A friend of mine is in sales. He sells high-end financial services products and is finding it hard going in the current market. The company’s main product has changed, making it much harder to sell and he has been given a new territory with very few of the affluent prospective clients he needs.

Whilst he’s a very experienced seller with a terrific track-record, his results and declining and his bosses are getting uptight. Knowing I have coached around such issues previously he got in contact looking for help.

I wanted to understand what would happen if things didn’t improve. My friend said, “Oh, they’ve told me in no uncertain terms that I’ll have to attend a disciplinary interview where we’ll examine ways my performance could improve; with a timetable and methods for tracking improvement.”

“And what did you say?” I asked.

“I said that sounds like it could be really helpful and could we do it now please!!”

I can see the point of a disciplinary interview for problems of willingness.By this I mean, recurring lateness, continual dubious sickness, being rude to colleagues or customers, etc.

But to discipline someone regarding their ability– struggling to use their knowledge, skills, experience and resources, seems to me to be daft.

In fairness, my friend works for a company that has grown very fast and which lacks a seasoned HR function and this could well be part of the problem, but the story also highlights a couple of crucial coaching principles:

• Telling someone to be do something does not enable them to be able to do it

and

• Waving sticks (or withdrawing carrots) may work a treat in motivating donkeys but it doesn’t do much for professional adults in a work situation

I’m reminded of the old saw of the company director who announced,

“Unless morale improves, sackings will continue”

 What do you think?

In posts 1 and 2 we explored six communication styles and the relative advantages and disadvantages of each:

• Tells
• Sells
• Tests
• Consults
• Joins
• Delegates

So how does all this relate to coaching and where would we place coaching on the spectrum. Some argue that coaching is all about empowering others and so must sit ‘right of centre’ towards delegation. However, we can also see that perhaps coaching doesn’t belong to this range of alternatives at all as it almost represents a philosophy of communication rather than a style. In many ways coaching is a means of adopting the advantages of each of the other styles whilst minimizing the disadvantages.

Placing coaching on the spectrum

Good coaches don’t fear loss of control as they know that the people they coach will have formulated their plans and ideas in their presence. Thus the coach has the ability to warn against a certain course of action if it is against the rules or likely to cause problems. Also, we’ve seen that coaching is an effective way for managers to build trust in their teams and so they can resort to Tell when the situation demands it without worrying about the team being uncooperative or becoming disillusioned.

So far we have considered the merits of various communication styles in a general context. What about when we need to communicate with another to help them develop?

It seems that Tell is dominant here and perhaps this is because most of us were conditioned to learn in this way at school. We would sit in rows of desks while the teacher would tell us what we needed to do and how to do it and lessons would consist of being told what we needed to know. But this doesn’t always work. Try explaining to someone how to do up a tie or lace a training shoe without showing them – it’s almost impossible. To do so requires us firstly to understand exactly the process that needs to be done and then to find the language to convey that process to another person in a way they can understand.

The modern world of work is changing so fast that we can no longer be certain that the ways and methods we used to become successful will be valid for the next generation. Solving today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions is a big risk.

Furthermore, people don’t retain a great deal of learning when they have only ever been told what to do. How many managers have you heard yelling, “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times!”, or “How many times do I have to tell you?”

Coaching presents a way of dealing with these problems as it is concerned with drawing our rather than putting in and thus enables people to learn in their own way and at their own speed. In this way we get learning and development that sticks in the same way as learning to swim or to ride a bicycle.

There’s an old Chinese proverb which, roughly translated, states:

“Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand”

Coaching is the best way to involve people in their own learning.