Stop me if this sounds familiar: you’ve attended a great workshop or a couple of days’ training and returned to work full of inspiration. You’re going to revolutionise the way you manage your time, communicate with others and prioritise your tasks.
But first, you’ve got to clear your inbox, answer the phone, and catch up on everything you missed while you were out of the office. Before you know it, your well-meaning notes make their way to the bottom of a drawer and you’re back to where you started.
Follow-up coaching: a two-part process
I see business coaching and training as a two-step process. First, the training itself, where you learn new skills, tools and techniques to improve the way you work. Then comes the important part: implementing what you’ve learned and making real changes to your process.
It’s the second part that often proves tricky, once you’re out of the supportive training environment, facing a busy day and the demands of your calendar and colleagues. This is where follow-up coaching can help: it gives you or your staff the opportunity to feedback, get help with stumbling blocks, and make sure that the training you’ve invested in takes root.
Plan for success with follow-up coaching
There are other ways to make the most of any training course – planning is key, and a bit of consideration over the goals you’ve got before you embark on learning will help you ensure you got what you came for.
If you’re sending staff on a course, set up a pre-course meeting to discuss what you hope to get out of it – and if it’s you that’s taking the training, do the same for yourself. Set yourself or your staff some relevant goals, and schedule in a check-in meeting for a few weeks after to measure progress.
Make the most of your investment
When you invest in training for yourself or your staff, you want to get the best return on your money – after all, it’s not just a financial investment, but also an investment of your time.
In my experience, organisations that invest in follow-up coaching after training are the ones who see the most change. These are the people who see training not as a box to be ticked, but a way to really empower their staff, make positive change and, of course, improve their bottom line.
I’ll usually offer coaching either one-to-one, or with small groups, and we’ll work through the process of implementing what’s been learned on the course into the work environment.
If you’d like to schedule some follow-up coaching or chat about a package of training and follow-up coaching, get in touch.