The first step in every structured coaching program – and incidentally,
the 1st of my series of 10 “leadership coaching best practices” blog
posts – is what we often refer to as “Participant* Onboarding” (*: throughout these posts, I will use the
words “client”, “coachee”, “participant” and “emerging leader” interchangeably).
What is “Participant Onboarding”?
The “onboarding” of participants into a coaching program is
the initial phase where you welcome your coachee(s), explain the process, and
kickoff the coaching engagement. Depending on how you’ve structured your
coaching program, this phase may vary in length and in number and types of
activities. However, there are common “onboarding” themes that typically
resurface within most coaching programs. Some of these are: Participant
welcome; Intake questionnaire; Definition of coaching; Explanation of the
coaching approach, process, tools and methodology; Communication and
confidentiality; Program timeline and milestones; Administrative aspects
(scheduling, cancellation, options, duration...); etc.
Why Does it matter?
Essentially, the efficiency of a coaching program (i.e.: how
quickly/smoothly can it reach its goals) will be greatly influenced by the
following:
- The ability for the coach to clarify the program approach and structure, and the ability for the program participant to understand and accept such approach and structure;
- The ability for the coach to “get to know” his/her client rapidly. Amongst other things, this means grasping the personal, professional and organizational context of the participant;
- The ability for the participant to rapidly initiate a deep reflection and adopt a change-focused attitude; and
- The ability for the participant to have a clear picture of what he/she signed up for, i.e.: when does the program start; how does it work; how long does it last; what do I have to do; why/when/how do I have to do it; what will I gain out of this.
As we can imagine, a well-executed “participant onboarding”
phase will play a central role in establishing these criteria so crucial for the
efficiency of the coaching program.
What works well, what doesn't?
When onboarding a new participant into a multi-month
coaching program, a number critical elements need to be covered, explained and/or
established. Based on our experience coaching several emerging leaders, we
found the following nine (9) practices – Do’s and Don’t’s so to speak – to be useful
with client onboarding:
1.
Welcome the
Participant: Schedule a half-hour conversation – either as a phone call or
a face-to-face encounter – to cover the
basics: High-level explanation of coaching (what it is/isn’t, the coaching approach
and philosophy, the process and tools); The program logistics and rules (scheduling
and cancellation, duration and cadence); The program phases, activities,
milestones and deliverables; The coach-participant confidentiality; The communication
preferences (how to share/archive information); and, last but not least: answer
any question that your client may have.
2.
Explain what
Coaching is/isn’t: Emerging leaders that have the luxury of participating
in a structured professional coaching program do so generally for the first
time. Therefore, they either have very little or even no idea of what coaching
is all about… Or worst, they have the wrong pre-conceived view of what they’ve
volunteered (or were “voluntold”) for. We found that spending a few minutes
during the “welcome call” to explain “what coaching is” was a good start. But we
also found it useful to write our own “brief overview” of coaching (in a 2 page
PDF document) coupled with an equally brief description of how coaching is used
within our development programs (a 3p PDF document). This way, our clients can peruse
this reference material at anytime during the program.
3.
Balance
Costs vs. Value: Because the overall development allowance that emerging
leaders have access to is generally limited, it’s important for the onboarding
phase (and activities) to optimally balance the real-time involvement of the
coach with the amount of work done by the participant on his/her own time. For
example, a shorter half-hour “welcome call” may be sufficient to cover the onboarding
basics if it is combined with two brief informational documents (e.g.: “What is
coaching”, “What’s our Leadership Coaching Approach”) along with an interactive
questionnaire (5-7page form to be completed by the client and covering basic
“personal”, “professional”, and “organizational” questions). This way, the
coaching program meets several success criteria (clarify approach, initiate attitude
shift, get to know the client, etc…) while “consuming” very little coaching-time
with the participant… thus minimizing costs without sacrificing value*. (*: this “minimize costs and maximize value”
principle will resurface often during our “Best Practices” series of blog posts).
4.
Make use of
Brief Articles and Interactive Forms: As stated earlier, we found that using
brief articles (that we wrote specifically for our programs) and interactive
questionnaires (forms that the participant can fill-out, save and return to
his/her coach) to be useful in a number of ways: 1. It helps us minimize the
coaching costs while maintaining the program value; 2. It allows us to convey
important information that the coachee can refer back to as often he/she
wants/needs (this last point applies to the coach as well in that he/she can
refer back to the client questionnaire at any time during the program); 3. It
also helps us “engage” the participant right from the beginning of the program
by asking him/her to complete a brief “homework” before the next program
activity (i.e.: read two brief documents, complete the onboarding questionnaire
and return it to your coach with any questions that you may have); 4. Finally,
by crafting specific “coaching-like questions” in our onboarding form, we help
the client initiate a reflective and development-focused mindset that will be
helpful for the rest of the program.
5.
Assess
and Catalyze Motivation and Mindset: Obviously, the participant motivation
and attitude are extremely important for the success of the coaching program.
As such, the coach needs to assess these parameters early on in the program, and
should keep an eye on them throughout the engagement. It is not uncommon to
encounter challenges regarding our coachee’s motivation and/or attitude. These difficulties
may be due to the fact that the emerging leader was “voluntold” by his/her
manager to participate in a coaching program (instead of having volunteered willfully)
… Or perhaps the participant’s perception towards coaching and leadership
development is negatively biased because of a lack of self-awareness and/or of
understanding of the program’s approach and benefits… But no matter what the
reasons are, once a participant is “onboarded”, his/her motivation and attitude
should become one of the coach’s main concern. Our experience has shown that,
although difficult to alter substantially, the best way to assess and maintain
positive engagement and attitude is through an honest (and sometimes frequent)
dialogue on that matter. It is best to be frank with your coachee: Why are you participating in this coaching
program? What benefits do you anticipate? Do you believe you need coaching, and
why? Are you completely committed to make the necessary effort to reach your
goal? Etc. We’ve also found that a bit of “soft selling” was always helpful
in clarifying misconceptions, dispelling fear and boosting confidence.
Reminding the client that participating in a multi-month coaching program is a
unique opportunity – especially for an emerging leader – and that it should not
be seen as a “development punishment” but rather as a “career opportunity”.
Finally, it might be helpful to engage the participant’s manager at various
points in the process: You may periodically ask the participant whether he/she
is comfortable with you reporting on the program progress to the manager
(without divulging confidential information, of course); Sometimes, you may
have to remind the manager that, although the time commitment towards a
coaching program is small (1-3 hours per week, including the coaching sessions),
the success of the program depends on the ability of the participant to complete
his/her “development homework” and to attend the periodic coaching sessions
(simply reminding the manager is often enough to raise his/her awareness of the
time commitment and to trigger his/her support).
6.
When
possible, adopt an Online Collaboration Platform right from the Start: Business
users receive and send, on average, over 90 and 40 emails per day, respectively.
And the amount of electronic documents that employees have access to – in their
inbox, on their PC, in the cloud, or at home – is simply overwhelming. Since
it’s not uncommon for a 6-month long coaching program to generate or make use
of over 30 distinct documents (forms, articles, reports, coaching summaries,
etc.), emailing back and forth and saving these documents on various PC or
media is simply ineffective. The use of an online collaboration platform where
the coach and his/her participants can safely and efficiently exchange and
store relevant program documents is a much better alternative, and should be
adopted right at the beginning of the program (during the onboarding).
7.
Schedule Activities
and Coaching Sessions ahead of Time: Cadence – the regular rhythm at which
program activities happen - is an important factor affecting participant
motivation. We’ll discuss this aspect a little later within the context of “development
coaching” (post #4/10). But during the “Onboarding” phase (as well as during
the “Assessment and Planning” phase), a number of activities are often assigned
to the participant as “offline work”. This is usually done in an attempt to
balance “cost vs. value” (it is more efficient for a coachee to complete a
questionnaire on his/her own rather spending one to two coaching sessions
answering similar questions from his/her coach). Although logical, this offline
self-paced work makes it a bit more challenging to keep a steady pace. In fact,
we’ve observed that, when a client is left to him/herself, there’s a greater
risk of delays in completing the assigned activities (like reading a brief
article on coaching, or completing an onboarding questionnaire). To palliate to
this “natural human tendency” of delaying work and postponing deliverables, we
found that pre-scheduling a few activities in “cluster” (say 2 to 3 at a time)
and gently reminding the client with periodic emails/messages that certain
tasks are “due” helps staying on course. For example, during the early stages
of a program, a coachee could be asked to: #1. Read the article “what is
coaching”, #2. Read and sign the coaching agreement, #3. Fill-out and return
the onboarding questionnaire, #4. Go online and complete a psychometric self-assessment,
and #5. Call his/her coach for his/her next coaching session. In this
situation, instead of waiting for each activity to be completed before
scheduling the next one, it would be preferable to “pre-schedule” all five
activities (#1, to #5) and to periodically remind the client that activities
#1, #2, #3 and #4 need to be done for the coaching session (#5) can take place.
This “pre-scheduling + periodic email reminders” helps establish and maintain
rythm, which in turn motivates the coachee.
8.
Trust the
Participant… but Dig deeper before launching the Coaching: As a coach, it
is imperative to attentively listen to our clients… but we shouldn’t take
everything that’s being said at face value. Often, we found that the original
intent that participant has may change quite a bit between the program kickoff
and the end of the “assessment and planning” phase (more on this during posts
#2 and #3). The value of the information gathered during the onboarding phase
is great… but it doesn’t mean that it won’t change throughout the program. For
example, a client may think that his/her greatest strength is “resilience”, and
that his/her development goal is to improve his “team building skill”s… which
is absolutely fine from a leadership coaching point of view. However, the
feedback obtained from the 360-assessment may uncover some blind spots – both
in terms of strengths and areas to be developed. And a discussion between the
participant and his/her manager may reveal different mid-to-long term career
plans, which might also impact the development decisions. When you put together
results from the 360-assessment, summary from the employee-manager discussion,
and insights from the coaching sessions, a different picture often emerges
(unbeknownst to the coachee). So, even if your coachee is eager to “roll up
his/her sleeves” and get going with the coaching, launching too fast without a
full picture and a complete plan may be akin to sprinting in the wrong
direction.
9.
Beware of
Recurring Scheduling Delays: Finally, as a general rule of thumb (that
applies to all phases of the program), we advocate being flexible, but without letting
the coachee delay the process unduly. There will always be a seemingly good
excuse – an urgent work meeting, an important client call, or a last-minute business
trip – for not having read an article, completed a questionnaire, or for postponing
a coaching session. When this happens, we found it useful for the coach to re-emphasize
the importance of this program – this helps (re)build commitment and motivation
(ref.: post #7), and facilitates establishing a good coaching cadence,
especially during the later development stages of the program (ref.: post #4).
In a nutshell, a successful onboarding could be
characterized as follow: comprehensive
but clear, flexible but steady, and
serious but engaging.
What do you think?
If you have ideas to share or feedback to provide, please
comment this post, contact me through our Blog or website (www.crinq.com), or simply email
me at: patrick@crinq.com.
Merci, in advance…
Patrick
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