The Five-Minute: Improve Performance - Rapidly

Lynne Cooper and Mariette Castellino
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oTe Five Minute Coach is an essential approach for busy managers
and internal coaches who need to make a dierence fast.
Mike Corker, Global Lead for Talent and Learning and Development,
Capgemini Infrastructure Services
Improve performance - rapidly
The Five-Minute
T
h
e

F
i
v
e
-
M
i
n
u
t
e
ISBN 978-184590800-3
9 781 845 908003
Crown House Publishing Limited
www.crownhouse.co.uk www.crownhousepublishing.com
Management and management techniques
Self-Help and Personal Development
Lynne Cooper is an accredited coach and coach supervisor working with individuals, teams
and organisations. She has co-developed the Five-Minute Coach and is the author of Busi-
ness NLP for Dummies.
Mariette Castellino is a coach, team coach and facilitator in the public, private and volun-
tary sectors and is one of the pioneers of the application of Clean Language and Symbolic
Modelling in organisations. She also co-developed the Five-Minute Coach.
Te Five-Minute Coach ofers a simple, but very efective, step by step guide to coach
quickly and efortlessly with amazing results. Short, punchy and easy to read, the
user can swiftly learn this innovative tool for improving performance.
Designed for leaders, managers and supervisors in any setting, this groundbreaking
approach to coaching on the job will improve job performance and satisfaction for
the manager and team member alike.
A must read for leaders at all levels across all sectors. Te way the topic is
handled has really made me re-look at the way I coach members of my team.
Douglas Waddell, Operations Director, Hand Picked Hotels Limited
Anyone who is looking for an easy to remember structured approach to
improving outcomes in their work life or as a coach should denitely have this
book on their shelf/e-reader.`
Sean Finnan, General Manager, IBM Global Technology Services
An original, simple, yet highly eective approach to achieving change at an
individual level or within a group and in diverse situations. It shows how some
very small changes in the coachs language can eect a big change.
Michle Moore, Head of People Development, Elior UK
A useful addition to the armoury of any coach from the manager of a team of
sta to the parent of teenagers.
Marian Ridley, Joint Director of Strategy,
Guys & St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust
Reading this book made me think hard about the way I manage my own sta and
reappraise my approach. Its clarity about how to make a real dierence through
eective coaching makes it a valuable addition to any managers briefcase.
Sir Steve Bullock, Executive Mayor, London Borough of Lewisham
5minute_FP.indd 1 11/04/2012 18:01
Coaching others to high performance -
in as little as ve minutes
The Five-Minute
www.crownhouse.co.uk
www.crownhousepublishing.com
5minute_final.indd 9 20/04/2012 08:23
First published by
Crown House Publishing Ltd
Crown Buildings, Bancyfelin, Carmarthen,
Wales, SA33 5ND, UK
www.crownhouse.co.uk
and
Crown House Publishing Company LLC
6 Trowbridge Drive, Suite 5, Bethel, CT 06801, USA
www.crownhousepublishing.com
Lynne Cooper and Mariette Castellino 2012
Te right of Lynne Cooper and Mariette Castellino to be identifed as the
authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may
be photocopied (except 203), stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public,
adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, with-
out the prior permission of the copyright owners. Enquiries should be addressed to Crown
House Publishing Limited.
Te Association for Coachings Code of Ethics and Good Coaching Practice reproduced in
Appendix III appears with their permission.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue entry for this book is available
from the British Library.
Print ISBN 978-184590800-3
Mobi ISBN 978-184590805-8
ePub ISBN 978-184590806-5
LCCN 2011940612
Printed and bound in the UK by
Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow
Crown House Publising has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for
external or third-party websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that
any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
v
Contents
Foreword ...................................................................................... i
Acknowledgements .................................................................... iii
A True Story .............................................................................. 1
Introduction .............................................................................. 5
1 Meeting the Five-Minute Coach ............................................ 13
2 Getting Started ....................................................................... 23
3 Te Five-Minute Coach Stage 1: Identifying an Outcome .... 37
4 Te Five-Minute Coach Stage 2:
Choosing the Best Outcome ................................................... 53
5 Te Five-Minute Coach Stage 3: Discovering More .............. 69
6 Te Five-Minute Coach Stage 4: Action Planning ................. 85
7 Te Five-Minute Coach Stage 5: Motivating to Act ............ 109
8 Dealing with the Unexpected ............................................... 125
9 Coaching in Action ................................................................ 143
10 Building Your Skills ............................................................... 163
11 Getting Results with the Five-Minute Coach ...................... 183
12 Developing as a Coach .......................................................... 195
13 Exploring Further Resources ............................................... 199
Appendix I: Te Five-Minute Coach Framework ..................... 203
Appendix II: Full Five-Minute Coach Example Transcript
Amira and Chris ..................................................................... 205
Appendix III: Association for Coachings Code of Ethics
and Good Coaching Practice .................................................... 213
References ............................................................................... 217
Index ....................................................................................... 219
5
Introduction
Do you struggle to balance all the demands on your time? Do you
sometimes feel that you arent achieving all that youd like to? Wher-
ever you look, are there problems to fx? If so, this book is for you.
We originally developed the Five-Minute Coach for managers. We
were hearing that life was tough. From senior managers to team
supervisors, no matter the size or sector of organisation, the com-
mon themes we encountered were long hours, high stress and far
too little time out of work to get body and mind in balance, never
mind achieve personal goals. Tat was a few years ago and, as we
write this book, it seems that in general things havent improved. In
fact, with the current pressures on resources, competition for mar-
ket share and increasing globalisation, people are struggling more
than ever to maintain their personal and professional efectiveness.
Not so the managers and others who have embraced the Five-
Minute Coach. Tey no longer fght fres constantly. Tey are getting
much better results as others take ownership of issues where appro-
priate. Teir approach to work has become more proactive and less
reactive; and they are creating opportunities to get a strategic per-
spective and make a real diference.
As the name suggests, the Five-Minute Coach is an approach to
coaching. Increasingly, people fnd a coaching style of infuencing
and leading much more efective than controlling and directing. Te
challenge individuals fnd though is that coaching just seems to take
too long until now. Tis book introduces you to a technique of
coaching thats ideal for busy people who need to get results swiftly.
6
The Five-Minute Coach
Developing the skills
Once youve learned the Five-Minute Coach technique, youll fnd
it becomes very easy to employ in your working day to make a dif-
ference in as little as fve minutes. To build that fexibility you need
to get to grips with the whole framework, such that you can run a
formal coaching meeting with it. A full session does last more than
fve minutes, although its still very fast.
After that youll fnd yourself using Five-Minute Coach questions in
conversations and meetings, and creating positive change around
you as a result. Before long, coaching becomes integrated into day-
to-day communications between you and your colleagues and a
coaching culture emerges.
What it does
Te Five-Minute Coach helps people to make a step change in the
way they work, which in turn leads to signifcantly improved per-
formance, in two simple ways:
1 Delegating. Te process ensures that problems are delegated
to their rightful owners. Rather than rescuing others, you
relinquish responsibility and return issues back to those who
raise them. Often the person who knows most about the
problem is best placed to resolve it. With this approach you
enable people to take responsibility, to devise solutions, to
innovate and to make decisions. Meanwhile, you create the
time to think and act diferently, and make a more useful
contribution yourself.
2 Revolutionising thinking. You establish a shift from
problem-thinking to an outcome focus. Solving a problem can
create a result that is quite diferent from that generated when
attention is on an outcome what we want to have happen.
Tis doesnt involve ignoring problems; rather you have a new,
efective method of moving beyond a problem.
Before long this step change becomes embedded. People start to
consider outcomes rather than raising problems. Tey know they
7
Introduction
can take ownership and choose when to ask for help or coach-
ing. Meanwhile, managers stop fxing everything themselves, coach
where necessary and get a whole new perspective on the work they
are doing. Stress reduces, performance improves and everyone
benefts.
Clean questions
Te Five-Minute Coach has its roots in Clean Language, a meth-
odology for working with individuals frst developed for use in
psychotherapeutic settings. Its originator, David Grove, developed
the concept of clean questions
1
those which contain the mini-
mum of assumptions and none of the questioners ideas, thoughts
or suggestions. Tese questions direct attention to the interview-
ees own words and deepen and develop her thinking.
James Lawley and Penny Tompkins studied and further developed
Groves approach, creating Symbolic Modelling,
2
described in detail
in their book, Metaphors in Mind.
3
Tanks to this work and the
training and support they have given to us and many others over
the last decade and more, Clean Language is now used in many set-
tings, from business to communities, schools to hospitals, charities
to homes. You can discover more about Clean Language by visiting
www.cleanlanguage.co.uk (see also Chapter 13).
Clean questions, the principles of Clean Language and the struc-
ture of Symbolic Modelling, including Lawley and Tompkinss
Framework for Change,
4
are at the heart of the Five-Minute Coach.
We have taken key clean questions and built a framework that is
easy to learn, quick to use and efective at changing the way people
think and work.
1 Grove, D. (1998). Te Philosophy and Principles of Clean Language. Available
at www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/articles/38/1/.
2 See Chapter 13 for other opportunities to access information on Symbolic
Modelling and Clean Language.
3 Lawley, J. and Tompkins, P. (2000). Metaphors in Mind: Transformation through
Symbolic Modelling. Developing Company Press.
4 Lawley, J. and Tompkins, P. (2012). A Framework for Change. Available at
www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/articles/313/1/.
8
How to use this book
Tis book is designed to help you learn how to use this pragmatic
and impactful approach to coaching to change the way you work
and improve the results you get.
Chapters 1 and 2 describe the Five-Minute Coach and what you need
to do to get started. Chapters 37 then lead you through the fve
stages of the process, step by step. To learn the coaching approach
youll need to read them in order at least initially. Youll discover
that these chapters include the Five-Minute Coach questions and
guidance on how to use them, complete with examples. Youll fnd
tips, troubleshooting and practice activities, as well as ideas on how
you can use the questions in fve-minute conversations once you
have learned to coach this way.
Ten youll fnd chapters to dip into when you want to learn more.
Chapters 8 and 9 give you guidance on how to handle unexpected
responses when coaching. Chapter 10 has some exercises to help
you practise your skills. Chapter 11 tells you how the Five-Minute
Coach is being used in practice. Chapter 12 explains more about
coaching. Chapter 13 includes a list of resources should you want to
take your journey of discovery with the Five-Minute Coach further.
Book conventions
Gender
At certain points in the book, to emphasise the importance of the
coachees role in the process, we refer to a coachee by gender (i.e. he
or she). We use one pronoun only to make it easier to read, so for
example, in the Five-Minute Stage in brief sections at the start of
Chapters 37, we have made the coachee female through all fve.
Elsewhere, we alternate gender from one chapter to the next after
all, this book is relevant to all!
109
Chapter 7
The Five-Minute Coach Stage 5
Motivating to Act
Te coaching allowed me to realise and remember my own potential
and that I have freedom to make decisions about my own life without
waiting for someone to tell me how to do it. I was pleasantly surprised,
with a plan for the future by the end - all from my own head!
Stage 5:
Motivate to act
And when [frst thing], then what
happens?
(Repeat until coachee is in a positive state
and seems keen to act)
And is that a good place to stop?
(Hand over notes)
Five-Minute Stage 5 in brief
Now that your coachee has an outcome and a plan of how to
achieve it, your purpose in this fnal stage of the Five-Minute
Coach is to leave her feeling impelled to take action. You use
a question youve practised in Stage 2 to help her get a sense
of how good things will be as the future unfolds and the out-
come is achieved.
110
Using your coachees words for the frst thing that needs to
happen (change the tense if necessary), ask:
And when [frst thing], then what happens?
Having completed Stage 2, youve probably anticipated that
you repeat this question with your coachees latest answer:
And when [answer to last question],
then what happens?
Ask your question with enthusiasm and use encouraging
noises to assist the coachee to feel the benefcial efects of
each consequence as it emerges. Notice the efect this fnal
piece of questioning is having on her. Keep asking the same
question until you see or hear some positive emotion. For
example, she may be speaking enthusiastically, smiling, nod-
ding or changing posture. Now your coachee has engaged
more fully with the whole outcome and action plan. Shes
motivated and energised to get started.
All thats left to do is to check the coachee is happy to end the
coaching. Your fnal question is:
As she agrees, hand over the notes youve taken.
Example: Starting with Stage 4 rst step
Coach: And when you read the book, then what happens?
Coachee: I remind myself of what I need to do, and I get
re-enthused about doing it.
Coach: And when you remind yourself, and you get
re-enthused, then what happens?
111
Chapter 7 The Five-Minute Coach Stage 5
Coachee: I fnd myself making the changes, without even trying.
Coach: And when you fnd yourself making the changes,
without even trying, then what happens?
Coachee: Ten life is easy, and Im becoming my best without
efort (smiling).
Coach: And is that a good place to stop?
Coachee: Yes!
Discovering Stage 5
Tis is the fnal stage of the Five-Minute Coach, where you make
sure that your coachee will start to work towards achieving his out-
come. Your role in this part of the coaching is to ensure that as well
as having a plan in mind, or on paper, the coachee feels motivated
and enthused to make things happen.
The difference that makes the difference
Having coached someone through three stages of developing an
outcome what he wants and supported him to work through
a comprehensive action plan, you could be forgiven for thinking
thats enough. And in some cases youd be right. Your coachee could
be chomping at the bit to get started.
However, we have ourselves coached people to identify an outcome
and work out exactly what to do to achieve it, only to fnd at the
next meeting that the coachee hasnt actually done anything. Of
course theres usually a rationale Ive just been too busy being
one of the most common.
Weve put the fnal stage of the Five-Minute Coach together to
overcome the problem of people not getting started on their action
plans. With Stage 5, any resistance or reticence to take the frst step
of the action plan soon fades away.
112
Stimulating action
Youre already familiar with the question in this stage. You used it in
Stage 2 to explore the consequences of achieving an outcome:
And when then what happens?
In this last stage of coaching, you ask the question not about the
outcome, but about the action that your coachee identifed as the
frst thing that needs to happen:
And when [frst thing], then what happens?
As you have been doing to date, write down key words and phrases
from your coachees response. Use these to ask the question again:
And when [answer to last question], then what happens?
You probably know by now that you are going to ask this question
multiple times, using the coachees previous answer on each occa-
sion. Youre engaging the coachee, step by step, with the process of
moving towards his outcome. You lead him to rehearse the route to
success in his mind, in the same way that top athletes prepare to
win a competition. Your coachee ends up in a very positive state and
inspired to take action.
Once youre sure that your coachee is enthused, positive and ready
to act, its time to conclude the coaching. Do this by checking in
with the simple question:
In our experience the coachee will be ready to stop at this point
and say yes. Ten ofer the notes that youve taken of the coaching
session. In the unlikely event that he doesnt want to stop, you ask
the very frst question again: And what would you like to have hap-
pen? If the coachees response is another problem or outcome to
explore, check whether its appropriate to do that now, and if not,
book another meeting.
Figure 10 outlines the steps to follow in Stage 5.
113
Chapter 7 The Five-Minute Coach Stage 5
Figure 10: Te Stage 5 Five-Minute Coach process
End
Move to stage 1
Q: And when [first thing],
then what happens?
Q: And is that a good
place to stop?
Book another time
Q: And what would you
like to have happen?
Q: And would you like
to work on that now?
Q. And do we both
have the time now?
Response
Response
from both
No
Q: And when [last answer],
then what happens?
Enthusiastic
response
No
Yes
Yes
Response
No
No
First thing that
needs to happen
Yes
Yes
L
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M
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C
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oTe Five Minute Coach is an essential approach for busy managers
and internal coaches who need to make a dierence fast.
Mike Corker, Global Lead for Talent and Learning and Development,
Capgemini Infrastructure Services
The Five-Minute
T
h
e

F
i
v
e
-
M
i
n
u
t
e
ISBN 978-184590800-3
9 781 845 908003
www.crownhouse.co.uk www.crownhousepublishing.com
Management and management techniques
Self-Help and Personal Development
Lynne Cooper is an accredited coach and coach supervisor working with individuals, teams
and organisations. She has co-developed the Five-Minute Coach and is the author of Busi-
ness NLP for Dummies.
Mariette Castellino is a coach, team coach and facilitator in the public, private and volun-
tary sectors and is one of the pioneers of the application of Clean Language and Symbolic
Modelling in organisations. She also co-developed the Five-Minute Coach.
Te Five-Minute Coach ofers a simple, but very efective, step by step guide to coach
quickly and efortlessly with amazing results. Short, punchy and easy to read, the
user can swiftly learn this innovative tool for improving performance.
Designed for leaders, managers and supervisors in any setting, this groundbreaking
approach to coaching on the job will improve job performance and satisfaction for
the manager and team member alike.
A must read for leaders at all levels across all sectors. Te way the topic is
handled has really made me re-look at the way I coach members of my team.
Douglas Waddell, Operations Director, Hand Picked Hotels Limited
Anyone who is looking for an easy to remember structured approach to
improving outcomes in their work life or as a coach should denitely have this
book on their shelf/e-reader.`
Sean Finnan, General Manager, IBM Global Technology Services
An original, simple, yet highly eective approach to achieving change at an
individual level or within a group and in diverse situations. It shows how some
very small changes in the coachs language can eect a big change.
Michle Moore, Head of People Development, Elior UK
A useful addition to the armoury of any coach from the manager of a team of
sta to the parent of teenagers.
Marian Ridley, Joint Director of Strategy,
Guys & St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust
Reading this book made me think hard about the way I manage my own sta and
reappraise my approach. Its clarity about how to make a real dierence through
eective coaching makes it a valuable addition to any managers briefcase.
Sir Steve Bullock, Executive Mayor, London Borough of Lewisham
5minute_FP.indd 1 11/04/2012 18:01

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