0:000Never coach your team members. If you fall in that trap, it's a negative spiral going downwards all the way. It's not your job to coach your team members. If you think it is, you have a mind shift to make. When I was a manager at a big phone company, did a pilot to bring up the customer satisfaction.
0:240So where do you start? With your team members. So what did I do? We had or I had 26 people in my team and I was like, if we want to make our customers more satisfied, we need to align our team with the customers. So what I was thinking was, first of all, my team, do I really know who they are and why they are working for us?
0:590Because you can assume why people start to work at your company, but did you ask them? It's a very important question. So I decided to go on a walk with everyone on my team one on one and just to talk about myself, about my personal life a little bit and that automatically invited them to talk about their personal life as well. And after that it's very normal to ask personal questions like, why did you choose this company to work for? Because a lot of people assumed I was working with a team of customer service employees and everybody assumed they are doing it just for the money and they never named it.
1:450And to be honest, they can be open about it to me because I didn't care if they say it's about money. Okay, great. Let's make it work for you and for me and for the company as well. So why not? For me it doesn't matter what the reason was, but it was important for them to say it out loud.
2:070Because if you ask a person why they want to work for your company and they start explaining it to you, it's automatically integrated in their system. So when we started this pilot and we wanted to ask them to do things they maybe did not like or feel insecure about it, when I remind them about why they are working at our company, it automatically clicks. They will find a way to do the job they maybe don't like or are insecure about. It's amazing. So this is the best part, go on a walk with everyone on your team.
2:550But then of course you have to evaluate their work. But I promise you, if you are going to evaluate their work, it starts to be coaching and that's not what you want to do. Never coach your team. Never. Never, never, never.
3:170So what can you do? You have to have data, of course, when people are working for you, you have to find data points to see how they do their job, not even for you to see, but for them to see as well, because you want them to take responsibility and to take ownership of their job. So you have to give them the data so they can see, okay, am I doing well or do I need to improve at these things? It's just this, so deliver them data is the second point you have to do. And then it's very easy when the evaluation is there, you are going to sit with them together next to each other or maybe in a cross, not against each other and you just ask them, hey, what do you think you can do better?
4:200And they are going to tell you because they have the data and they see what they can do better. And of course, you know some things as well that they can do better, but if they don't point it out, you don't tell them. You just write it down. Write it down what you see they can do better, but what they don't name. That's it.
4:410And after that you ask them, okay, what is going well? And again, with the data or with their feelings about the data, they are going to tell you things they are doing well and you are going to say: That's correct. You are great at that. You are doing this well because and you are going to explain why it's very good for them that they do it in that right way. You connect it to the vision, mission and strategy of the company so they feel seen and heard.
5:130It's amazing. And it's the truth because they come up with it and you just acknowledge it. It's amazing. And after that you did this with the whole team, you wrote down several things the team members didn't name, and what you then do is not going to coach them, you are not going to tell them, hey, this is what you don't name, you have to do that. No, you just start a training.
5:400You can do it every day in a little start of the day, day start. You can do it weekly or maybe monthly and you just give them a training about these things they don't name. Maybe you're thinking, yeah, but they have to know it. Yeah, that's great, but they don't know it. And if you start to coach them, they start to feel insecure about it, that they don't take ownership over it.
6:060But if you give them a training and you give them the main points and you train that every day, every week or every month, a bigger training, it's up to you. You can figure out what's the best way possible to. You know if it's a lot of information or just a tiny bit of information. It's up to you and if you do that daily, weekly or monthly and you give them the training, the training there's a new evaluation moment and they probably will name, Okay, this can I do better or this is going very well because they connected to the training you gave? So it's very easy.
6:510They still feel seen, they feel like you hear them and they feel valuable for the company. They feel ownership and they never feel like you are you are saying you are not good at your job, you are a bad human. No, they never feel this because training is to get better. It's amazing. They feel like, oh yeah, we get training.
7:160They start to learn these things and they see, okay, in the data it shows me I'm not good at this yet. So they point it out and then of course they can say, okay, I will improve this by doing this and this and this. Or they can say, okay, can you help me? I'm Paul. Can you help me Paul with improving this?
7:380Or maybe you have solutions for improving this? And then you can think together how your team member can improve. And this is great. This helped me to go to a very, very good customer satisfaction. Within six weeks, the growth was it was amazing.
8:000We calculated with the NPS score and we went from 21, plus 21, to plus 43 in six weeks only. And the satisfaction for my team members went up high as well and they trusted me more. So it's amazing what this can do for you And it's it's really easy. It's just go on a walk, talk about your own personal life, ask about their personal life and why they work for you, then give them the data. Then at evaluation, you ask them, okay, what can can you do better and what is going right.
8:410Okay. What's going right, acknowledge and you make it bigger. And what they don't name, what you see that can go better, you write it down and you start training them and you just start repeating it. And it's amazing because there are no worries, almost no stress about it. You feel like a team together and you are growing your employees.
9:070Your team is getting better and your customer satisfaction is getting better as well or whatever your team does, it's growing. It's amazing. Just try this framework and you will see it's much easier to help your team to grow and it's much in the beginning when you start with this, it costs just a little bit time and after that people are going to ask you, how come you have time over? How come you have more time left and you can do all these other things? Because other people with teams are asking you, okay, but I need so much time to spend with my team and what you just have to do is send them this video and say, okay, I'm doing this.
9:590And at that moment you will have more time for other more important things. Your team is important, but yeah, you just have to focus on the quality of the time you have with your team and if you do it like this, they will grow and it's much more easy and it's fun as well because you work together not against each other. A lot of times it feels like that, that's not necessary.
