Most executives spend a large percentage of their time with their talking with employees and salespeople.  Whether face to face or on the phone, they believe they are developing these individuals by providing valuable coaching.  It may be likely that any time a teacher (executive) and student (employee) spend together is valuable.  If we are truly committed to developing our   people, let’s make sure that we spend the majority of time coaching and improving (versus chatting).

One of the sales professional I coached enjoyed providing me with the details of accounts, calls, pipeline and schedule.  He wanted me to know how busy he was and how much he had going on. I call this activity ‘purging’.  Some salespeople need to purge and want your validation or input. But let’s not fool each other.  This is not coaching.  It’s more like ineffective de-briefing.  It could become effective de-briefing if you were asking the questions and your employee/salesperson was answering them.  To spend time listening to the salesperson pontificate on details that are important only to him is not effective coaching or debriefing.

What should happen instead?  If your employee feels the need to purge (and you choose to spend the time as the receiver), it is vital that all purging remains separate from the coaching that takes place.  The coaching session qualifies as coaching only when you help the employee or salesperson grow, develop, become stronger and more effective.  Every session should culminate with a key takeaway—a lesson learned, an epiphany, and some specific action to be taken by the employee prior to the next coaching session.
Don’t allow valuable coaching time to be monopolized by purging. If you’re going to invest coaching time, make sure that coaching actually takes place.