Telephone / Remote Coaching

A number of years ago when I was developing my coaching and mentoring skills in a formal way, I met a manager from a business based in the SW of England who told me her Coach telephoned her once a month for coaching sessions. The Coach lived in France and worked as a coach for managers based in the UK, Scandinavia and the USA. All my training to this point in time told me 60% - 70% of communication was based on body language and the prompts associated with body language; so how could you possibly develop an effective working relationship on the telephone if up to 70% of the communication prompts were missing? Likewise what would the loss of the visual prompts have on building rapport? This intrigued me and set me on a path of discovery to see what was possible.nnMy first telephone coaching work was with a group of sales managers who had been on strategic sales training course. My role, as their coach was to support them in implementing personal action plans off the back of the training. This was explained to them and agreement was achieved prior to the training. These managers were based across the UK, had large sales teams and all travelled many miles each week. They were comfortable with the telephone as an effective form of communication and used telephone conversations several times a day to manage their teams.nnTo this day I have not met any of these sales managers face to face. However, the telephone coaching was successful and the sales managers effectively implemented their action plans. We all learnt from the experience and had fun doing it. As I have discovered over the years, even with quite specific performance related coaching, people bring ‘themselves’ to the coaching relationship and so the coaching goes beyond the original objectives, even on the telephone! I continue to do this style of work.nnIn the process of working with this group of sales managers I learnt the skills needed to be an effective telephone coach. What I have added to my original experience of telephone coaching is a requirement to meet the people I coach face to face, just once, at the beginning of the working relationship. nnOne added learning dimension has been I have transferred these telephone skills to when I manage my team at a distance through telephone contact. I am no longer concerned about taking on critical issues at the point of concern on the telephone and getting good outcomes. I do not need to wait for a key meeting or when I am next face to face with a team member to address an issue which needs immediate attention. I know I have the specific skills that make for a positive outcome at the time it is needed and as such, avoid situations getting out of hand.nnSo I would like to offer you some practical hints and tips that I have learnt over the years which I think help create an effective manager and team member relationship – a more coaching style of management – what I call my ‘Golden Rules’.nnnGolden Rules for Managing by TelephonennThe Telephone – an Everyday ToolnDevelop your process skills to help create a strong relationship. I find it easy to develop trust and rapport through the telephone. People are used to the telephone as a communication channel to develop relationships in their everyday lives. When telephone coaching, as a manager do the same things you would do if you were having a face to face meeting. For example, manage the meeting in the same way by having a set time to talk, have a list of items to discuss, prepare, take actions and follow them through, use email to follow up and provide supporting information before or after the telephone session. As managers we tend to get a bit informal and don’t use our usual meeting skills when on the mobile phone, thus reducing the opportunity these important conversations provide.nnHands FreenIt is essential to be hands free. Headphones plugged into a digital cordless telephone if on a landline, or a headpiece plugged into a mobile phone eliminates background noise. Hands free also means you can take notes, as you would during a face to face meeting. In coaching terms you then have the exact words your colleague used so there is no confusion. Hands free does not mean in the car, on the motorway, at 70mph! I would really recommend you don’t manage your people by having important conversations whilst in motion. It is bad for the listening skills and it can be very dangerous for you. nnAuditory SkillsnDeveloping strong auditory skills are important. Using the telephone naturally encourages a focus on the auditory strengths; it enables you to really listen. Although body language can inform, it can also distract. Plenty of reflective questioning and summarising can be most helpful to support active listening. The notes you take because you are hands free supports and enhances your auditory skills. nnLanguage PatternsnPeople naturally prefer to take in information in 3 main forms – Visual (seeing), Auditory (hearing) or Kinaesthetic (sensing/feeling). Listening to team members’ language patterns will give you a clear indication of which sense they prefer use to take in information. So if they are predominantly visual they will use language such as ‘your face looks familiar to me’, ‘I see what you mean’. Predominately auditory people say things like ‘Your name rings a bell’, ‘I hear what you say’. And predominately kinaesthetic people say ‘I get a feeling we have met before’, ‘I sense you want to say something’. So, to build rapport, understand their language patterns and reflect back this language in your own questions and statements. When the visual prompts are lost, the spoken word becomes so much more important. Matching language patterns will build rapport and will help create harmony in your working relationships.nnHear the Body LanguagenAfter a period of conscious attention whilst on the telephone, you can start to hear the other persons body language. When doing media training some years ago, the ‘expert’ training me in radio interview techniques said “gesticulate when you talk, the listener can hear it”; and they can. I can hear when a member of my team is animated, when they have a sip of tea, if they are reading their emails at the same time as talking to me, when they turn their head because they have been distracted. Take note of these prompts. The more I focus on hearing the body language, the more I pick up. This fills the unknown communication gaps for me and gives me lots of information I wouldn’t otherwise have noticed.nnnSilence is GoldennSilences are important. I have had to learn how to manage silence on the telephone. Reflective team members naturally need time and silence to think and then to talk. When telephone coaching you need to recognise ‘reflectors’ quickly because the telephone is a verbal communication instrument. Silence may not be natural to you but it may be very comfortable to your team member. When silence is allowed in this context, it is most effective and it gives them time to think.nnRemote working and increases in fuel costs means that managers find themselves having to manage large teams geographically disparate to them. Using other communication channels such as telephone and video conferencing mean managers need to have a wide range of communication skills. As a manager have you really thought about this recently? Next time you have an important call to make think a little bit more than what you want to say. Apply some of the ‘Golden Rules’ and see what happens. nnMy experience is that as a coach I can effectively coach a manager by telephone anywhere in the world without having to travel vast distances and reducing my carbon footprint. As a manager who uses a coaching style, I find I can deal with a whole variety of team issues including team meetings in an effective and timely way.nnn