Hey Coach I Need Your Counsel

I've never played on a sports team and have never coached one but I have been a coach. I am not a psychologist (and have never played one on tv) but I have counseled employees. The coaching and counseling I am referring to is part of providing ongoing feedback as a human resource professional or as a manager. I was thinking about this topic today after recalling a particularly challenging employee I once supervised.

Several years ago one of the employees I supervised was one who staffed a key area of our department. The employee was responsible for greeting customers, determining what assistance they needed, ensuring the customer received the assistance needed, providing forms where requested, and answering phone calls and general email inquiries. The employee was hired because of their past experience in working with customers, fluency in several languages, and the fact that at the interview the employee gave a strong indication they understood how their role would influence how others saw our department on first contact.Unfortunately, not long after the employee was hired we began to receive complaints from customers stating the employee was rude and seemed unwilling to help them. In addition to observing these things myself, I also noticed that the employee became flustered when several customers were waiting for assistance at the same time. When I had a coaching session with the employee to point out specific things the employee had said to customers and actions the employee had taken that gave the perception of rudeness, the employee did not understand. To the employee, they were merely offering quick service to our customers. I learned, after speaking further with the employee that the behaviors may have stemmed from learned cultural differences in expectations and assumptions. I outlined the expectations our customers had and provided specific examples. Only after the desirable behaviors were modeled by working with the employee did the employee begin to understand.

When coaching employees it can be difficult to remember that the focus must remain on the behaviors being exhibited and not the (real or perceived) attitudes of the employee. It is integral to remember that point as the employee's receptiveness to coaching will depend on providing specific examples of behaviors and not general statements regarding their attitudes. For example, state "Stieg (as in Larsson, yes I read the trilogy), you have been late five days within the past two weeks and your reports have contained multiple mistakes" and not "Stieg, you seem to not care about your work as of late".

What amazingly positive and/or incredibly unbelievable stories might you have about being a coach or being on the receiving end of a coaching session? Did you learn some "what to do" and "what not to do"?