You lead a team and you want them to get things done. On the other side, we must admit that many times our team members’ performance is not as we expected.
There are some reasons why they do not perform well. Maybe they don’t know what to do, how to do the task, not confident to do their work, why they need to do it, or they are just not willing to do it. There are many ways that you can do as a leader. You can educate them, give them the necessary training, motivate them or give them coaching.
Coaching is very common for all of us. Usually, in our normal days we do coaching regularly and have a schedule for one-one-coaching. When working remotely, feedback and coaching are even more important to do. Address issues before they become a source of conflict to keep things running smoothly and deliver a good performance. But, during this pandemic, how to do virtual coaching effectively?
There are five steps that we can use to bring out the best in our team.
- Listen, Observe, Evaluate
Coaching opportunities happen every day. Constantly pay attention to opportunities to praise or give a suggestion. Listen when they talk during the video call or on the phone, observe their behaviors when they chat or email us, and evaluate their performance. - Identify an Opportunity
Opportunity for coaching can come from various sources. It can be from our observation and evaluation, or the person identifies an opportunity for themselves and ask us to help them. Or someone else from other departments and outsider identifies that our team member needs coaching or feedback. Or maybe, because of their performance, we think that new skills are needed within our team. Choose one thing to focus on for everyone, and each team member can get different coaching or feedback. - Cushion
A cushion is a verbal or non-verbal message that softens the environment and makes our team members more receptive to the coaching. We might begin with praise of what he/she has done well, or a suggestion such as, ”May I make a suggestion?” or “Do you want to know how to do your work much easier?”We can use cushion both in text chat or during a phone-call or video-call.
- Provide Action, Benefit, Context
Give our team members a specific action – what we want them to do. A benefit helps them see how this action will help them to improve. Adding a context helps them see how this change relates to their world and they see “the bigger picture.”For example: If we have one team member that always comes late to our virtual meeting that attended by other departments, we can say to him/her personally, “Next time, please try to come 5 minutes before a meeting. That way, you can use the extra time before meeting to have a small chat with others and will get more thorough information from other departments that will help you finish your project. When you are on top of your duties, I am confident we can finish the project on time and so other departments can benefit from our project.”
- Reinforce
One important factor in this step is to “catch” the team member improving or doing the right things, then praise them. Give them a virtual thumbs up on a meeting, use the certain emoticons to praise them when you chat with them, and you can praise them directly during the virtual meeting with others. Reinforce behavior becomes repeated behavior.
These days, with the help of technology, we can do coaching to our team virtually. Now, one big question for us as leaders, what are potential coaching opportunities on my team? Follow the 5 steps and bring out the best of them.
Maria Shanti Devi Anggraini – Senior Trainer – Dale Carnegie Indonesia
Note: More about tips on leading and managing virtual teams are available in Dale Carnegie Live Online Training: Leading Virtual Team. Contact our Training Advisor for more info.
