Author: Anders Christian Hjort

Have you ever had a great coach that helped you improve your personal performance?

Why should I commit to change an old habit that works perfectly well with me, although I know what I’m doing is not perfect and sometimes causes me some trouble?

1. What are the Facts?

2. Why change?

3. What’s in it for me?

4. Why risk getting out of my comfort zone?

In all behaviour change the answers to these questions are relevant if you want to succeed in helping you people to change and get better.

So how to cope with the behaviour change challenge.

Well, you need a reference, clear objectives etc. But how do you benchmark people performance?

Most measure hard quantifiable outcomes and decides what is going to be achieved as an individual, team and organisation. 10% growth, 50M+ turnover, 15% growth in EBITDA, reduce inventories by 27% etc.

How about the soft quantifiable behaviours that results in the above?

To illustrate I will share with you a real story.

I once had a great guy in the warehouse department. He was taking care of logistics and shipping. We had hard numbers to meet on a daily basis. Number of shipments on time and many more, however he was not motivated by these numbers and hard KPI’s at all. A succesful day to Peter, was a no hassle soft measure. Focussing primarily on
what he could DO, and what actions and behaviours would help him succeed in his own terms. “When things were “Swinging”, he said, he what was needed to meet the hard numbers – however, not directly motivated by the numbers, but by the behaviours he needed to do and adjust to get into “the groove”.

Knowing this, each Monday I asked him:

1. What did you do well last week?

2. Anything that challenged you?

3. What will you do differently now?

4. Do you need help to get there?

“That’s great Peter, looking forward to follow up with you next week – your doing well!”

All I needed was 5-10 minutes conversation each week showing interest in what he was doing, giving motivational feedback, and now and then guidance if he needed help to unleash his growth potential and commitments towards himself.

This is what coaching people can look like – It’s simple, not very time consuming, and we met the hard numbers most if the time.

Effects on Peter?

Highly motivated and so was my CFO.

Most people think coaching is a time consuming fluffy task – it’s not! – it’s simple and highly motivating.

But also managers need to get into their new habits and comfort zone being a coach – when management tasks threaten steal time and attention from this core behaviour set – however, setting the scene in the right way and being a great coach will help you being perceived as a great leader.

How About that?

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