Case Study: Developing Virtual Coaching Skills
COVID-19 effectively halted in-person training. Moving technical training to virtual delivery is relatively easy, but that’s not true for training in soft skills such as coaching. At the start of the pandemic, we were in the process of updating our Results-Oriented Coaching Skills offering. The pandemic provided an opportunity to test, gather feedback, and incorporate a new flexible delivery approach in our latest version, ROCS 6.0.
Five A’s of Workplace Coaching
One of the challenges of coaching is establishing a routine or process for how a manager approaches team development. The Five A’s of workplace coaching are an effective framework to help integrate coaching into a manager’s work routine.
The Connection Between Coaching and Communication
When you're a manager responsible for coaching your team's performance, it’s helpful to have a simple coaching mantra. What is a mantra? How can a coaching mantra help you guide your team members to a higher level of success?
Developing a Coaching Mindset
If you ask managers if coaching is an important part of their job, most will say, "Yes." However, organizations hold managers accountable for business results, not team development. How can managers focus on driving results and developing people at the same time?
The Problem with Virtual Coaching
Coaching is a deeply human experience, and communication is the foundation of the process. Recently, virtual coaching has become a standard practice, but there are challenges in not coaching in-person—from reading body language to observing people on the job. How can you overcome these?
Outcomes-Based Organizations: The Future of Managing Dispersed Teams
It has become apparent that working from home is here to stay for the foreseeable future. As a leader, how do you approach this new work dynamic? One novel approach is to become an Outcomes-Based Organization, shifting the focus of day-to-day management away from activities and toward results.
The Value of Early Action for Declining Performance
If you're a manager long enough, you'll encounter declining performance in one of your direct reports. It won't get better on its own—so when you see it, take immediate corrective action!
Continuing Engagement Development for Managers
Managers need the skills, knowledge, and behaviors to help their teams sustain an engaged culture
Employee Engagement Development for New Managers
When organizations identify high-potential candidates for management, they should also provide them with comprehensive preparation.
Do’s and Don’ts of Virtual Conversations
The pandemic has forced many of us to change how we engage with colleagues and customers. Here are tips on what you should and shouldn’t do in virtual conversations.
Managing Scope Creep
Vendors can be a valuable resource for temporary headcount or expertise. But sometimes work and costs exceed the defined scope. How can you prevent this?
New Webinar Learning Solutions for Managers
Do you have more time now for remote training? Our management development webinars help sharpen skills so that when you're ready, you can hit the ground running.
Transitioning a Workshop to Webinar Training
The spread of COVID-19 has encouraged many companies to embrace electronically delivered training. Here are several factors to keep in mind to make it effective for the learner.
Four Ways to Tailor Your Call on a Customer
Every customer is different—with different personalities, needs, and preferred ways to engage. Your challenge is to meet that uniqueness in your style and presentation.
Challenging Coaching Conversations
Coaching someone who isn’t receptive to guidance can be intimidating, but avoiding these conversations can result in unrealized potential, a tolerance for subpar performance, and underperformance.
Sales Questions Are About Creating Engagement
Successful salespeople know that good questions are key in sales calls. Good questions create meaningful engagement and an exchange of information that can lead to a better understanding of the customer's needs.
The Advocate Role in Account Selling
Account-based selling with multiple decision makers is complex than selling to one decision maker. But it still needs one-on-one interactions at essential moments. How do you get them? One key is having an advocate.
Planning a Healthcare Provider Request Call
If you're an MSL answering an HCP's question, you don't always get to plan your answers in advance. However, a little planning before a call can help you not only answer the question but also provide value and build your professional relationship.
Creating a SMART Sales Call Objective
Every call is an opportunity! Make good use of your customer's time by preparing, starting with your objective—the one thing you need to achieve to move the customer closer to buying.
Cultivating Positive, Productive, and Professional Opinion Leader Relationships
MSLs often need to communicate complex information to opinion leaders. This is much easier and more effective when you have a positive, productive professional relationship.
Building Effective Learning Activities
It doesn’t matter whether you are facilitating a workshop, delivering a webinar, or building eLearning—the more interactive the learning program is, the better it will succeed.
Managers, Don’t Forget to Document
Routine documentation is an important part of performance management and coaching. It may seem overwhelming at first, but a few simple processes can help you incorporate regular documentation into your management processes.
Gamification and Games in Learning
To transform a boring lecture into an interactive fun learning environment, learning professionals are increasingly incorporating gamification and games into their learning designs.
Building a Coaching Culture
In a "coaching culture," both the person being coached and the person delivering the coaching value and seek development.
Aligning Performance Objectives with Company Objectives
Good training is based on performance objectives linking what people learn with how they work. Aligning these with company objectives ensures that learners develop skills and knowledge that the organization needs.
The Business Side of Being an MSL
In graduate school, you might have focused on science or healthcare. To succeed as an MSL, however, you also need to understand the business of healthcare, pharma, or biotech.
Building a Listener-Focused Presentation
MSLs often need to present technical data to opinion leaders. One way to do this effectively to adopt a listening mindset, focusing less on what you want to say and more on what they need to understand.
Questions That Bring Opinion Leaders Value
When you talk with friends or family members, you often start with a question, listen, and then respond. And it goes back and forth that way: asking, listening, and responding. Conversations with opinion leaders should have the same cadence, with good questions, careful listening, and sharing information.
Value-Based Selling
Customers have more options than ever for purchasing products. To distinguish yourself you need bring the customer real value.
Assessing Performance
Assessing direct reports’ performance seems like it should be straightforward: you just check their results and make your judgment. However, it’s not always that simple. Sometimes circumstances beyond the person's control interfere with progress. In an organization that values collaboration and teamwork, how do you fairly assess the contribution of each person on a team?
Performance Objectives vs. Learning Objectives
You see it all the time: “By the end of this program, you will understand...” But understanding doesn't always translate into action. Performance objectives make training more effective by focusing on what learners will be able to do with their knowledge.
The Key to Knowledge Transfer: Self-Directed Learning
Malcolm Knowles, one of the fathers of adult learning theory, wrote that "Teaching, like medical practice, is mostly a matter of cooperation with nature. The function of the teacher is to guide the student into the experiences that will enable him to develop his own potentialities."
Why Create a Sales Model?
Selling today is complex: multiple stakeholders all have a say in what to order, how, and when. The landscape requires a strategic, integrated selling approach. A solid sales model can give structure to integrated sales and make it easier to develop selling skills.
Influencing Skills vs. Selling Skills
For medical science liaisons, selling is taboo. MSLs provide support to healthcare providers; sales representatives convince them to adopt a product. But sometimes MSLs do need to have influence—for instance, to alter an opinion based on incorrect data. The ability to influence others can be vital to an MSL's success.
Three Key Questions for Effective Coaching
Coaching should be simple and intuitive. Managers won't use a complicated coaching process that takes hours to prepare and execute. A simple coaching approach has managers ask themselves three questions. We call it the coaching mantra.
Closing for Action
The ABC of selling—"Always Be Closing"—is an old adage. To succeed in selling, it’s important to take a step back and ask, “What is a good close, and why is closing still important in today’s complex marketplace?”
The Power of Evidence-Based Feedback
Feedback is one of the most effective tools you can apply to develop direct reports. If you apply it incorrectly, however, feedback will be, at the very least, ineffective.
Annual Performance Reviews — Beneficial or Time Wasters?
Completing one big annual performance review usually is a huge waste of time and money.
What’s All the Fuss about Proficiency vs. Growth Assessment?
On January 17, 2017, the Senate confirmation committee asked Betsy DeVos how she would measure student achievement.
Key Principles of Adult Learning
Have you ever sat in a training program and thought, “Wow! This is a huge waste of my time?”
Do You Want Learners to be Fired Up About Training?
The way to combat dull PowerPoint-driven sessions is by knowing, understanding, and mastering your responsibilities as a facilitator of learning.
Why Should You Train Your Trainers?
Whether your trainers have on-the-job experience or are new to the trainer role, it's important to provide them with skills to effectively facilitate learning.
Romar Learning Solutions Celebrates 30 years
This year marks a wonderful milestone for Romar Learning Solutions — our 30th anniversary.
Leadership – A Focus on Management Behaviors
If the goals of leadership are to drive results and create an engaging environment for the team, then the behaviors the leader demonstrates are foundational.
A Stewardship Approach to Leadership
In recent years, leadership has shifted from a “command-and-control” approach to an engagement approach.
Creating an Engaging Community of Managers
The idea that managers play a critical role in creating engaged workforces is not new.