Like a sonata, a good story, or a successful project, the session of the Coaching Manager, and Direct Report (the client) has a structure. In future segments I will flesh out the details of each segment, but for my current discussion I want to outline in very broad strokes the outline of the session. This is the session, the one on one, between the coaching manager, and the direct report (the client) a seen from 10,000 feet.
At the highest level, the coaching manager (and client) session has three parts: beginning, middle and ending. Well that was easy wasn’t it? Humor aside, this is very much the case, as the session can have been seen to have a short starting segment, the session itself, and a recap of what has been discussed. But to help the coaching manager utilized the form, I want to label each session in a way that will be more meaningful to the coaching manager, and aid them in remembering and implementing this structure in one-on-ones.
At the highest level, the coaching manager (and client) session has three parts: beginning, middle and ending. Well that was easy wasn’t it? Humor aside, this is very much the case, as the session can have been seen to have a short starting segment, the session itself, and a recap of what has been discussed. But to help the coaching manager utilized the form, I want to label each session in a way that will be more meaningful to the coaching manager, and aid them in remembering and implementing this structure in one-on-ones.
- SET SCOPE: For the first of the three sections of the coaching manager session, I want to borrow jargon from the world of Technology, SCOPE. In technology development language, SCOPE is the boundaries of the project, or the system to be delivered. To give an example, if business leaders, and technology builders meet to discuss a project they may highly define the project as a way to display financial reports on the screen of a mobile device. If the discussion has a sharp project manager, or business systems analyst (my prior career) they will ask the business “mobile devices also have an input device (keyboard) do you want to allow editing of financials on a mobile device? We can do this but the costs and development time might double.” A smart business person will realize that the mobile devices in question are smart phones, and editing numbers on a phone is clumsy at best, and will say “no…I don’t think we need that. That does not give much additional value on what we want delivered.” So in that short conversation the high level of the scope of the project has been defined. The SCOPE of the project is to deliver financial reports viewable on a mobile device. In the same way the coaching manager, and the client (the direct report) need to agree on what the scope of the session will be. In order to set scope, the coaching manager may ask the client to prepare a short agenda in advance of the session (the one on one). The agenda does not need to be any longer than a paragraph. It can list one to three topics to be discussed, with one level of detail under each main topic point. So this would look like…” Topic A, Sub Topic A1, Subtopic A2, Subtopic A3, Topic B, Sub Topic B1, Sub Topic B2, etc.” But between preparing, and submitting an agenda, things can happen. Things that may change the pressing topic to be discussed. When this happens the coaching manager needs to be sensitive to the change, smart enough to have the client weigh in, flexible, and organized enough to create a new agenda on the fly. In the first 10 minutes, whether the session proceeds under the topic of the original agenda, or a modified agenda, the coaching manager needs to mirror back to client what they have heard as being the topic for the session, and what the desired deliverables will be from the session. An example of a closure for the SET SCOPE segment, might be where the coaching manager says something like… “so the SCOPE for this session as I have heard it, is to discuss how you work with your customer to deliver requirements quicker. And at the end of the session we want to have at least two new ideas on how you can achieve this. Is this correct?” Another example of closure on the SET SCOPE section might be where the coaching manager says something like “so for SCOPE for today’s session I think I heard that you want to decide on two college courses to take in the coming year. Two courses that will make you better at your job, and that the company will at least partially pay for. By the end of our session you want to have a workable plan to deliver on this. Is that correct?” In a future section we will break down the elements that can drive scope, and how to arrive at SCOPE for the session in cases where they client does not have a defined agenda, or the defined agenda needs to change. But for discussion here, just think of the SETTING SCOPE section as agreeing with the client what topics will be discussed, and what the deliverables of the session will be. Very simply put, this section is about “what are we going to talk about”. And this needs to be do-able and constructive work.
- CONSTRUCTIVE DIALOGUE: The next and middles section of the coaching manager session I am calling CONSTRUCTIVE DIALOGUE. This is where the topic, or topics that are in SCOPE are discussed. It is typically the longest section of the three. If the total time allocated for the session is 60 minutes; SET SCOPE should normally take from 5 to 10 minutes. CONSTRUCTIVE DIALOGUE should take about 35 to 45 minutes. The third, and final section (yet to be discussed,) ACCOUNTIBILITY should only take about 5 minutes. As I went through training as a professional coach, several weeks were spent just on the techniques, and best questions to use in guiding the client through the body of the coaching session; the section I am calling CONSTRUCTIVE DIALOGUE. I am not going to attempt to put months of coaching training, and experience leading actual coaching sessions into a few paragraphs, but until we examine the three sections in detail, I can say a few words about what the goals of the coaching session, the CONSTRUCTIVE DIALOGUE, aim to be. First the coach establishes what work has been done so far toward achieving a goal. The coach asks for any obstacles, or blocks the client has encountered so far. These obstacles are captured, and the client is asked how they can best remove, or minimize the blocks. If the client seems they are stumped on what to try next to remove a block, the coach can use a short brain storming session to come up with fresh ideas. I have done this with probably dozens of my clients, and I still find it surprising that after only about ten minutes, we are able to come up with 10 or more ideas to try! When the coach and the client feel they have reached a good option or approach to further a goal, or remove an obstacle, they may have time to continue on to the next item, or topic. In my experience, in a one-hour session, normally only one or two topics can be discussed with sufficient detail, along with mapping of action steps in that time frame. In theory it is possible to take on three, or even more topics in an hour session – but in reality the most I have ever seen properly dealt with is three topics in a one-hour session, and really most sessions only deal with one or two. So a good coach will keep this expectation in mind; that dealing with one or two topics in any given session can be considered a successful one.
- ACCOUNTABILITY: The third and final phase of the coaching manager, client session is ACCOUNTABILITY. This segment is the close of the session. In this phase the coaching manager summarizes what the agenda, or the goals of the session were. The coaching manager summarizes the key points of the CONSTRUCTIVE DIALOGUE. The coaching manager then calls out the action items that were agreed upon during the session. In the last part of the ACCOUNTABILITY segment, the coaching manager asks the client (the direct report) to put a delivery date against each action item. The coaching manager also recaps any possible obstacles to completing the action step, along with solutions to remove or minimize blocks to completing the action items. At this point the only piece left is to agree on the net meeting date. This ACCOUNTABILITY phase may sound like a takes a large part of the session to complete. But as this is the session in summary, this last phase normally takes only 5 to 10 minutes to complete.
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