How to Use Assessment Based Coaching To Drive Performance

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Transcript

Why Assessments Stall Out

SPEAKER_00 0:37

One of the fascinating things that is happening in the coaching industry, probably more than anything, is what's going to happen with assessments. Now, for years, to be blunt with you, I have struggled with assessments. And what I mean by that is I've struggled with assessments from the standpoint that people would run assessments as coaches. And I do the same thing. I'm certified in disc and emotional intelligence and the motivator assessment. And we do what is called a debrief. We charge a couple hundred bucks. Some people charge up to $500. And then it stops there. Now, I'm not saying everybody does that. If you're a coach, don't get offended. And I thought to myself, how do we take this forward? Now, I'm going to digress here for a second. One of the things that we're doing here in progress coaching is we're now creating assessments, our own assessments from readiness assessments to sales to a leader to employee to employee self-coaching. They fill out this assessment that we built, uh assessment forms that we built out, and then it interprets the information and builds out a coaching plan. It helps the person or the manager coaching the person put things into action for lack of better description. What I want to introduce you to is a goals assessment coaching framework. And this is how assessment-based coaching can drive performance. Now, I'm going to use disk. You know, everyone seems to understand disk. Now, I have a familiarity with obviously disk and emotional intelligence as I'm certified in the motivator. Um, but also there's things out there like personality assessments, like MBTI, Strength Finder from Gallup, which is an awesome tool. And I always like to share with people, I'm agnostic. I don't specialize in one assessment

Building Assessments Into Coaching Plans

SPEAKER_00 1:56

tool. And what's really interesting is when people use these assessment tools, for lack of a better description, they tend to focus on the results of the assessment. And what I think we miss out on an opportunity is the assessment teaches us something about the person, it gives us a frame of reference. So let's take somebody who's a high-de-an disk. And it was really interesting in one of the companies that I work with, you know, people tell you he's a high-D in disk. And I and it was said like it's a disease. I said, okay, he's a high-and disk, what's the problem? Well, it's like he doesn't care about people. And this particular person that I'm referencing, I'm like, I spent time with him, he cares a lot about people. But it's interesting, he is a dominant. There's no doubt he's a high-dean disk. I did his disk assessment. And so what it teaches us is when we run assessments, number one, they can't have the results sit on their own. Because then we're going to focus on just the assessment results. We have to ask ourselves, what's our success? What's our end

The GOALS Coaching Framework

SPEAKER_00 2:41

goal in this whole thing? What is our desired output in terms of our coaching? See, the assessment tools serve as an understanding of how to approach and coach this person. So I want to introduce you to a framework that we built called Goals. So let's take that high D in disk for a second. And I asked this particular person, I said, what is your ultimate goal? And the person shared with me, I want to have successful succession planning. I want more empathy. I want us to listen to each other more, and I want everybody in this company to feel like they have a voice. And really what he was talking about was a major, major cultural change. I said, okay, now in order for the goal to become reality, then we introduced the O of goals. What objectives need to be met? And one of them was active listening. One of them was greater empathy. Another one was not making assumptions or labeling people. So then the A of goals is actions. How do we put that into action? How do we facilitate action? So we started to use some different types of meeting formats where people would come in and actually present. They would actually come in and present what their departments or what they were working on. Almost like the apprentice show, if you remember way back when. And it allows people to have format of form to actually speak. And then the L is leverage. How do we leverage that assessment

High D Leader And Culture Change

SPEAKER_00 3:41

understanding? So let's say somebody comes in and they're communicating what their department's up to and they have all this data and they really can't speak to the team collaboration and cooperation. And all of a sudden you realize, you know what, this person's a high DN disk. One of the questions could be well, what does success look like? What are you doing to facilitate collaboration? See, the leverage is to leverage the understanding of the assessment results to meet the goal, to address the objectives, and to define and facilitate their actions that will create the objectives to meet the goal. And I often tell people, when you're doing any type of an assessment, I ask, why are you doing the assessment? Well, I don't want to understand this person. I said, Great. What's the desired output from understanding that assessment? You'd be amazed at how many people can answer that. So again, the goal is to begin with the end in mind. What will we see here and feel? What does success look like? When you're coaching this person, how are you going to use these results from this assessment? What's the goal? Let me give you another one. I have a leader who is really trying to be viewed as a leader, and he's more of an influential leader. He has a dotted line, he does not have a direct team, but he wants his own team someday. And so one of the goals is to be seen as a really strong leader. The objectives is to be very focused on other people's strengths, the dotted line people, people around him. And every week he has to put into action. So I created some learning projects, and his actions are he has to do a random act of kindness. He has to communicate positivity in a verbal and non-verbal way on a weekly basis. I've been working with this person about six months. And one of his emotional intelligence attributes is he's low in empathy. So when he's doing these things, he doesn't really come off authentic, it comes off forced. Because guess what? It is forced. It isn't one of his natural habits. So I just got a message as I was recording this podcast. And he said, I gotta tell you, I'm gaining traction. People are like, you know, you're a really good leader. He goes, I didn't hear that the first couple months. Mind you, we're just entering the seventh month together. And he said, Boy, this takes time. I said, it does. People don't allow you to change in their own minds as quick as you'd like them to, isn't it funny? And he started laughing. He goes, Yeah, and I go, so when we're leveraging, we're understanding how to use the understanding of the assessment results. In this case, he was low in empathy. I had to get people around him to see that he is a caring person, and he is. But he's just low in empathy. So he's practicing empathy. What's his goal? To get his own team. What are the objectives? To be seen as a strong leader who deserves a team. The actions, we had to facilitate greater caring interactions between him and other teammates. So they viewed him as a leader. What were we doing in the leveraging? We were leveraging the understanding of his emotional intelligence. By the way, very high in self-aware, very high in emotional intelligence. But he knew he was low in empathy. What did success look like? Now we haven't reached that. Success looks like he's going to get that job. He's going to get

Low Empathy Leader Gains Traction

SPEAKER_00 5:51

that team. And he's been interviewing for it. He said, I don't think I would have been as confident as I was six months ago. Now, while I come off, I'm praising my coaching. That's not the objective here. The objective is for us to really, really understand that assessment-based coaching is around using and leveraging the understanding of the assessment results to number one achieve a goal, to focus on a specific area, understand the objectives. I always go back to objectives being knowledge, skill, and behavior. What knowledge, skill, and behaviors need to be facilitated? And what are the actions they need to partake in, or what actions do I need to facilitate as a coach to move in that direction? That's how assessment-based coaching can be wildly successful. But what we have to do is not let the assessment results sit at the debrief stage. How do we put them into action? So, what we're doing here at Progress Coaching is we have a platform called Assess to Coach, the word assess the number two coach.com. And it's a full-blown platform as well that we sell separately. And now we just built Action to Coach, where we send text reminders and email reminders specific to the assessment results as well as the coaching plan, which does what? Helps us coach to the goal, objectives, and the required actions to facilitate.

Tools That Turn Insight Into Action

SPEAKER_00 7:11

That's what we're doing here at Progress Coaching. So again, if you use assessments, put together an assessment based coaching strategy. Let us know if you need help.