Success is usually apparent, but not always. When you cook a meal or wash your car, you’re left with a clear sign of a job well-done.
But when you’re training a business professional, there might not be the instantaneous moment of transformation. In other words, the middle-aged manager who’s just gone through a life-changing training session walks out of the room looking like a middle-aged manager. The true impact of the training might not be apparent for days, weeks or months.
In this world of immediate payoffs, that’s usually not good enough. Even if something in us doesn’t cry out for validation of our efforts, leadership is going to need to track effectiveness of training investments.
Good news … Bluepoint Leadership has a list to help you. The company is planning to release in the weeks ahead a series of six press releases, each providing a Top 10 list that touches on aspects of coaching, training and professional development. Stay tuned for lists on top coaching mistakes, top qualities for coaches and top ways to build long-term coaching relationships.
But Bluepoint’s first list wisely starts with the core question of coaching: How do you know it’s working?
Ask yourself, has the person being coached:
- Raised their standards of performance and career ambitions to scary heights.
- Redesigned how their precious time, attention and energy is invested.
- Eliminated those once-important practices and habits that no longer serve them well.
- Challenged and laid bare their most closely-held beliefs and assumptions.
- Set unbelievably ambitious goals for themselves.
- De-junked their lives of incessant time-wasters, stresses and distractions.
- Gained a greatly enlarged view of their amazing strengths and capabilities.
- Confronted and slayed the principal demons that had been blocking their way forward.
- Rediscovered their playful, creative side that had long been held in exile.
- Re-acquired a radical passion for work, life and the well-being of others.
By the way, don’t feel the need to shoot for all those stars necessarily. Delivering on 7 out of 10 of those objectives means successful coaching.
Are you in a coaching relationship? How do your efforts as either the coach or the coached align with that list of 10 signs of success? Are there any other success factors that you’d add to the mix?
