I am currently carrying out some research into coaching within call/contact centres.

Many people know that coaching is a great way of improving performance and motivation and should be one (if not the) most important part of a team managers/coaches role. I am keen to hear of what support/coaching the team manager/coaches get from official training programmes, to refresher training and on the job support and help.

I am very keen to hear from team managers/coaches as to what sort of training they have had to be coaches and what sort of support they get on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.

I am also very keen to hear from anyone who works in a call/contact centre as to what support they provide for their coaches.

Thanks for any help and support in advance.

Neil

1) Coaching by itself is a Skill Set.

2) One normally does not coach a functional and effective Coach on how to coach. It requires somebody with an understanding of the job on hand and can provide the Coach with a "View from the Outside".

4) This job on hand changes from company to company from team to team, within the same company, from person to person within the same team, from Coach to Coach and from Manager to Manager.

5) Unless the internal Coach has grown into the position there is very little that any body from outside can do about it. Having said this I would alsolike to add that there are Very Perceptive Managers, that a Coach would not want to part company with.

6) It might sound surprising considering that I function as an external resource. But then that is what it is. You don't coach a Coach - you act the Co - Passenger with the Coach and earn the Coach's respect so that the Coach shares issues and you facilitate the Coach in identifying the training requirements and help the Coach to finalise the Coaching Plan by maintaining discretion and making a few suggestions that could help. Once accepted the Coach's Coach is another member on the team.

7) The Person in charge is the Team Manager and the Coach essentially works towards getting the members of the team, to deliver the performance that is desired- the way your teacher at the Elementary School works with a student.

8) The Better the Coach the better the learning process, and better the results.

9) I am of course speaking of what I enjoy doing most.

Any questions are of course welcome!

In the UK team managers (TM's) usually manage a team and coaching is one of the skills they use to do that. I must confess I am a bit unclear as to your references you seem to be implying that there are dedicated coaches, in the UK I have never encountered dedicated coaches as a unique job title.

Team managers are usually supported by the learning and development dept with skills training in areas such as presentation skills, team management, delegation, time management, disciplinaries, coaching, motivation , recognition, valuing, encouragement, personality types, quality issues, disciplinary issues, learning etc. The level of support can depend on how effective the training was in the first place, ie the follow up after any training intervention. Any assumption that coaching needs to be supported is based on the premise that the training for the coach was initially ineffective or poorly designed.

Typically any externally recruited team manager will have coaching, developing and supporting as an essential parameter on any job specification and relevant experience will always be sought.

Trainers and development specialists are coaches as well, if they have studied or qualified in any way they will be well aware of the factors surrounding coaching.

For my center, we have continuous uptraining sessions for our supervisors and managers. The training is done by any of managers who is a subject matter expert on a specific area. We have what we call "webinar" wherein a manager from a different site will be facilitating a coaching session over a conference call. The attendance for this is based on a first come first served basis and is purely voluntary. A training lead for every site will do a recap of what was discussed after the call. This sessions usually last for about 2 hours.