It’s About Timing, Not Time

The number one request Business Efficacy receives from managers is to help them find more time to spend coaching employees. Hot management topics like execution, leadership coaching, and leveraging strengths are hitting bookstores like weeds on an untreated lawn. Each reinforces the need for managers to spend more time with their people. It is no wonder managers are frustrated in the search to provide high-impact management while also experiencing diminishing availability.

Business Efficacy is convinced the way to help managers resolve this dilemma is to get them to realize great coaching is more dependent on timing than on time. Please don't misunderstand; there is great value in spending quantity and quality time in coaching employees. Every quality meeting and management practice can produce a payoff. However, nothing is more productive than well-timed coaching encounters. These sessions are effective because they seize the "readiness to learn" factor.

Impact, not duration, is the key component of any coaching effort. We've all experienced those "aha" moments. These discoveries are revelations which prompt one to exclaim, "Why didn't I see that?" Great coaches strive to create these moments. They are masters of sensing when one is ready to learn, understand, and change. They create encounters. Effective coaches master great timing and always seem to have plenty of time to work with each member of their staff.

Here are three keys to maximize the effectiveness of coaching encounters:

Always have a development objective in mind for each employee.

It is essential to know where you need to lead an individual to generate the highest impact. Coaches who rely on timing are great at critical thinking skills. They effectively gather essential data, analyze it for behavioral cause and effect, consider all possible development choices, and then decide on a development path for each individual. They maintain this approach until behavioral improvement is sustained.

Seize every opportunity to move someone from "I think I get it" to "I do it and I do it well."

Business Efficacy has done performance analyses on thousands of sales managers. It is amazing how many     work interactions managers actually have with salespeople. Today's technology-driven world makes it easy to remain in contact with employees at all times. Productive use of this increased accessibility is a challenge. The secret is to use everyday interactions, regardless of original purpose, to create progress on development objectives. An example would be when a salesperson is calling in numbers for the week. Perhaps the high-impact development objective is to help this individual improve their ability to discover a client's broader needs. The manager might say:

"Thanks for getting these numbers to me on time. How did your last sales call go? That sounds promising. What were all the needs you discovered on the call? Good, how did you uncover those? Nice! You put into action exactly what we discussed last time. Keep going and I can't wait to hear what you discover on the rest of your calls this week."

This is an example of using timing to reinforce an expectation, check progress, praise improvement and effort, and set future communication expectations. It is completed within a few minutes and still accomplishes the original purpose of getting a numbers update. Managers can be much more productive in developing employees if they learn to take better advantage of everyday interactions and timing. Great coaches are always "in the game." They take advantage of every encounter, planned or unplanned.

Provide value in every interaction.

Be a great listener and help people reflect on their actions through the use of thought-provoking questions. High performers have a conscious understanding of what activities and fundamentals accomplish tasks and can effectively utilize them in any circumstance. It is a manager's responsibility to develop and enhance this knowledge in each employee. This means using well-timed quality discussions to help develop understanding of what does and doesn't work, and most importantly, why. It means encouraging one to do an activity under varying circumstances and then discussing what was learned. This does not mean using time to restate expectations. Too often we find managers using valuable coaching time to state again and again what they want done. This is of no value to the employee or the manager. The key is to use this time to have meaningful discussions about what happened, why, and how to proceed. Value comes from using questions like: "What happened?", "Why?", "How would you do it differently next time?", and "How can you keep that going?" Accelerated learning is dependent upon a manager using well-timed questions and dialog to create a compelling reason to take action.

The truth is there seems to be little possibility of managers finding significantly more time to coach employees. Work pace and demand appear only to increase. Productive use of timing to provide high-impact coaching is the only viable solution for meeting management development requirements. Do this by constantly being “in the game” through the use of multiple employee encounters. Focus on them rather than on you. Have a passion for action. Provide clear communication - keep it simple, yet spell it out. Ask, don’t tell. Finally, always look for opportunities to produce quick developmental wins. By focusing on high-impact timing, coaching excellence is within reach.