According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workforce report, 85% of the global workforce is not engaged or otherwise actively disengaged at work.
This is an illness that has likely infected your company. Unengaged workers are like dead cells, taking up space in the body of your organization. What’s worse is that, just like in human biology, where one cell goes inactive, other surrounding cells follow. This repeats until an entire area of the organizational body becomes inactive, atrophies, and dies off.
Without a solution to this problem that Gallup is calling a $7 Trillion global issue, you will watch your company crash and burn.
Take a moment and answer these questions:
If you can’t say that your organization is delivering on all of your promises, mission, purpose, and outcomes, that’s a problem! But you don’t have to solve it alone.
Are you able to deliver on all of your organization’s promises in exactly the way you want?
I’m Dr. Scott Baird, Founder of Griffin Hill. We coach leaders in a way that transforms businesses from low productivity to amazing performance through a simple, but powerful, framework. Coaching has the power to heal the plague of disengagement that is currently spreading across organizations worldwide.
As you read, you’ll begin to see how we can help, even just by telling you how we effect change in the organizations we visit with:
- The End Results of Coaching
- The Qualities of a Good Coach
- And How Griffin Hill Provides Help So Powerful
What Makes a Good Coach?
Accountability
Do you have a friend who only says whatever you want to hear in the moment? Every time you voice an opinion they agree? Every decision you make is a great one? Everything you ask of them is “no problem”?
How reliable is that friend?
Yes-men make poor friends and even worse coaches.
“ Self-deception always leads to self-destruction.”
Your coach needs to be able to speak the truth, even when it’s hard. You’re never going to learn what you need to from someone who will never show you your mistakes. One of my favorite statements about human performance is, “Self-deception always leads to self-destruction.” If your coach doesn’t have the confidence to be truthful with you, you can’t trust them to set you in the right direction.
Accessibility
What good is coaching if you never have access to it?
The people who you rely on the most are there for you no matter what. They’d hop on a plane and fly anywhere in the world to come and get you if you needed help. You should expect the same of your coach.
A coach is absentee if they don’t promptly respond to your texts or calls, don’t maintain regular contact with you, and don’t meet with you in person to provide powerful help.
This applies even, perhaps especially, in the face of COVID-19! There are ways to be physically present without risking exposure. By wearing a mask, social distancing, and staying home if you have symptoms, a coach can still meet with you in person. One thing we have learned from COVID-19 is that time and space is no barrier to effective personal engagement. Modern tools and technology empower effective coaching relationships.
Process
Successful coaches coach a process. They understand your business before they start giving you advice. Many coaches base their direction solely on their life experiences without a process to give it context. You need a coach that can refer to a solid process, a series of steps to increase productivity and revenue, in order to truly succeed.
Cameron Baird, Former-President of Griffin Hill, explains how a good coach uses process:
Life experience is important to coaching, but there’s caution that comes with it. We’ve had coaches who have started with great life experience, but they then rely on that experience only.
Successful coaches coach process.
With companies I’ve been coaching for years, when we run case studies, the very last thing they do is turn to process. They never go there. A coach should be able to hold up process and circle back to it in coaching:
- What plays did you run?
- How did that benefit play go?
- What were your drill-down effects and consequences questions?
If a coach can hold you to a process, and even tie coaching from their life experiences back into process, then they’ll do well.
How Can You Get World-Class Unlimited Coaching?
One of Dr. Scott O. Baird’s greatest mentors was the chairman of his PhD committee. He had a saying that has stuck with him to this day:
Help So Powerful
You need to bring help in a timely way, and help that is adquate to the need.
He described a Pioneer family who settled in a cabin on the plains. They’re courageous, but vulnerable to attack from bandits and marauders. When they’re attacked, the cavalry comes.
His first point was this: As a coach, you’ve got to be the cavalry. But it doesn’t end there.
“It doesn’t matter if the cavalry has hundreds of soldiers on horseback if they arrive too late.”
If the cavalry doesn’t get there in time, and the cabin is burned down and everyone is killed, then that wasn’t help so powerful. It doesn’t matter if the cavalry has hundreds of soldiers on horseback if they arrive too late.
Alternatively, if the cavalry shows up with a couple of soldiers, and they’re vastly outnumbered by the bandits, the cabin will still be burned and the family will still die. Timeliness isn’t the only factor, you also need to give help that is adequate to the need.
What this vivid metaphor teaches us is that in order for coaching to successfully solve problems, there needs to be a method in place to deploy the cavalry, or powerful help, in the right amount at the right time.
There are formal mechanisms that allow for timely and need-based coaching responses.