Coaching Employees through Difficult Situations

Have you ever had to provide coaching to an individual who can't take criticism, or inherited an employee who seems to continually make the same mistakes on the job? Part of growing as a leader is learning how to successfully tackle these and other challenging situations. In this course, leadership consultants Lisa Earle McLeod and Elizabeth McLeod help new and experienced managers address some of the most frequent coaching challenges. Using scenarios, Lisa and Elizabeth demonstrate how to motivate employees who have been demoted or promoted, as well as how to effectively coach employees who have big egos or simply don't want to be coached. In addition, they share strategies for using supplemental resources to further your coaching efforts.
Learning Objectives:
• Define coaching.
• Describe the foundation for successful coaching.
• Explain how to coach someone who is older than you.
• Articulate how to coach someone who makes excuses.
• Identify how to coach poor performers or bad communicators.

• 1. Foundations for Successful Coaching
What is coaching?

- Coaching is not cheerleading; it's leadership. And it's not about standing on the sidelines, and barking orders. It's about teaching skills and improving mindset to make meaningful improvements in performance. It's easy to walk around, putting out fires and directing behavior, but coaching has a bigger longterm payoff. Coaching will give you a much more resilient and confident team, and a team that can function even when you're not there to call the shots.

A foundation for successful coaching
1. Empathy
2. Accountability
3. Understanding
• 2. Situational Scenarios
Coaching someone who is older than you
1. Validate the other person
2. Compliment them
3. Build your own credibility – Don’t get defensive
4. Deal with the original issue
Coaching when someone is passed over for promotion
1. Address the problem proactively
2. Put yourself in their team
3. Validate the other person
4. Give opportunity to grow
Coaching someone who has been promoted

1. Validate the other person
2. Raise awareness between past role and present
3. Coach
Coaching someone who didn't get enough training
Training is skill based; coaching is for personal development
1. Let them know you want to help them to be successful
2. Offer additional training
3. Position yourself as the coach

• 3. Attitudinal Scenarios
Coaching someone who makes excuses
• Open with a question
• Acknowledge the pattern of excuses
• Reinforce the importance of positive behavior
Don’t debug every excuse, but the habit.
Coaching someone who doesn't want to be coached
Successful coaches offer support, are trusted, take things one step at a time.
• Establish yourself as a supporter
• Make one suggestion
• Offer a compliment
Stay respectful and offer support
Coaching someone who has a big ego
People do not need to accurately assess themselves in order to imrove
1. Acknowledge something positive
2. Frame improvement as good to great
3. Get agreement to a tactical next step

Coaching someone who can't take critique
• Begin with a compliment
• Give an example of what good looks like
• End on a positive

• 4. Behavioral Scenarios
Coaching someone who is a poor performer
Ask to improve one specific important skill – eg. Efficiency, Skills are not linear.
Coaching someone who is a bad communicator
• Share one strategy
• Provide a relevant example
• Offer a winning strategy
Coaching someone who keeps making the same mistakes
Break down skills into manageable tasks.


• 5. Ongoing Coaching
Suggesting resources
• To do skills training
• Relationship development – Peer coaching
• Require self study – Every Friday 2 hours study, and share with others.
When to give up on coaching – R.O.C – Return on Coaching
Don’t let sunk cost let you make wrong decision . Measure ROC
1. Manageable steps
2. Tools
3. Clear expectations
4. Feedback
5. Outside training
6. Internal experts
You have got only one you, Make sure you are spending your time wisely.

• Conclusion

- If you take nothing else from this course, know this. Coaching doesn't always have to be a formalized 12-step process with a lot of deliverables. - No, it doesn't. Effective coaching can be short, intentional conversations you have with your team during day to day business. - It takes some work from you on the front end, but when you do this well, your time investment pays off 10 fold down the road. - Use coaching as a way to build those soft skills, and increase the confidence of your team. - So they can operate smoothly and efficiently when aren't there to hold their hand. - If you want to learn more about coaching or even get coached by us, you can follow us on LinkedIn or connect with us through our website. - Coaching is about having lots of meaningful conversations, and, yes, sometimes they're challenging conversations. - But it's an investment you make over time, and one with big payoffs in the long run.