CoachingCategory Archive

Why Train KCS Coaches?

By: David Kay 1 Comment
25 Feb

A client working to justify the expense of coach training asked for a risk assessment of not training her coaches.  I thought that was an excellent question.  Having given it some thought, here’s my response, captured and shared in the workflow.

There are three critical success factors for KCS:

  • Engaged executive sponsorship
  • Measuring the right things, and using those measures the right way
  • Having the right coaches, properly prepared, and given the time to coach

I can fairly say that I’ve seen lots of variation in successful KCS programs, but I’ve never seen a successful implementation without these three things.

Without appropriate training, your coaches will not:

  • Feel confident enough in their own KCS skills that they’re able to model the behavior and provide feedback to others
  • Understand how to use KCS measures to assess knowledge developers’ progress towards licensing
  • Feel comfortable giving direct, helpful feedback
  • Understand influence skills and how to use them
  • Understand how beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors interrelate, and how to intervene
  • Be able to tell when someone is ready for licensing
  • Be calibrated with each other in using the Article Quality Checklist and the Content Standard
  • Understand how to structure their coaching sessions, and have the right job aids for coaching

In other words, without this kind of training, your coaches aren’t going to be prepared to run effective coaching sessions.  Given the time that you’re investing in coaching, that’s an enormous waste of resources…and one that puts the success of the overall project at risk.

What’s your experience been with preparing coaches?  Am I overstating the risk of not training them?

(HT RW)

Communicating the What and the Why: Intuit Does it Right

By: David Kay 0 Comments
5 Mar

 

 

Effective, persistent communication is the cornerstone of KCS.  Team members need to be engaged emotionally—to feel like they’re part of a big, important quest—and practically—knowing exactly what they need to do.

Rather than saying anything more about this, I’m going get out of the way and let one of our customers show you.  Having participated in end-user training to kick off Wave I of a brand new KCS initiative, I was delighted to be cc:d on this fabulous email that program manager Joe Young of Intuit’s Virtual HR team sent to the new KCS candidates.  My notes follow.

Congratulations!  We have launched KCS for Intuit HR with an initial wave of nineteen participants.  That’s pretty amazing to me.  Just imagine how quickly we will be able build a central repository of shared knowledge with that many really knowledgeable people. (1)

KCS Mantras

  • Tight Focus on Specific Question
 This will be hard for many of us.  (2) KCS is not about writing articles that detail many variations.  The focus is on that one question from that one person.  If you did not include a detail in the chat, phone, or case, it does not belong in the article.
  • Good Enough
 Perfection is the enemy of the good.  Don’t dither and don’t agonize over the “right” wording.  Get the essence of the issue into an article, save it, and move on. (3)
  • Create Articles “In the Moment”
 When creating new articles, customer context is key.  Use the words that the customer used in describing the issue.  Don’t “improve” the wording.  And don’t wait until you “have time to write.”  You will lose that customer framing.
  • UFFA
 Mindset shift.  On every question that you get, walk through these steps:
    • Use It: Search for an article that addresses the question in [our tool] (4).  If it exists, use the information.  Capture the ID and paste in into the [incident tracking system] case.
    • Flag It / Fix It: If the article you find could be improved, Flag it for improvements (Candidates) or edit it directly (Contributors).
    • Add It: If you determine after searching that no article exists that answers this specific question, write one using [our authoring environment](4).  Do it now, even if people are waiting on the phones or chat.  Senior leadership (copied on this email) understands that our service levels will dip as we populate this new resource.  The benefits we derive will pay back a hundred-fold. (5)

Training Materials for HR KCS

I had a request in the last training session to provide the decks we used for the online training.  I almost attached to this email, and then realized that a better way to model the new behavior we want to see would be to post these files in our repository.

I have created an article that contains two training decks and the current version of the Content Guidelines.  I am sure everyone on this email will have no trouble locating it. (6)

Job Aid

I have laminated versions of the Quick Reference sheet.  It’s the first two pages of the Guideline document, two-sided.  If you would like a copy to have at your workstation, let me know how to get it to you. (7)

Coaching Assignments

Expect to be contacted by your assigned KCS coach shortly, if this has not already happened. (8) [T]eam members should expect to spend an hour a week with their coach through the Candidate process.  [People taking escalations in] the first wave will likely have more customized arrangements based on their situations.  Look for further communication.(9) [List of coach assignments followed.]

David’s notes:

  1. What a clear, compelling vision—who doesn’t want to be part of that?
  2. It’s OK to acknowledge that we’re building new skills, and that it can be hard.  This “sufficient to solve” guidance for Solve Loop content is, ironically, often hardest for your best and most thoughtful team members.
  3. In its crispness, this paragraph models KCS style at its finest
  4. In the original, this was an actual link to the appropriate tool.  Nice.
  5. When leadership acknowledges that they’re willing to take a short-term productivity hit, they rarely actually have to
  6. It seems like a little bit of a trick, but putting information people want into the knowledgebase really is a good ice breaker.
  7. Simple, helpful laminated cards with the quick reference guide are both useful and a tangible reminder of the program.  This is especially useful for a highly distributed or homesourced group.
  8. Often, after training, I feel like participants are still somehow waiting for permission to start doing KCS.  Taking the practical step of setting up the first coach meeting often supplies the needed incentive to start.
  9. No one communication, even one as good as this, does the job on its own.  This message closes with a reminder to all of us that communication is the job that never ends in a KCS program.

ps – Know someone who is coming to TSW in Santa Clara?  We’re running our popular one-day Introduction to KCS the day following, May 10th, at the TSW site.  Enjoy another day in California: send a colleague, or come join us yourself!

 


The Power of Appreciation

By: David Kay 3 Comments
22 Jun

Really, it seems too good to be true.  If you heard about this in an email, you’d mark it as spam immediately.  “You’ll feel better, make the people around you feel better, improve relationships at work and at home, and make people more likely to listen to you.” Sure…do you have a Nigerian millionaire’s estate to split with me, too?

The funny thing is, though, it’s real.  Appreciation, given sincerely and consistently, does all that and more.

Before I say more about this, let me be clear about what I’m not talking about:

  • Flattery.  We can all tell when someone’s blowing sunshine up our skirts.  It makes us feel manipulated, and besides, no one trusts a flatterer.
  • The compliment sandwich.  Have you ever known people who only say something nice when they have something negative to say?  “Great work closing your cases this week…oh, by the way, if you don’t start attaching cover sheets to your TPS reports, you’re going to be in big trouble.  Nice tie!”  This isn’t very subtle, and appreciation from a compliment sandwich-maker leaves us wondering when the other shoe is going to drop.
  • A grateful attitude.  Don’t get me wrong; this is a great thing to cultivate.  But when I’m talking about appreciation, I’m talking about a specific set of behaviors, not a mindset or attitude.

Appreciation is the act of telling those around you the attributes or behaviors they have that you like.  For a coworker, this might be the fact that you can absolutely count on them to do what they say, or how their work makes your job easier, or how their positive approach just makes the office a nicer place.

Most of us notice these things, and we may even mention them to others.  But how often do well tell the person we appreciate?  Especially if we don’t do it frequently, it may feel awkward, or even somehow unprofessional.  But practice makes it comfortable, and it’s perfectly professional when applied to workplace topics.

There are as many ways to express our appreciation as there are reasons to appreciate others.  A quick face-to-face comment works, as can an email, or a post-it.  If you’re inclined, home-baked cookies or veggies from the garden are nice, but really, this is a case where the communication is what counts.

Appreciation works best when it’s

  • Specific—tell them exactly what you liked
  • Timely—as they say, “if you see something, say something.”  Now.
  • Personal—say why they and their actions matter to you.

If people know you appreciate them and what they do, they’ll be happier to do more of it for you.  They’ll know you value them, which means if you do need to have a difficult conversation, it’s based on mutual trust.  And it really does feel good to see someone smile when you let them know what you appreciate.

Appreciation is an extremely powerful behavior to cultivate.  Let’s all remind ourselves to do more of it.

(On that note, let me say how much Jennifer and I appreciate the fact that you’re actually reading this.  It’s fun putting our experiences and observations in writing, but knowing that more and more people are reading it makes it really satisfying.  Thank you!)

(HT to Beth Haggett, who developed the KCS Coaching workshop that got me thinking about appreciation in the first place.)