No-Blame Coaching

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In their recent HBR article, “Coaching Your Team as a Collective Makes It Stronger,” Sanyin Siang and Michael Canning introduce the concept of No-Blame Coaching. No-Blame Coaching treats success and failure the same from one important perspective: approaching both success and failure as opportunities to learn. This mindset “will allow your team to pivot from mistakes” and achieve “bigger breakthroughs.”

This works perfectly when doing Protection Plan coaching! When a customer decides against protection, as coaches it is our responsibility to be sure that the customer received all the information necessary to make an informed decision. For example, if we don’t respond when a customer declines protection because “All extended warranties are a rip-off!” we have an obligation to tell them why this isn’t true for our Protection Plan. (“I’ll never try to defend my competitors’ service plans! Let me explain why mine is different.”) Reviewing what was discussed with the customer will find those learning opportunities that Siang and Canning referenced.

Just as important, when a customer chooses protection it is time to coach too! What did you say that helped the customer choose protection? What questions did you answer? When did you introduce the Protection Plan? Not only do these questions reinforce best practices, but they also help the coach to become the storehouse of personal best practices. This is important because everyone is going to hit a slump, and it’s our jobs as coaches to remind our team of what they’ve previously done to be successful. “When you were doing well you told me that you shared true stories when Protection Plans saved the day. Are you still doing that?” “Are you still using your 10 second Protection Plan introduction when it’s busy?”

Our teams learn best when their coaches focus on improvement, not blame. Be sure that’s how you approach Protection Plans and you will always…Make It Happen!

Quick read: The best coaches avoid placing blame when giving feedback to their teams. Instead, they view both success and failure as learning opportunities, which makes associates more open to growth.