If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there. One of the most important roles of a manager is to ensure everyone knows the destination. The most effective managers set expectations and assess their employees’ performance against those expectations, and take a coaching approach to helping them get to the destination. That’s exactly what you’ll learn to do in this course! You will explore how to collaboratively develop expectations with those you lead. When you encounter expectations that are not being met, you’ll learn how to use "Coaching Algebra" to determine the underlying issues that are impeding performance, and how to respond as a manger-coach. We look forward to you joining us as we explore these essential coaching topics!
Coaching Algebra
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From the course by University of California, Davis
Setting Expectations & Assessing Performance Issues
225 ratings
University of California, Davis
225 ratings
Course 2 of 4 in the Specialization Coaching Skills for Managers
From the lesson
Diagnosing and Addressing Performance Gaps
In this module you will learn how to detect and resolve performance gaps for members of your teams. You'll learn about a process called "Coaching Algebra," and explore some effective strategies for coaching both skill set and mindset performance gaps.
Meet the Instructors
Kris PlachyCEO and Founder & Instructor, Leadership Coach, LLC &
UC Davis Division of Continuing and Professional Education
[MUSIC]
Welcome back.
In the last video I referenced something I call Coaching Algebra.
This video explains what I mean by Coaching Algebra.
At the end of this segment not will you only know precisely what coaching algebra
is, but how to use it effectively to diagnose performance gaps.
So coaching algebra is something that I coined a while ago.
It really helps managers cleanly, and clearly think about performance so
that they can get the maximum effort from a coach perspective.
I can know exactly how to coach my employees, and
hopefully really impact Their performance overall.
And I use the expression algebra because it's an equation [LAUGH].
You know, algebra is a mathematical equation, and
there's two variables, right, that influence a result.
And that's what I'm talking about in this example.
So as coaching algebra is defined, this is how it looks.
We all have results that we get, and
in this example I'm going to call that our what, right.
The result is the what.
It's the what we get.
Till we get 20 thousand dollars in revenue.
We get 4 new clients, we get 10 referrals.
We get 6 new projects, right?
There are the results.
On the other side of the equation we have skill set plus mindset,
or how plus why.
How we do our job?
Is our skill set.
This is our ability, right?
This is how we do our work.
Why we do our job is our mindset.
These are the thoughts that we have that are driving our outcomes, and
our performance.
Whatever our result is [LAUGH].
It is influenced by our skill set, and our mindset.
How we do our job and why we do our job, leads to the result that we get.
So if we are not getting a result that we want,
we have to look at the two variables.
We need to look at our skill set, and we need to look at our mind set.
To see which one of those two, or both need development.
So that we can get a maximum result moving forward.
So how do we determine whether or not we're dealing with a skill set, or
a mindset when it comes to our employees?
And we do that with three basic questions.
These become the best tools, the best questions for managers who coach.
So I really want you to remember these questions.
The first question is.
Does my employee not know what to do, but they are willing to learn?
So if the goal is to increase revenue, if the goal was 50,000,
and they got 20, is that the first time they've been asked to get 50,000?
So if it is, maybe there's a skill set gap.
That we need to work on with them.
Increasing volume, increasing questions etc, right?.
So does my employee not know what to do, but
they are willing to learn such an important question.
That helps us figure out maybe this is a skill set issue.
The second question, does my employee know what to do, but doesn't want to do it.
That is a mindset issue.
Maybe they generated 50,000 $60,000, $100,000 in revenue.
And this month they generated 20.
So now we know they have been able to do this before.
So wondering if maybe they have something going on in their mind
that's influencing their ability to get the work done.
So they know what to do, but they just are choosing not to do it.
And the last question is does my employee not know what to do,
and they have no interest in learning.
So that could be someone who has never achieved $50,000 in revenue,
and when you talk to them about hitting a goal of $50,000 in revenue.
They look at you like no way am I ever going to be able to do that.
That's impossible.
I can't achieve a goal like that.
So now we're dealing with skill set and mindset.
So those are your three questions, does my employee not know what to do but
they are willing to learn, does my employer know what to do, and
they are unwilling, they are uninterested in doing the work,
and does my employee not know what to do, and they are not interested in learning?
These are the three questions to use, because based on how you
deduce your response will determine how to approach them as a coach.
And how we approach them is what we're going to talk about in our next section,
how to coach skill set, how to coach mind set.
But, first, you have to really be able to determine which one is the most important.
And the reason this is so important, you guys,
is because if you identify that someone doesn't have the skill set, but
they're willing to learn, and you coach them that way and it's not accurate.
They really do have the skill set.
You can see how that's just a total waste of your time and theirs, and
that's when a lot of managers tend to be teachers.
They just teach all the time or tell.
They don't really develop.
Other parts of the employee or the opposite could be true.
You think that someone just has a really bad attitude and
they don't want to do the job,
but they actually just don't even know how to do what you've asked them to do.
And that kind of coaching can also go sideways on you.
It can be ineffective.
So we want to be really thoughtful about this and
make sure that we're really identifying what the challenge is.
For the employee.
And the best way, I find, to determine if we're dealing with a skill set or
a mindset issue, is when we ask that question,
does my employee know what to do and they're choosing not to, we have to really
have good evidence that they have done what we're asking them to do before.
Have they generated this kind of revenue in the past?
Is this a first time, that we're asking them to generate at this level?
Just because I can generate 20,000 dollars of revenue doesn't mean I can generate 50.
There's a gap there that I have to, as a manager, help fill, okay?
So if I can't really find good evidence that someone has done what I'm
asking them to do as a part of their goal.
In the past, then I do need to start to wonder if there is a skill set gap.
If I know for sure that someone has done this work in the past and
now they're just all of a sudden not getting it done.
I have good evidence to say, no,
you have a lot of experience achieving goals like this and now you're not.
So that makes me think it's a mindset issue.
And the last thing I want to leave with you in this section here is
to recognize this.
If you have someone who doesn't have the skill set, and also is lacking in mindset.
So they don't know what to do and they also don't want to learn.
You have to address the mindset first, right?
Think about any examples of when you've
tried to learn how to do something difficult.
Most of us, when we try something new and it's hard,
we get really stuck in our thinking, right?
This is too hard, I don't know what to do,
this is impossible, I'm never going to figure this out.
These are things that a lot of us say in our mind.
And those kinds of thoughts block our ability to learn.
So until I, as a coach,
have helped my employee work through those thought processes, it's very hard for
me to teach them something new if they're too busy thinking about how hard it is.
Is to learn.
So when we're confronted with someone who has both the skill set, and
the mind set gap we have to always address the mind set gap first.
So as we go into our next session and
we break down skill set coaching mind set coaching I want you to keep in mind
that someone who doesn't know what to do, and isn't interested in learning.
You always want to start with the mindset.
So in summary, coaching algebra is an equation where we have two variables
that help determine a result.
And in this case our two variables are skill set, or
how, plus our mindset, or why.
Those combine to equal a result, or what.
And a result is always neutral.
A result is a symptom of inputs, or
in this case variables, of our skill set and our mindset.
So if we are not getting the result that we want,
then we need to evaluate that through out employee's mindset and skill set, and
see which one, or both need coaching
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