Here’s how I can tell how good someone is at helping to bring the best out of others….

How to measure the impact of coaching is a frequent topic of conversation in my world and while there are a number of ways to do this – at an emotional level, improvements in the area someone is focused on or the frequency of interactions for example – there is one measure that tells me the most about how effective someone is, or will be, at helping to bring the best out of others.

The most effective coaches I work with are the ones who have a very focused process they commit to every week to improve their people skills.

What does this look like? Something like this…

• Sunday evening/Monday morning – review (or create if this is new to you) your list of people skills you would like to improve (2-5 things which get added to or reduced based on learning from the previous week)
• Identify the opportunities you have to work on any of these areas this week
• Plan what you will do and where the feedback on what you tried will come from
• Execute the plan and review how it went
• Add or delete items from your people skills list based on learning from the previous week

Why this works so well is because opportunities to interact with people more effectively are legion – colleagues having bad day, making someone you don’t work closely with feel part of the team, a random act of kindness with a stranger, putting a smile on someone’s face for no particular reason or offering your thoughts to your partner on how they just handled a moody teen!!

I spend a lot of time with clients helping them build this process but it’s very doable on your own. While the motivation to build this habit can vary from person to person, hopefully knowing this is important might be a wee nudge in the right direction!

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