Why Train KCS Coaches?

A client working to justify the expense of coach training asked for a risk assessment of not training her coaches.  I thought that was an excellent question.  Having given it some thought, here’s my response, captured and shared in the workflow.

There are three critical success factors for KCS:

• Engaged executive sponsorship
• Measuring the right things, and using those measures the right way
• Having the right coaches, properly prepared, and given the time to coach

I can fairly say that I’ve seen lots of variation in successful KCS programs, but I’ve never seen a successful implementation without these three things.

Without appropriate training, your coaches will not:

• Feel confident enough in their own KCS skills that they’re able to model the behavior and provide feedback to others
• Understand how to use KCS measures to assess knowledge developers’ progress towards licensing
• Feel comfortable giving direct, helpful feedback
• Understand influence skills and how to use them
• Understand how beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors interrelate, and how to intervene
• Be able to tell when someone is ready for licensing
• Be calibrated with each other in using the Article Quality Checklist and the Content Standard
• Understand how to structure their coaching sessions, and have the right job aids for coaching

In other words, without this kind of training, your coaches aren’t going to be prepared to run effective coaching sessions.  Given the time that you’re investing in coaching, that’s an enormous waste of resources…and one that puts the success of the overall project at risk.

What’s your experience been with preparing coaches?  Am I overstating the risk of not training them?

(HT RW)