I had the opportunity to attend a 4-hour workshop on coaching presented by Janel Anderson, PhD , CEO of Working Conversations. She presented many coaching tools; a couple of simple ones are below. They can be applied for coaching direct reports, self-coaching and peer to peer coaching.
Tell Me More
Use this tool when you hear a “ping” to signal that something deeper is going on with an employee. For example, your direct report mentions a job opportunity in another area of the organization. At your next one-on-one, you bring up this topic. “You mentioned the job opportunity in marketing. Tell me more about the job.” This tool may uncover other interests the employee has and other opportunities for advancement in the organization to retain the employee.
The Five Whys
This tool was developed by Toyota in the 1970’s when competition was fierce for the company. In order to gain an edge, manufacturing processes needed to be improved. The Five Whys is a tool to quickly get to a root cause of a problem and its solution. For example, financial information input into a main computer system is not translating into financial reports. A line of questioning might go something like the following:
- Why is the financial information not showing up in the reports? Answer: The report query is not pulling the correct numbers.
- Why is the report query not reporting the correct numbers? The report query is missing these three fields.
- Why are the three fields missing from the query? The three fields were dropped when a computer system upgrade happened last year.
- Solution: Add the three fields back into the query and check the upgraded system for compatibility.
She also covered the Appreciative Inquiry tool. A more complex tool best utilized for recruiting and retaining high performing employees.
Have you used any of these? What other coaching tools have you used?
