REACH Out to Your Team

Maybe it is because we are in the middle of the football post season coaching shuffle right now, but I have been thinking a lot about the important role that coaching plays in becoming an effective, successful manager. There is so much pressure on you and your team these days to perform at higher levels; “do more with less and do it faster” is the rule today. You can’t achieve the results you need in today’s competitive climate unless every member of your team is highly effective at doing their job, and it is up to you to make sure they can do it. This means you need to spend less time managing and more time coaching. Let me explain.

Typically, managers spend a lot of time organizing and planning and going to meetings and giving directions and measuring performance, but times are changing. You need your team to be better, and you need them to get better faster. Having you standing around giving directions and setting higher goals for them won’t help if they don’t know how to get better at what they are doing right now. Instead, they need for you to come along side them and work with them, so they can grow and learn. This is important to do even with experienced team members (if you’re not growing, you are dying), but it is urgent to provide focused, personal coaching for newer or lower performing team members.

Unfortunately, many managers need coaching around how to coach! Maybe you would like to help, but you don’t know how. The REACH model is a simple system that I have discovered works really well for managers in any industry working with team members at any skill level. As you work through each step in the model, the goal is to interact with the team member about the issues and opportunities they encounter every day, and discover ways to improve. The summary below assumes that you and your team have been using this model for awhile, so for your first coaching session with a member of your team, you can probably skip R and begin with E.

REACH Coaching Model

Review Focus Area

• Begin by going over the needs, goals and action steps agreed upon during the previous coaching session.
• Use this info as a starting point for this session.

Evaluate Situation and Identify Coaching Opportunities

• Ask your team member to share with you several specific behaviors and skills where they believe they are doing well.
• Discuss these areas and give any additional positive observations you have to offer.

Articulate Coach’s Perspective and Offer Recommendations

• Invite the team member to also outline for you any behaviors or skills where they know they still have opportunities for improvement.
• Discuss these issues, and then introduce and discuss additional behaviors or skills you have observed where there are also opportunities for continued growth.

Create Action Plan and Define Outcome

• Working together, develop an action plan – 1-3 items that the team member will complete before the next session - that will help the team member continue growing in those opportunity areas.
• Discuss any problems or issues that exist or might arise which would impede the action plan from being successful and discuss options to address those obstacles.

Help Support the Action Plan

• Affirm the team member and provide strong assurance of your support and availability to provide assistance in achieving the stated goals before the next session.
• End the conversation by clarifying how and when the team member can reach out to you for support and ask them what you could do that would help them the most in their mission to achieve their goals by next time.

If you schedule these coaching sessions on a regular basis – at least twice a month for team members who have the most room for improvement – you can accomplish a lot in just 30 minutes that will boost the productivity of your whole team, and keep you in the game even when other teams are looking for new coaches.

Management Quick Tip – Never Stop Asking “Why?”

It is easy for organizations to get into process ruts, where you keep on doing what you have always done. However, that is also the best way to keep on getting what you have always gotten, and if you aren’t satisfied with those results, it is time to make changes. The best way to start thinking your way out of those ruts, and protect yourself from digging into them in the first place, is to always ask “Why?” Why are doing it this way? Why are we doing this now? Why aren’t we doing it another way? Why are these results important? “Why” is a great way to begin to evaluate practically anything you are doing. It is important to understand the reasoning, the motivation, and – most importantly – the goal of everything you are doing as a manager, as a team and as an organization. If you can’t justify the reason or the motivation, or if the goal behind some activity or process is not aligned with your high value goals, then maybe it is time for a change
 

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