“Are You Ready?” To Be a Great Coach?

By Christel Roco, American Airlines

[one_half]“Are You Ready?” was the overarching theme resonating throughout American Airlines in 2015. “Are you ready to restore American as the greatest airline in the world?” was the question the CEO, Doug Parker, frequently posed to thousands of leaders in the company while they took on the huge task of merging American Airlines and US Airways to be the biggest airline in the world.

Being the world’s largest airline wasn’t the ultimate end goal, however. The new American Airlines aspired to be the world’s greatest airline. Senior leadership knew this wasn’t an easy task or one to be taken lightly and developing strong leadership teams throughout the organization was the keystone in making this happen. Managers needed to understand the critical role they played in the organization during such an important time in the company’s history and be able to help their teams move quickly from a state of transition to fully functioning and driving a new aligned culture. It became evident that leadership development at the “new American” needed to: increase awareness of self and others to achieve better business outcomes and communication in an inclusive environment; engage teams and build strong relationships and connections within those teams; and build high performance coaching skills among leaders.

Coaching has become an essential competency for leaders at all organization levels and American is committed to developing a strong internal coaching culture. They recognize that one of the most important priorities for leaders is to be a catalyst for the high performance and career acceleration of their team members… and coaching is one of the most potent tools available. For this reason, American’s Reservations leaders partnered with Bluepoint Leadership Development to design and deliver a powerful, experiential workshop to help their managers excel at coaching others for high performance.

While coaching has indeed become today’s fastest growing human resource development activity, it also is a timeless interpersonal process that great leaders have employed for generations. The power of coaching is easy to understand. When a person has the opportunity to discuss and reflect on their work, unique aspirations, and most important talents with a trusted advocate, their learning and personal commitment is almost always dramatically increased. For most leaders, however, a significant shift in their assumptions, relationships, and intentions was required before they could realize their full coaching potential.

Coaching requires leaders to engage in a process of intense relationships and challenging conversations that will inspire and enable others to shift to a new pathway going forward. A discussion was held around a “coaching impact model” that illustrates the four commonly used leadership approaches: directing, advising, training, and coaching. While all four approaches are frequently used by leaders, the lasting impact is only realized when the talent owns the solution that is brought out through coaching. [/one_half]
[one_half_last]During Bluepoint’s “Leader as Coach” Workshop, American Airlines’ Reservations’ managers gained experience with a proven coaching model that they could immediately use in their leadership roles. The key elements that make up the Bluepoint coaching model start with “earning the right to coach” and ensuring that the leaders take an inward look and then focus on how to strengthen their reputation in the organization. The goal is to have a leadership brand that others will gravitate to and then want to be coached by that leader. The second part of the model addresses making solid, deeper connections with their talent. This is critical to get to know the whole person and therefore understand how to tailor the coaching to their specific needs, goals, aspirations, and wants. The final piece focuses on the coaching conversation that may include constructive criticism, acknowledgement and affirmation, or challenging messages that need to be addressed

The workshop incorporated the very best practices of professional coaches with Bluepoint Leadership’s expertise in leadership training. Through a series of lectures, discussions, and engaging experiences, managers were guided through a very hands-on coaching workshop. Coaching power tools were shared to leverage in their coaching discussions. These included how to use silence as power, intuitional perspective, and not leaving anything unsaid that the talent needs to hear. Finally, the art of asking effective questions was addressed including providing the leaders with Bluepoint’s “60 Big Coaching Questions” that served as a valuable resource to use when engaging in coach-like conversations. Leading as a coach often means giving up traditional notions of management and entering the uncertain world of personal relationships and intense conversations.

With over 6,700 employees in 22 call centers and 12 countries, American’s Reservations department has taken Doug Parker’s challenge to heart and has made great strides in developing their leaders in order to restore the company to greatness. Having great leaders who take great care of employees will result in agents ultimately taking care of our customers, who have high expectations and many airline options these days. The airline industry is constantly changing and so are the interactions with customers. With so many self-help options available online now, customers frequently call airlines with more complex issues, which in turn increases the customers’ chances of becoming more frustrated. Dealing with difficult customers not only requires the right personality and skills but it also requires the right guidance and coaching from leadership. It’s important to have a culture where relationships and conversations truly matter and are valued and American has taken this commitment seriously. n

Christel Roco presented a session on this topic at the 2015 QATC Annual Conference. She is the Senior Manager of Quality Management at American Airlines. Christel may be reached at christel.roco@aa.com.[/one_half_last]