Overview: Coaching and Feedback
Everyone deserves to understand how they’re doing and how they can improve.
Respect Is More Than Being Nice - Unscripted
Hear leaders discuss the many facets of respect - and how sometimes it takes courage to be respectful.
Everyone Can Coach
We’re all expected to seek and provide feedback – and even provide coaching when we can help others improve. Good coaches make the people around them better and more productive – and you don’t have to be a supervisor to provide coaching!
Feedback
Providing a reaction or response to a specific action, idea or situation.
Example: I think you should put a summary paragraph at the top of your recommendation.
Coaching at Koch
Purposefully helping others so they can understand and apply our principle-based framework to realize their potential and maximize their contribution to the team and Koch's long-term success.
Example: I think you should put a summary paragraph at the top of your recommendation – to provide useful knowledge to the people who will review your proposal. I’d be happy to work with you to figure out the most essential information to include in it.
You Can Help Your Supervisor Get Better
Listen to leaders describe how everyone can help their supervisors improve.
A Principle-Based Approach
It is important to understand the principles that inform our approach to coaching. Without this knowledge, misapplications often occur. Here are some common misapplications (Coaching is NOT...) and principles we strive to apply instead.
| Coaching is an Application of... | Coaching is NOT... |
|---|---|
| Respect: It is respectful to provide honest feedback and helpful coaching. Humility: Coaching involves helping others understand what they are and are not good at and how they can improve. Contribution Motivated: People who are contribution motivated build trusted relationships and provide honest feedback. They also want to understand reality and value honest feedback. Closing Gaps: No matter how well someone is performing, they can always do better. Supervisor Responsibilities and Expectations: The primary responsibility of a supervisor is to help their employees develop their potential (Self-Actualize) and maximize their contributions by applying Principle Based Management. |
|
Examples: Offering Coaching
While supervisors will do a lot of coaching, we are all expected to help one another improve. Here are some examples of what it might look like to coach...
- Your Supervisor
- A Co-Worker
- Someone More Experienced
- Someone You Don’t Know Well
Rachel recently explained to her supervisor, Luis, that during team meetings he regularly offers ideas and suggestions before others have a chance. She uses specific examples to describe how his behavior often discourages others from offering challenge. Now, Luis is intentional about seeking ideas and challenge from others.
Maria and Jake have worked together on the safety committee for about a year. Jake’s coaching has helped Maria sharpen her communication skills and improve her ability to provide direct, valuable feedback. Over time, she realizes that she really likes helping others develop, so she decides to pursue a supervisor role.
Ora is early in her career and Jing has been in sales for over 20 years. Ora notices that Jing is uncomfortable using their team’s new AI tool. She offers to help Jing learn to use it effectively. The two work together for several weeks until Jing is confident using the AI tool on her own.
Reina needs to learn more about database management. She uses EverLearn to connect with Filip, who eagerly shares his knowledge and provides assistance as she learns. After a few coaching sessions, Reina gained enough knowledge to continue her learning using online resources. Filip offers to assist her if she has questions along the way.
Demonstrating Courage: Uncomfortable Conversations
People who are contribution motivated want to know if they are not doing well or if they are engaging in behavior that is problematic, yet people in the best position to provide that feedback and coaching often shy away from it. It is essential, especially for supervisors, to demonstrate courage and have uncomfortable or difficult coaching conversations. Here are a few tips:
- Assume people want the truth and can handle it.
- Address issues early because they typically get worse over time.
- Approach the conversation with a “I want you to be successful” attitude and view this as an investment in the person.
Here is an example: Gianna joined the company a few months ago. She has a lot of valuable knowledge and experience that can really benefit the team, but the way she is engaging with co-workers and other teams is problematic. Her supervisor, Evan, schedules a meeting separate from their monthly one-on-one to address this with Gianna. He provides examples and clearly communicates the expectation for employees to live Our Values, especially Humility and Respect. Evan wants Gianna to be successful, so he invests in her development by coaching for behavior, not just skills.
Examples: Receiving Coaching
Responding productively to coaching is critical for your development. Being defensive, protectionist or resistant to change prevents you from growing and benefiting from coaching. When you are contribution motivated, however, you use principles to grow and improve.
- Humility
- Self-Actualize
- Changing Paradigms
- Transformation
- One key aspect of reacting to coaching with humility is focusing on reality. For example, when you receive coaching and the coach needs more information, share it. This can sound like, “I’m flattered you think I can lead the team, but I really love doing hands-on engineering. I don’t think I’d like being the leader.”
- Another aspect of being coached with humility is reflecting, thinking about the actions you need to take and doing something with it. This might sound like, “In this upcoming meeting, can you pay attention to whether I’m speaking up enough? I’m trying to be more proactive about offering challenge.”
- Coaching can help you discover, develop, and utilize your abilities to succeed by helping others improve their lives. This might sound like, "When you gave me feedback about how you saw me contributing, it really got me thinking. I do like project management, and I would like to pursue more opportunities there.”
- Coaching can help you identify when you need to change your paradigms – if you’re open to it. This might sound like, “Hmm, I do need to investigate how AI might impact how things are done in our industry” or “You’re right, I haven’t spent enough time staying connected to the most current processes. I’m going to explore more.”
- Coaching can highlight how you need to transform and guide you as you strive to transform. This can include:
- Setting goals and having a coach who holds you accountable for milestones along the way.
- Brainstorming ways to gain the skills and knowledge you need to transform.
- Pointing out the progress you’re making.
How is Coaching Related to Other Aspects of Employee Development?
In many ways, coaching is what ties together the various aspects of our approach to employee development. Things like training, formal feedback and stretch opportunities are more effective when combined with on-going coaching and feedback.
Good Supervisors Coach Everyone on their Team - Unscripted
Hear more about the supervisor expectation to coach ALL team members--including those who are doing well.