroom-training programs or computer based
training programs are the 'events'. Implementation and change
is the process after the event! When we were adolescents,
we needed time to integrate any new information we learned into
our systems (habits). From there, the information
I took
root and we changed and matured. Luckily, adults
complete this cyclical process in shorter amounts
of time than do adolescents, but the component of
time and process, is still necessary to make real
changes. By the way, a good definition for adults
is "kids in longer skin"! The impact of
that truth resonates throughout more than just training
if you ponder it for a moment.
So, what are we dealing with when adults come out
of a training experience in the classroom or have
just exited the training program at their PC? They
started the training with a set of habits they were
comfortable with using everyday, almost unconsciously.
The goal of the training was to challenge those
habits. Some habits were affirmed and some were
not. For those that weren't affirmed, two changes
are required; first, let go of your comfortable
habit and second, take on a new, not-yet-you, habit.
Demonstrations, maybe even role-plays, were
done to show how to use the new tip, technique,
idea, skill, etc. Then the announcement came ---
make the change! Viola! Presto-Change-o! Old habits
gone; new habits on. Hardly.
Habits are strong. The simplest of behaviors can
be difficult to break. Put your hands together as
if you are going to pray. Now fold your hands letting
your fingers weave between each other. Notice which
of your thumbs is on top. Now, let go and re-grasp
your hands so that your other thumb is on top. Simple,
right? No. Comfortable? No. Awkward? Yes! Want to
take another, longer, test that proves how strong
simple habits are? Take your wristwatch off the
wrist you have it on now and place it on your other
wrist. Find out how long it takes you to stop looking
at the naked wrist to tell time! I actually did
very well within a couple of days of moving my watch
to my right wrist unless I was under stress. Even
minor pressure or tension would cause me to look
at my now naked, left wrist. It took me 11 months
to create a new, automatic, non-conscious habit
to look at my other wrist.
Habits
are hard to break. New habits are even tougher to
create. Coaching and monitoring are the secret ingredients
that challenge the old habits and help your staff
make a successful transition from good ideas in
the classroom to implementation in their work environment.
Without this component, it's like throwing your
training budget down the drain. You can hope, wish
and pray for people to make changes. Some will.
Some are easy learners and sponges. They soak everything
up and use it all. Many will enjoy the training
but never implement a single idea. Then some will
not enjoy learning anything new and there is no
hope, wish or maybe even prayer that will make a
difference. Coaching serves all these learners.
The sponges mature quicker in their use of new habits.
Staff that enjoyed the training will be encouraged
to recall, remember and use what they learned. The
staff that is hardest to change will still be the
toughest challenge for the coach, but the coaching
process is the best hope for moving this learner
from old ways to new ways.
What does a coach do? Take a look at sports. Every
sport has a coach. Where does the coach perform
the work? Right next to the player! Think of football.
In practice, the coach is out on the field sometimes
working right behind the player calling out pointers,
shouting encouragement, and generally making that
player his entire focus. When game time comes, the
coach is forced by the rules to move to the sidelines,
but he's still 'on the field'. Does
football have a monitor? You bet! There is a person
up in the pressbox filming the game for review on
Monday morning! On average, a team spends 30 hours
a week getting coached in order to play four quarters
on Sunday!
Coaching is working
with your staff members. Monitoring is checking
on your staff members. Both are valid measurements
of performance. Management mostly does
monitoring. Don't think so? Just ask your staff!
Monitoring is a quality assurance step and you find
it performed in all industries. Some of it is formal
… logging or taping calls for review in the
call center; pulling units off the line for inspection
at the plant. Much of it is informal … "Hey,
what's this?" asks a manager or supervisor
as they walk through the plant. "Can I ask
why you told our customer that?" asks a team
leader in a call center after hearing a conversation
as she walked by the workstation. We monitor formally
and informally and we do it frequently. Coaching
is different.
Coaching takes purposeful
time and involvement. It's supportive. When you
are in the coaching role, you are fully engaged
with your staff member in all aspects of their work
and their interaction with your customer. Coaching
requires lots of personal energy. Just like the
sports coach, it's about calling out pointers and
shouting encouragement to your players! The only
difference is the decibel level since you aren't
out on the court or the football field! Its
entire focus is the self-development of your staff
member. It's not punitive. It's positive. It's a
way for your staff member to grow as a result of
the training program you had them take. It's where
you become part of the process of moving from classroom
information to workstation implementation helping
staff change old habits and develop new ones.
Can you train and not coach? Absolutely. Can you
count on changes, improvements, new habits, increased
customer satisfaction, more skilled and capable
staff? Absolutely not.
Source:
HR.com
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