Q1: I have a manager who is trying to listen and lead with empathy and compassion. He’s asking all of his employees how they are doing and he consistently gets back “ok.” How can managers check in with the people on their teams that may prompt deeper responses?

People get tired of the same question. So instead of ‘how are you doing?”, try:

• What challenges are you facing today?
• What part of Work from Home (WFH) is going well? what’s not working as well?
• What’s been the best part of WFH so far? what do you miss you as you WFH?
• How can I help you be more successful as you WFH?
• What support do you need to be even more successful at home?
• If you had a magic wand, what would you change as you WFH?

Q2: How can you coach a manager who is resistant to feedback or gets defensive?

The first step for coaches to address this issue is understanding that many times defensiveness and resistance comes from a place of fear and insecurity.  The coach’s job is to go beneath the surface emotions and support the manager in discovering the root cause (s) of their actions.

 What advice can you share to handle this type of situation?

Often coaching and training is given a strengths-based approach, while overlooking weaknesses.  The coaching should start with the acknowledgement that the coachee’s strengths have allowed them to accomplish and reach the position they are in.  At this point, their weaknesses are what is holding the person back.  As a coach, a pivot into discovering weaknesses is a method that can unleash tremendous self-discovery in a person.

Q3: How can new leaders be effective coaches?

Coaching can be the difference between gaining compliance from your employees and gaining real commitment. The goal of coaching is to move someone from awareness to action. This means moving someone from understanding the impact they are having on the team to having them commit to small steps that will change their behavior.

Most managers are good at the action part—setting goals, building a plan and ensuring accountability. The awareness part is often more challenging. How do you help someone see the impact they’re having on an organization and team? Start with the four effective questions detailed below. Once they start to understand the impact of their behavior, then they will move to action on their own, instead of being told what to do.

The 4 types of effective coaching questions a new  leader needs to learn are:

1. Open-Ended (Tip: Start with ‘how’ or ‘what’)
2. Advice-Free (Tip: Don’t get wed to your advice. Allow the coachee to choose their next step.)
3. Short and Simple (Tip: 8 words or less)
4. Forward-Focused (Tip: Use forward chronological language, such as ‘next week’ or ‘in 6 months’)

If an organization won’t pay for coach training, I recommend 3 things:

• Practice one open ended question per day
• Listen to your employees
• Know when to coach (and when not to coach)

Q4: What are the signs of a toxic culture?

The top three warning signs of a toxic organizational culture include:

1. Disparate staff treatment

This is where some employees are held to different standards than other employees. For example, let’s say one employee is reprimanded for being late; another employee is also late on the same day, yet not reprimanded. This biased behavior causes internal resentment, erodes organizational trust and adds toxicity to the organizational culture.

2. Conscious avoidance of inappropriate behavior and language

This happens when one employee says something inappropriate to another employee, and the organizational leaders consciously avoid dealing with the situation. For example, let’s say Julia reports to leadership that said Pierre said “Julia, I’d love to see you in a skimpy bikini.” A toxic culture will ensue if leadership doesn’t address this situation quickly with Pierre and the entire organization.

3. Policy inequality

This occurs when some employees do not have to follow organizational policies and procedures, while others do. An example would be when some employees have access to a bonus and other employees do not, despite the same occupational specialist and job functions. This creates confusion and a sense of inequality, adding to the toxic culture.

Q5. What are some tips for delivering a team training?

First, read this blog to understand why training often fails and what to avoid.

A successful training starts with a clear, specific training objective. In other words, what will the participants think, do or say differently when they leave the training? Once the objective is identified, the next step is to outline the needed conversations to achieve the objective; the last step is to design the exercises that will create the conversations. For example, if the training objective is for each participant to know how to coach their direct reports, then some of the training conversations might be:

• What is coaching?
• Why is coaching important?
• When does a manager coach or not coach?
• How does a manager coach?

From there, the activities could be:

• What is coaching? (define it via video from a famous coach)
• Why is coaching important? (list the business case, including the benefits of a coaching culture)
• When does a manager coach or not coach? (group discussion on when to coach and when to train employees)
• How does a manager coach? (identify coaching skills, teach the skills, have the class practice the skills on the facilitator, then have the class practice with each other in pairs)

It’s important to have some visuals for the participants to use as they learn; this could be handouts, graphs, a simple PowerPoint, games, video, dashboard, etc.

In general, an excellent training follows the 1/3-2/3 rule, where 1/3 of the overall time is spent teaching content and 2/3 of the time interactively applies the content to the participants’ work, so they can immediately use the training the next day.

Finally, it’s important to follow-up the training with evaluations. Most evaluations just rate if the participant liked the training; this doesn’t give meaningful data. Effective trainings use the Kirkpatrick method to rate how the training will be used by each participant, as well as the participant’s depth of knowledge.

One last tip: People need to move their bodies every 45 minutes to keep their brains engaged. So be sure to create an activity or break once an hour!