Coaching Inspection Processes

At ECE, we have found that when clear guidelines are provided to employees, inspection points
are installed throughout their employment, and prescriptive feedback is given to employees,
there is no option besides success.

Coaching Session Deliverables Inspection

A famous American philosophical writer once said “We are what we repeatedly
do, therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit”.

When we inspect what we expect, we can then determine the fruits of our labor and determine
next steps based on the results. Without the inspection points, there are no results to measure if
the coaching staff is effectively doing the tasks we have asked them to do. The coaching staff is
given a list of tasks they need to accomplish, each with its own cadence. They are given training
on how to prioritize their tasks along with the tools to prioritize and manage them.

Each week, the leadership staff inspects the coaching session reporting to determine if the
coaching staff met their deliverables. Examples of deliverables that the coaching staff might
have:
● Complete at least one (1) coaching session per week per agent on your team.
● Complete at least two (2) coaching sessions per week per agent that is on a
performance improvement plan.
● Complete one (1) self evaluation coaching per QA fail (as defined by the QA
rubric/minimum score) within 24 hours of the case being graded.
● Complete one (1) coaching for each critical error within 24 hours of the reporting of the
critical fail.
Using the coaching tool(s), the leadership staff will filter to determine if the coaching staff has
met their deliverables. This guide was developed to assist leadership staff in inspecting
coaching sessions in ZOHO.

During the coaching staff’s one to one coaching session, the leadership team will provide
prescriptive feedback on the expectation of deliverables and if they met them by simply sharing
their screen while walking the coach through the coaching session deliverable inspection
process they took, and showing them how many coaching sessions they performed. The
leadership staff will ask the coach to determine how many coaching sessions they performed,
and then ask how many they should have performed. If the coach is not meeting deliverables,
the leadership staff will ask them what their obstacles were, and have the coach share their
screen and show where they planned on meeting with the agents they didn’t meet with enough.
For example, if Billy the coach didn’t meet his deliverables because he didn’t meet with Cherry,
Julie or Antoinette, then Joan, his manager, would ask Billy to share his screen to show her
where he had planned on meeting with Julie, Cherry or Antoinette. This will help to rule out any
priority/time management concerns. If Billy had it on his calendar, but didn’t execute the task,
Joan and Billy would work together to reflect what happened at that time and how to prevent
Billy from missing valuable coaching sessions. From time to time, the simplest answer to solving
a coach’s problem is to have them provide you access to their calendar so you can inspect more
often, and provide them live feedback instead of waiting for their coaching session to determine
that they didn’t meet the deliverables. Leaders can learn more about sharing google calendars
here. Having a coach share their google calendar with you will make it easier for you to pop into
coaching sessions to shadow them and use the coaching session evaluation form below.

Coaching Session Quality Evaluation

Peter Drucker, arguably the world’s greatest management consultant famously said “If you can’t
measure it, you can’t improve it”. The same is true about the act of coaching. The leadership
team has developed a Coaching Session Evaluation Form for evaluating coaching sessions,
which enhances our quality of coaching by providing specific guidelines and feedback for
coaching sessions. The form will be used during calibration sessions, for the coach to self
evaluate a coaching session and for the coach and their manager to calibrate on expectations
and if the coaching session met or failed to meet those expectations. Feedback to improve
provides coaches with the direction they need to be successful.

The coaching session evaluation form will help leaders to determine the effectiveness of their
coaching staff while they deliver feedback in coaching sessions. The coaching form has four
main categories, each including line items that refer to specific behaviors that are ideal for
coaching sessions. Those four categories are Time Management, Tool Utilization,
Communication, and Engagement and Knowledge Transfer.

The section for Time Management category has three line items. These measure behaviors that
lead to successful, productive coaching staff.

● Was the coach on time?

● Did the coach give the agent time to prepare for the coaching session?
● Was the coach prepared for the coaching session?

The section for Tool Utilization has two line items. These measure behaviors that are essential
for resourceful coaching staff.

● Did the coach use all appropriate tools to make this a successful coaching session?
● Did the coach provide the agent access to the tools needed to continue success after
the coaching session?
The section for Communication has five line items. These measure behaviors that showcase
effective communication in a coaching environment.
● Did the coach communicate expectations of improvement clearly to the agent?
● Did the coach receive the agent’s buy in?
● Was the primary focus clear?
● Did the coach give the agent an opportunity to ask questions?
● Did the coach listen to the agent and respond correctly to the agent’s
concerns/questions?
The section for Engagement and Knowledge Transfer has 2 line items. These measure the
effectiveness of the coaching method used, as well as the effectiveness of the ideal behavior
transfer.
 ● Did the TL/coach have the agent demonstrate the new skill/corrected behavior before
ending the session?
● Did the coach engage the agent in the correct Big4 coaching method (Microlearning,
Peer Shadowing, Reverse Peer Shadowing, Self-Evaluation)?

To facilitate the self-evaluation, ensure that all parties participating in the calibration have
access to the coaching session and its notes. For example, if you are not able to record the
coaching sessions, then ensure that all parties are able to physically see the coaching session
happen. Choose which coaching session you will be evaluating and shadow the coach during
that time. After the coaching session is over, ask the coach to evaluate their coaching session
using the Coaching Session Evaluation Form. After they are done grading the session, compare
the markdowns and credits with how you graded it. In a group setting, each participant would
send you their sheet before the meeting so you can compare and prepare discussion points.
Coaching tools like ZOHO coaching tool have calibration functions in them. This can be done on
an individual basis or on a group level.

Outlier Review and Support

Reviewing a program’s Achieve scores by team will reveal which coaches might need more
support or development. An outlier review will help to identify and prioritize those coaches for
the senior team leads/operations leaders to develop and support.

● To identify the outlier, open Achieve.

● Select the program/LOB you are reviewing (if Achieve does not already default to the
LOB you oversee)
● Click on Achieve score by team
● Apply your date filter

● Sort the report by Achieve Score by clicking on the Achieve Score column header. The
teams at the bottom of the list (lowest Achieve Scores) will be the outliers. These are
typically significantly below the other teams.

● Identify the target number of outlier teams. You cannot prioritize every team, so if you
are one senior team lead that oversees 10 teams, the bottom 3 would be the ones you
would focus on. One thing to consider when identifying outliers is the makeup of the
team. If the team is mostly new agents, and all of the other teams are mostly tenured,
then the outlier may not be a true outlier. Regardless, they will still need additional
 support if they have a drastically different team makeup than the rest of the floor.

● Once you have identified the outliers, the areas of opportunity should be identified for
each coach. This is done through the internal weekly business review during their
coaching session. Shadow sessions are sometimes necessary as well to identify the
area of opportunity for the coach. For example, the coach might struggle with time
management, effectively leading a team, or providing direct impact feedback, etc. As a
result, their Achieve score is the indicator of the impact of the behavior. We would just
need to identify the behavior through inspection practices.
○ Identify the area of opportunity. Sometimes this has to be done by inspecting the
coach through a more critical lens. Typically, the coach is not aware of what they
need to do to improve. Otherwise, they would have already implemented those
best practices and would be performing more effectively.
● Outliers should get extra attention from their leader, including additional coaching
sessions, additional shadow sessions/evaluations, etc. The coach that is struggling may
need to observe you doing a model coaching session so they can see it in action and
apply it to their next agent. Each of the coaching sessions should be documented
through the coaching tool.
● Just like agents, sometimes the coach needs to shadow a high performing coach while
they perform their coaching sessions to pick up on the best practices of the successful
coach.
After reviewing this document and taking the described actions, you are now able to measure
and evaluate the coaching staff. By measuring their adherence to the deliverable goal, their
quality of coaching session, and their performance in comparison to their peers, you can provide
your coaches with valuable feedback to help shape them into effective leaders. Through this
inspection and feedback loop, you foster an environment where your coaching staff are
consistently receiving feedback and adjusting their behaviors to produce better results.