Coaching in the Workplace - Part VI

Perhaps the most important, and often underutilized, tool in truly effective coaching is Giving Praise.

• Great companies and coaches take the time to recognize good work and good people
• They also encourage their people to ask for recognition when it is not forthcoming
• It’s good for your people to “toot their own horn”!

How do you feel when you get praise for doing something? You want to do more of it!

Processing: Getting “In” to Empty

Another requirement of effective Time Management is the realization that you cannot (and should try to) do everything at once. What you should do, however, is have control over all of your "In" boxes, (physical and virtual):

Getting “In” to empty doesn’t mean actually doing all the actions and projects you have collected

It just means:

1. Identifying each item
2. Deciding what it is
3. What it means
4. What you are going to do with it

Once you have done that, you have control, and in effective time management, control is what it is all about.

Measuring Outputs

The measurement of outputs in business is critical to any organization. What is important, of course, is making sure what is being measured is germaine to the success of the venture.

Two ways of measuring outputs are to look at the voice of the process and the voice of the customer:

The Voice of the Process

• Output measures that describe the actual outputs and capabilities of the process

The Voice of the Customer

• Output measures that describe customer’s needs, wants, and expectations

Both measurements are important to understand what is needed by the customer, and what the system is delivering to satisfy those needs.

Grand Opening of Business Education Talk

Hello All,

Business Education Talk debuted in March 2008. I hope you have a chance to drop by frequently, as we discuss topics of interest to education in the modern workplace.

Thanks,

Bob DeLaMartre

Coaching in the Workplace – Part V

The fifth essential rule of coaching in the workplace is:

Be Comfortable with Feedback

“Not so easy”, you say? Like so many things in our personal as well as professional lives, this can be a learned skill. Practice giving and receiving feedback. Consider the following:

• What if a coach is uncomfortable giving or getting feedback?


• That discomfort will probably be projected


• A negative attitude is contagious


• So is a positive one!

Feedback: Going out and coming in – Essential to success in the workplace.

Managing Commitments - Part III

The third basic requirement of effectively managing your committments is:

Use a Well-Organized and Completely Trusted Tystem

Once you have decided on the next action to take, you must put it into an organized system that you completely trust and that you review regularly. This system may be one or a combination of the following:

• Outlook calendar
  
• Outlook tasks


• Blackberry or PDA


• Day-Timer


• Tickler file

The key here is that you completely trust the system. If you do, you can free yourself to think of other things...

Interacting with Customers

As we all know, there are proactive and reactive ways of listening to our customers.

The Problems with using only reactive methods of listening to customers are important to note:

1. Customers who voice unsolicited complaints represent a small and biased sample of the customer population


2. Complaints are frequently lodged with a specific solution in mind


3. Handlers of immediate problems often cannot implement permanent and widespread changes


4. Process is generally intended to solve immediate problems due to stressful circumstances

Proactive ways of dealing or "listening" to our customers offer several benefits. This is a topic that will be discussed in a future blog.