The principles of High-Performance Coaching your managers must understand
Without knowing these principles, your first and second-line managers won’t be able to help their teams maximise performance in your contact centres or branch network.
High-Performance Coaching involves managers positively influencing the behaviour of their team members to achieve their targets. It uses proven principles from behavioural psychology, including those we call the ABC Model and Pairing. They help explain why people behave the way they do, and how to improve their behaviour.
These principles were identified in early 1900s (Skinner, 1937 ) (Watson & Rayner, 1920 ). They’ve been consistently validated in multiple studies across many applications (including business, sports and teaching). We can confirm from over 2 decades of experience they work very well to increase sales.
High-Performance Coaching helps managers use these principles in a simple way, so they’re able to motivate their people to consistently use the same behaviours used by their high performers.
The ABC Model
All behaviour happens in 3 stages. An Activator (like walking into a dark room) triggers a Behaviour (like flicking a light switch) to achieve a desired Consequence (like the light turning on). Activators prompt a behaviour to start. Examples of Activators used by managers include giving team members relevant information, asking them to arrive to work on time, asking them to cross-sell on every call, and giving them relevant training.
However, it’s the Consequences a team member experiences for using a Behaviour which determines whether they’ll do it again. If their manager immediately reinforces them for using a behaviour with Positive Feedback, they’re more likely to repeat it in the future. When managers don’t understand the ABC model…
Problem #1: Most of the time, managers focus on providing Activators, rather than positive Consequences
Managers often aren’t aware that the Consequences their team get for their Behaviour determine whether they’ll repeat it in the future. This lack of understanding leads most managers to focus on providing Activators, while accidentally ignoring the desired Behaviours their team members use.
Unfortunately, accidentally ignoring people’s good work is more destructive on their motivation than focusing on their weaknesses (Gallup, 2013b ). This is the main reason organisations we’ve worked with have had problems with their customer experience, productivity or sales.
The powerful thing about Consequences is they affect people’s overall motivation. When people are criticised for what they’re not doing well, or they’re ignored, they lose motivation to keep doing what they were doing well. This means the effort they put into their job starts to drop away, and so does their performance.
The Solution
Your first and second-line managers need to spend more time planning and delivering positive consequences for their good work. When people are recognised for their good work, their improved motivation spreads to all areas of their job. They put more effort into their job, and their performance increases.
Pairing
Pairing occurs when people associate things with each other, because they’ve experienced them together. For example, hearing a song you like might cause you to remember a positive time or person in your life. On the other hand, seeing or smelling a certain hard liquor might make you feel sick, causing you to remember a bad night out.
As a general rule, we pair other people with certain emotions, depending on our past interactions with them. This means your team members pair you with certain emotions, depending on the past interactions they’ve had with you. If they pair you with positive emotions, you’ll find it very easy to influence their behaviour. However, if they pair you with negative emotions, you’ll find it difficult to do so.
The thing is, we’re hardwired to focus on the bad things in life – our ancestors wouldn’t have got far if they spent their days enjoying the flowers and sunshine, instead of avoiding the things that could harm them. This hardwiring is called the Negativity Bias. It means managers are much more likely to notice and correct the things they don’t like about a team member’s behaviour, rather than recognising what they’re doing well. Unfortunately, constantly focusing on a team member’s failings hurts their performance, rather than helping it.
Team members also have this bias. This means they remember any correction they get much more strongly than any positive recognition they receive.
There are 2 problems which prevent managers getting the best out of their people, when they don’t understand Pairing and the Negativity Bias…
Problem #1: Managers try to correct team members at the same time as giving them Positive Feedback
Positive Feedback is the most powerful way there is to motivate a person to repeat a behaviour (CEB, 2002 ). But many managers make the mistake of giving correction at the same time as positive attention. This is often referred to as the feedback sandwich.
When team members get positive attention at the same time as correction, they experience the correction much more strongly. The negative emotions they experience are then paired with the recognition they receive in the feedback sandwich. They begin to associate positive attention with negative feelings, and pretty soon, they don’t want positive attention from their manager. When this happens, managers lose their ability to motivate their team members.
Problem #2: Managers don’t give enough Positive Feedback
Because of the Negativity Bias, any corrective feedback a person gets has much more impact than positive. So unless a manager provides a lot more positive feedback than corrective, team members will pair them with negative feelings. When this happens, managers lose the ability to motivate their team.
The Solution
Fortunately, these problems are easily solved.
Managers need to provide a lot more Positive Feedback than Corrective Feedback. And they need to avoid combining the two in the same coaching conversation.
Research indicates that to create a high performing team, team members need to get at least 3 times a much positive attention to correction (Fredrickson & Losada, 2005 ), and teams overall need 5 times as much (Losada & Heaphy, 2004 ).
When managers make the effort to do this, their team members develop a positive Pairing with both them and Positive Feedback. This enables them to motivate their team to hit their sales targets.
What’s your goal today?
1. If you’d like help to hit your targets, claim your FREE Strategy Session. During this free consultation, one of our experts will discuss your situation. Based on this, they will recommend a strategy to help you hit your targets and look like a hero.
2. If you’d like to learn about High-Performance Coaching for free, go to our “Free Resources” page, where you can get download resources to help you start increasing performance today.
3. Contact us. We help Senior Leaders across Australasia, Asia-Pacific and North America (in Pacific, Mountain and Central Time), so get in touch!
CEB. (2002). Building the high-performance workforce: A quantitative analysis of the effectiveness of performance management strategies (p. 35b).
Fredrickson, B.L., & Losada, M.F. (2005). Positive affect and the complex dynamics of human flourishing. American Psychologist, 60(7), 683. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.60.7.678
Gallup. (2013). State of the global workplace: employee engagement insights for business leaders worldwide (p. 43). Retrieved from http://www.gallup.com/services/176735/state-global-workplace.aspx
Losada, M., & Heaphy, E. (2004). The role of positivity and connectivity in the performance of business teams. American Behavioral Scientist, 47(6), 747. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0002764203260208
Skinner, B.F. (1937). Two types of conditioned reflex: a reply to Konorski and Miller. The Journal of General Psychology, 16(1), 272-279. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00221309.1937.9917951
Watson, J.B., & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3(1), 1-14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0069608