As the world adapts to a remote-first environment, leaders everywhere realise the importance of providing consistent coaching and feedback as their teams navigate this new working landscape.
A recent H.R. Executive article highlights how coaching has ‘exploded’ because of the pandemic. It states, “the role of coaching is different in this new work-from-home paradigm” – in this article, we will look at how coaching has changed and how to evolve your skills to deliver the best coaching experience possible for your employees.
Alongside the requirement to coach on particular skills and abilities, leaders must help their teams through mentally challenging situations, tackle unique problems and keep morale high in what is essentially a complex workplace.
In the last 12 months, leadership skills such as coaching and giving feedback have been tested to their limits.
As we look to create an environment where we can move forward, learning from the pandemic challenges, coaching and feedback will play a vital role in your organisation‘s success.
Today, we look at how to improve both your coaching and feedback skills. First, let‘s look at what it means to be a great coach in our post-Covid world.
Improving Your Post-Covid Coaching Skills
The pandemic has caused a shift in the employer-employee relationship. Never before have teams had to pull together to overcome novel challenges – in many ways, it has brought people together more than any other event in the last fifty years.
Due to the nature of the pandemic, leaders faced problems without a rule book; they had to dig deep, and their employees had to trust them. And this trust became a two-way thing, as leaders also had to place new trust levels in their remote teams too.
From this change in dynamics, coaching has also evolved.
CEO of an award-winning software-based coaching product, Ben Brooks, recently stated, “coaching is becoming seen as less of a remedy for a problem and more of a virtuous process and experience that brings out the best in all of us“.
A coach’s role has gone from scheduled coaching events to more of an overarching ‘duty of care’. As a leader, I‘m sure you will have various recent examples of leadership problems you have never faced before.
Employees might have struggled to cope with their workload as they homeschool their children. Or perhaps some of your team have opened up to you about mental health struggles – a recent study on the mental health implications of Covid found that over half (54%) of adults have felt increased worry or anxiety related to the pandemic. Again, this is not something that pre-pandemic would have been on your radar as much.
So what can you do to improve the impact of your coaching abilities now, in our Covid-altered world? Here are a few suggestions –
- Understand that coaching has now evolved from being a task and job-oriented event and being aware of the need for a more personal, emotionally supportive coaching style.
- Offer to coach and mentor everyone, not only those who have displayed or expressed specific problems.
- Plan behaviours, not tasks – as a coach, it should not be your aim to set specific tasks but to encourage and cultivate new, successful behaviours in your coachees.
- Ask the right questions – think about the questions you ask the individuals you are coaching; you want to ask thought-provoking questions that enhance their behaviours. Do the questions you ask need to be updated for our post-Covid world?
- Always be aiming to build resilience. Building resilience is critical in our Covid-altered world, and it is something you can help instil in others with your coaching practices. For more information on building resilience, see my previous post, which you can find here.
Now let’s look at overcoming the challenges of giving feedback in our remote-first world.
Giving Remote Feedback
The nuances of language, communication styles, and body language are essential when giving developmental feedback, which is much harder in our remote-first world.
It might not be possible due to time constraints to have phone or Zoom conversations with individual team members when advising on adjustments or giving new directions. And so it is often left to email to communicate vital messages – as the saying goes, often things can get ‘lost in translation‘.
Even when it is possible to have video calls with your team, there is still a distinct difference between the connection you can strike here compared to an in-person meeting.
Humans are social creatures, and we feed off and thrive on interpersonal connections.
But while remote-working is here to stay in some form or other, at least for the foreseeable future, giving useful virtual feedback is a must.
Below are ways you can improve the effectiveness of your virtual feedback –
- Increase the amount of time you believe is necessary for clarifying objectives and priorities. Fact: Virtual communication takes longer. It is better to spend more time being clear at the beginning than leave employees wondering what you meant in your quick email; slow down.
- Use an online project management tool. Some organisations have made it through this period of remote working without virtual project management software. However, those who use one will find planning and organising task much more manageable. Slack and Monday.com are popular and useful tools.
- Seek to understand errors – if you need to tackle a problem with a team member, ask them to tell their story first. Understanding a person‘s motivation can help you predict and manage future problems more effectively.
Being a successful coach and mentor in our virtual world is about having a clear focus and building trust within your team.
Remote coaching is not something that many leaders were familiar with before the pandemic; it is one of the skills that people have learned and adapted to along the way. If you are interested in developing your leadership skills in line with our new remote-first world, you will find several articles on current leadership topics on our blog.
Additionally, click here to browse the accredited leadership courses we offer to help develop your coaching skills in our virtual world.
Until next time,
Julia
About Zestfor
Zestfor specialises in developing Training programmes and resources scientifically tailored for technical markets – including Pharmaceutical, I.T., and Life Sciences.
Our blend of in-classroom, online, and virtual live-stream delivery methods will engage and assure even the most introverted team members from the first meeting – whether face-to-face or virtually. To have a brief chat, call us on 0845 548 0833. Alternatively, please email our team here.
