The uncertainty of the present times has thrown a lot of things out of balance. From living to learning, everything’s out of hand.
Today’s post aims to address one of these many out-of-balance aspects – learning. I’ll particularly focus on remote coaching practices, which is a prime concern for most of the current workforce. So team leads and managers, let’s get straight to it!
- Pre-Session Preparation
Firstly, get it super clear in your head: Why are you doing this? What’s the purpose? Do you want to improve the overall performance of your team? Do you want to make the onboarding process of newer employees easier? Or do you wish for the collective growth of your entire workforce?
Once you have goals aligned and sorted, proceed to step one:
- Establish Prerequisites
When introducing your coaching sessions, let the objective of this coaching session be known to all. Make it clear to the audience what you will be teaching in each section of the session. As you outline this, ensure you make your expectations clear as well. Let your audience know what prior knowledge they need to have on the subject. Or if they should belong to a certain industry to be taking part.
Simultaneously, make sure that the invitation to your coaching session is warm and inviting as well. Refrain from being too harsh and demanding as it may set a different tone for your session.
- Organize & Prepare Yourself
Once you begin receiving enrollments, it’s time to prepare yourself. Ensure that all your resource material for the coaching session, i.e., worksheets and planners are ready to issue. Do a little research about your students too. You can schedule a quick get-to-know session, wherein you introduce yourselves to one another and get a better grasp on each other’s approach and personality.
Once acquainted, you can connect on social platforms to know them better. If that gives you a little background on their motivation for the course, it will help you tailor your teaching methods so they can achieve their goals in a better way.
- Arrange Necessary Equipment
The last preparation that you need to make for your remote coaching session is to arrange all necessary equipment and subscriptions. I’d recommend you arrange a proper noise-canceling headset and a proper mic. Arrange a super smooth internet connection and purchase subscriptions to necessary tools, such as video-calling tools like Zoom.
- Mid-Session Conduct
When it’s time to execute your remote coaching session, the following are some best practices to adopt:
- Connect with Your Audience
Connecting with the audience on a personal level is amongst the latest coaching trends. Gone are the days when people wanted strict and work-only coaches. People now feel more comfortable and connected to coaches who keep it real. They feel more encouraged when listening to real-life struggles and stories of relationships, failures, and success of their coaches. So, when jumping into your lessons, ensure that you keep the human factor, i.e., empathy alive.
It’s best if you execute this via a video conference. Maintain eye contact with your coachee and observe their surroundings. If they seem uncomfortable, offer them another time slot. If they seem anxious, worried, or distracted, acknowledge and do your best possible to get them relaxed and comfortable.
- Explain Thoroughly
Another good way of establishing a connection and comfortability grounds is to revise your prerequisites in the video conference. Explain your expectations and the flow of the session again and check if your coachee has complete understanding.
Even if they show up unprepared in your first class, don’t let your audience panic. Assure them they’ll have a great learning experience. Provide them enough time to grasp things. Encourage them to take a step forward and ask questions if need be.
- Keep Yourself Organized
Now, here comes the best practice that pulls all of the best practices together. The pressure of the ongoing sessions may make you mess up and lose control. If you’re coaching multiple individuals at once, you may even lose track of their performance.
So, we recommend using a whiteboard calendar to keep yourself aligned. You can use this to mark upcoming and scheduled sessions for the week and the month. You can even mention major reminders for the next session, so you focus on them more than the rest. Doing so will help you acquire better and measurable results.
Organizing your material resources as well as your mental space will help yield better and more reliable results.
- Post-Session Measures
Signing off your last session is only the beginning of another journey. Yup, you are a coach, and you have to have it the tough way!
- Compel Your Audience to Take Actions
The purpose of coaching was to make an impact and drive results. So, during the video conferences, your learned what they had to. But now, what do they do with that information?
Line up suggestions, open doors, and make ways for your audience to take a decisive and progressive step in their journey.
- Gather Reviews
Lastly, ask your students to drop feedback about their learning experience to your mail. Ask them what they achieved and what they learned. Tailor super specific questions like what they achieved from a particular section. Or if the time dedicated to a certain part was ample enough. It will help you improve your future coaching sessions.
