Speed coaching 2 - video reply and preview

Here’s a variation on the classic Kolb learning cycle. What speed coaching does differently is to speed up the process and present it in a more visual form.

Let’s take the Kolb cycle of experience, reflection, theorising and planning the next step; in speed coaching we present it this way.

Your prompt as a manager is to ask an employee about the previous day and to think about one event or communication exchange that didn’t go as well as hoped. The employee recalls and describes the situation.

Now, the new idea is that you present this as a video and ask - OK, if you had seen a video of the exchange beforehand and had the power to rewrite the script, what would you have done?

The next question is what can you do with that particular rewrite that you can apply to other situations? (learning transfer)

However, we’re not done yet, there’s one more stage. We can encourage the use of video previewing for further transactions so that the employee gets into the habit of predicting and rehearsing situations - process tool.

That’s how it works; quick, effective and sticky learning.

For details about speed coaching email me on georgesandford2@gmail.com

Speed coaching - right now!

Immediate tips (1)

Here’s the thing; most managers recognise the benefit of coaching but can’t find the time to do it. Furthermore, F2F time with staff may be limited.

Here’s the solution

By combining the best aspects of coaching and time management we can deliver powerful coaching messages in a fraction of the normal time.

Here’s the philosophy

If F2F time is limited every moment needs to be used well and to have a positive impact.

How’s it done?

There are many techniques which are demonstrated on the Speed coaching course but here’s something you can use right now.

Create good habits through questioning

Your coaching input should develop lifelong good practices that last way beyond the moment of delivery. Here are two question sets that can be used as a mini-coaching session.

Set 1

What are your objectives for today?

Get people out of the habit of turning up to work and doing stuff but creating and working to objectives. If you ask this question regularly, people will get used to having a ready answer.

Is that an objective or a ‘to do’ item?

If somebody gives you an answer like, ‘clear my email box’ or ‘contact client X’, that’s not an objective, it’s just stuff and tomorrow there will be more stuff of the same kind and we won’t be any closer to reaching our objectives. Get people to write their ‘to do’ list and then, write their serious, longer term objectives, then ask;

Which of the activities on your ‘to do’ list contribute to your objectives?

The next stage is to move from questioning to reporting. Instead of asking these questions you ask employees to come to you with a set of quick explanations. It’s quick, effective, encourages focus and produces results.

For question Set 2 - look out for the next posting.

For details of Speed coaching right now, email me on georgesandford2@gmail.com

Thanks for reading.

Choices

Life coaching involves a lot helping people to understand and make the right choices. My ability in this field stems from having had a very varied life with many ups and downs.

Sometimes people feel they are stuck through no fault of their own and ‘have no choice.’ I remember working on a particularly depressing project of introducing and employee review system into a local government organisation in the UK. Everybody was so cynical and negative about their employer that I asked, ‘If it’s that bad, why do you stay?’

‘Well, we’ve put up with it for 20 years now, so another twenty won’t make any difference,’ came the fatalistic reply, adding, ‘besides, we would lose many of our pension benefits if we left now.’

‘So you choose to stay.’ I said. It wasn’t a very popular comment.

Some years later, I had the chance to test my own theory first hand. I’d tired of commuting between England and Portugal and training in a different city each night to retire to an empty hotel room. I packed up and moved to Portugal but not with any kind of capital. My wife son and me ended up living in a rundown farm house with no water, bathroom or kitchen for two years. I took what work I could get and ended up at rock bottom when I worked for an old builder called Sr. E as a labourer. It’s not an exaggeration to say he was a cruel man. Each day’s labour brought new tortures. He would often go off for a few hours to come back and curse that I’d done nothing. One Christmas Eve, we worked till seven and then he tried to go home without paying me. In the new year, the next project involved trying to break up a rock floor in a cellar with a pneumatic drill that fell apart every time you hit a hard piece. There was no ear protection and the noise was skull numbing. After two weeks of futile endeavour in the dark pit, I’d reached the end of my tether but what I can I do, I thought, I have a wife and son to support; we’re only one step away from homelessness - no exaggeration; no choice.

All the same, I threw the tool, walked off the job never to return again. I went to a café and bought a beer with my last few escudos. As happens in the Algarve, I got talking to an old guy - English. ‘So what do you do? He asked. ‘Oh, a bit of everything.’ I replied vaguely. ‘Only’, he continued, ‘I’m looking for someone to convert part of my garden into a driveway.’ By chance, within 30 minutes, I’d landed my next job.

Now you can say I was extremely lucky and maybe I was but it taught me one of the most important lessons of my life - there really is always a choice. From that day on, I can say that I’ve never felt trapped and it was the turning point in my history.

Choosing isn’t easy and choices don’t come cost free but very often the cage you’re in is of your own construction and you can walk out the door any time you like.

This video's a little bit cheesy but I have to say I agree with 90% of it. Certainly has some ideas worth thinking about.

Speed coaching

I recently ran a coaching course in which I introduced the process of scaling.

In this, you look at a skill or behaviour and ask the coachee to rate themselves on a scale of 1 -10. If they score themselves four, you then explore what five might look like and what behaviours would be present.

People found this very useful and practised it during the session however, one person was worried that it would just take too long.

OK, so one answer is that development activity always takes up some time but it is time well spent and not doing it condemns everybody to stay in the same place but this still isn't enough for time hungry managers.

It occurred to me that what was needed was a way of keeping the best of a leisurely approach to coaching but doing it in a fraction of the time.

I then looked to my time management guru, Brian Tracy for inspiration. Although I am a big fan, he's maybe sometimes so ruthless with time that a manager following his suggestions completely could come across as cold or aggressive.

OK, I thought, what we need is a hybrid; something that combines the tough functionality of time management with the soft skills of emotional intelligence.

This led me to think about leaders and managers that I've worked with. Although they are often considered pariahs, I found a lot of good examples among politicians. The more effective ones seem to combine a packed timetable with the ability to appear not to be hurried and to have time for people. Another group of exemplars are some of the CEOs that I've met. Limited in facetime, the best ones have a magic light touch that can inspire and motivate in the space of seconds.

I'm working on putting this stuff together for some Speed Coaching courses. For now, you'll have to make do with this fast moving advert.

Dyslexia - we need a plan

I am dyslexic. This caused me a lot of problems in school and early life. In adulthood, I started to develop coping and learning strategies. I worked out how to redesign the world so that it made more sense to me. Having spent the majority of my working life self-employed and, as a trainer, designing my own materials, I have been able to work to my own agenda and control my environment.

Over the last year, I’ve been writing a book for a well known academic publisher. Thirty year’s of learning strategies went out of the window as I found stuff coming at me in vast quantities from all directions. The brainstorm of editorial feedback was like carpet bombing on my brain; a terrifying, mind-numbing cacophony. It took a long time to switch off all the interference, one way of which was to hide all track changes.

Dyslexia comes in many shapes and sizes for different people and my own particular brand involves difficulties with short term memory, information processing and cross-referencing. Basically, there just seems too much to think about; then of course, there a regular problems relating to fonts and point size. I’d forgotten about this until I received a text in Times New Roman that looked like a dense forest of thorny, rapidly growing rose bushes!

So this is the bad news but what about the gift? Generally, I find things really difficult or really easy. Years ago in a computer class I once completed a critical path analysis flow chart in about two minutes when the rest of the group took half an hour - I couldn’t understand why because I saw the complete path in one snap shot vision and just had to spend the two minutes actually creating it.

I can write an audio script in one simple writing as if I’m just copying a dictation and I learnt to play musical instruments without tuition very easily. I play guitar and keyboards; I don’t look when I’m playing as that would only confuse me; playing in the dark is best of all. Naturally, I don’t read music but can hear a tune and play it more or less straight away.

We, (dyslexics) inhabit a parallel universe; sometimes we can see you, (non-dyslexics) and even hear you but often it’s like someone talking under water. Whether it’s you or us who are under water is not clear.

I’ve never wanted to make a big deal about it or use it as an excuse but the recent writing project made me realise that there are a few things that might be helpful to all.

From the dyslexic point of view - make it clear that you are dyslexic and this may require some adaptations by the people you are working with.

Take control of your learning and express the communication channels and processes that you need - because otherwise, it will be very frustrating for everybody.

From the employer, editor or other party perspective, please use non ornate fonts such as Arial and minimum 12pt. Don’t crowd pages with information. Keep stuff simple - don’t be ambiguous, provide context and reason but briefly and specifically. Sometimes what is obvious to you may take us ages to grasp and things that seem complex, quickly understood.

Basically, we need to talk about it and make a plan.

From an employer’s perspective you will find that the pay-off of employing and getting the best out of a dyslexic employee an be enormous. Very often, we are gifted with original insights, creativity, prolific production and determination - not a bad package.

We just both have to tune into the same frequency.

Here’s a great video.



If you have any experiences or thoughts you’d like to share on this subject, I’d be very interested to hear them.