How to Build a Skill in Coaching

Have you ever had a feedback session and then been sent on your merry way? No thought as to how to get better? Or how to improve your skills?

Skill Building is the most undervalued and under utilised part of any Coaching session.?It’s generally the bit that gets missed or not done for any number of reasons.

But, it is the highest value part of the session, so when doing your planning for the entire coaching and feedback session, you need to make sure that you build enough time into your plan, as you won’t get the meaningful change you are looking for without it.

When you have finished the feedback part of the session (as detailed in previous blogs), you will have identified the one thing that will make the biggest difference if you were to do it differently.

This is the point that you move onto the Skill Building part of your session.

Sometimes it won’t be possible for you to do the Skill Building part yourself as you are not the Subject Matter Expert, so it is perfectly acceptable to get some help.

When I do this at Xcel Health , I often need to have some help for the clinical scenarios and there is no shame in not knowing enough about one particular area. You can’t be brilliant at everything!

The method of Skill Building that I use follows the same theory of Sports Coaching.

In the Management Structure of any Sports Team there are Head Coaches (you) and coaches that will look after one particular area, such as defence, tackling, golf swing, bowling etc (these are your Subject Matter Experts).

When you want to start to ‘build a skill’, it’s important to remind yourselves of the context of how it came about and the impact of not doing it as well as desired.

Firstly, it’s important to hear from the person that you are coaching.?I want them to explain to me their thought process and how they wanted this particular item to be received.?I want them to think of the impact of how they conveyed the information on anybody else involved in the situation.

For the purposes of this blog, this was a person to person interaction, although this also works well for non-person facing or technical roles.?Feedback and coaching are important no matter what the situation and can be adapted.

I believe that the person being coached needs to outline what they wanted to achieve and the best way that they thought this could be achieved.?Once you know the outcome or the ‘what’ that you want to achieve, you can focus on the ‘how’.

The most powerful way to get success and buy-in is to ask the type of language or phrases that would be included in a successful outcome.?Listen closely and write them down so that you can quote them verbatim later. ?

Next comes the exciting bit : I (or the Subject Matter Expert) will demonstrate what I think ‘good’ looks like using their words and phrases.?I will encourage them to make notes and to listen to the tone, the words and to listen out for the words and phrases that they said were important to achieve the right outcome.

Next I get feedback on what they have heard using the feedback loop (as discussed in previous blogs) and see whether they would make any changes.?Not only does this get them thinking about how they will approach this, it gets them used to the feedback model.

Then, it’s over to them to show me (or the Subject Matter Expert) how they would do it.?Once they have gone through it, we will go through the feedback loop, with the positives and negatives.?We would suggest any improvements or change the language if required to make it sound more like them.

As they say, practice makes perfect, so once the feedback has been given, we will go through and practice it again.?And again. Until the person being coached feels confident and can then reproduce the better version consistently.?Repeat as many times as you feel need to, but usually I would stop at a maximum of 3.

At this point it’s really important to note down what you have coached and the skill that you have built in the Coaching Log/ CPD record (or whatever you use) and set a date for an observation where you will specifically watch for the skill that you have just worked on.

When done well, Skill Building can make a significant difference in performance and improve somebody’s ability to consistently be excellent.?It also builds confidence and can support the ability to adapt this to other situations where required.