Behavioral Coaching: How Not to Waste Time

My mission is to help successful leaders achieve a positive change in behavior: for themselves, their people and their teams.

But behavioral coaching will not solve all performance problems.

If any of the following conditions prevail, you may be wasting your time:

• The person you're coaching is not willing to make a sincere effort to change. If someone is unwilling to say "I have a problem" or "I have something to improve," don't waste your time.

• The person has been written-off by the company. If you want to fire people, fire people. If you want to help them, help them. But don't jerk them around.

• The person lacks the intelligence or functional skills to do the job. Behavioral coaching does not turn a bad doctor into a good doctor, or a bad engineer into a good engineer.

• The person has the wrong strategy, mission or direction. If the people being coached are headed in the wrong direction, behavioral coaching will only help them get there faster."

• The person lacks ethics or integrity. Fire them. Don't use behavioral coaching to fix ethics problems.

Again, if any of these conditions exist, don't waste time on "coaching."