Norquest News & Notes

For the past few days we have been discussing coaching, and its importance to peak performance. It is perhaps fitting to mention a book that was written by a successful senior executive for an international financial organization who took a year’s sabbatical to pursue outside interests. The book is entitled Coaching Kids' Hockey: The Good, The Bad, and The Unbelievable; and is the true story of a coach and his team of eight year old hockey enthusiasts. “Starting the season as if they might never win and ending as if they might never lose, they encountered everything from cheating coaches to referees ignoring blatant fouls to red tape that would make a civil servant blush.”

However, to me its real value is that through practical and actual examples, the author reinforces the following principles, which can be applied to any coaching application:

• Coaching is inspirational, but the Coach also has to keep learning new things, and has to keep up with new developments.
• Praise and engendering a feeling of pride is important. Motivation and/or reminding people of how much they have improved is critical to their continuing success.
• People are better known by their actions more than their words – watch as well as listen.
• Teach both fundamental skills and team play. Treat everyone equally & fairly
• Everyone has strengths - concentrate on what the person does best.
• Remember that learning should be fun, but success comes with effort and determination. The best learning is experiential - forcing them to make the decision or choice strengthens the learning.
• Have a plan (strategy) and follow it, and review it often
• Obstacles are a normal part of life. “Good intentions are everywhere but fairness consistency and integrity are not”. Some obstacles will appear unfair, immoral and/or even illegal. But face your obstacles – stand up for your beliefs. But then it is also important to refocus on your goals and move on.
• Sometimes you just have a bad day & nothing seems to go right, but you hav

An elite athlete will never reach his peak potential without a coach, and neither will you! You may be good at many things, but you can improve! With someone to mentor you, or teach you better methods, or shortcuts, can move your personal or business life to the next level, and the next, and the next! Have you ever pondered a problem for a long time, only to find someone who could solve the problems quickly?

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) defines talent management as the implementation of integrated strategies or systems designed to increase workplace productivity by developing improved processes for attracting, developing, retaining and utilizing people with the required skill and attitude to meet current and future business needs.

It is essential to all organizations to not only recruit the best talent, but also retain it. One of the crucial strategies involved in effective talent management is to define competencies (knowledge, skills and attitudes) the organization needs to get the work done, and then to coach individuals toward that end. In essence, organizations need to assess the skills of their people, and then provide them with the proper training so that employees and managers are performing their jobs effectively.

Is your organization focusing on this? Are your supervisors doing all they can to coach individuals in the areas that they need to be competent? Are you matching what is needed for business results to what is being coached?

Effective coaching is a challenge for today's leadership. It is tied directly to your talent management plan, which aligns your human capital and business strategies to support organizational financial goals and positively impact bottom-line results

In order to drive this, your managers and supervisors need to:

• Understand job skills.
• Learn the coaching process.
• Identify coachable performance problems.

Coaching experts say that anyone can benefit from coaching.

Coaching involves observing, analyzing, demonstrating and giving feedback. Managing the talent you have is a continuous, long-term process. A coaching program should provide the following end result of supervisors who are able to: