Remote coaching: what is the secret to its effectiveness?

Remote coaching is yet another challenge brought by the global pandemic. What happens when training does not take place in physical space, when the trainer does not have the trainees within a short separation of a desk or even in the same building? but rather, working hundreds or even thousands of miles away?

Being able to shorten the distance in remote coaching can prove to be an arduous mission for all companies, mainly because there is no shared context. This happens when the trainer has no information about the people on the other side of the phone or screen. As a rule, we gather a lot of information about the world around us, ranging from office culture to events in the personal lives of colleagues or even the climate. Without any conscious effort on our part – and often without realizing it – that information becomes part of a mental data code that we use to interpret situations, decode interactions and understand motivations.

In this context, social interaction is extremely important. Coaching it’s not simply a comparison between stated objectives with a list of executions. The purpose of training is for trainees to better understand the consequences of their actions and to be able to see when there is a disconnection between what they should be doing and what really happened, which requires the trainer to put himself in the trainees’ shoes and interpret several situations. A difficult task to do at a distance.

Besides, the absence of a social context reduces trust, one of the pillars for effective training. Trainees need to have enough confidence in the trainer to share their successes and failures, expose their vulnerabilities and ask for help. Trust is not a one-way street. Efficient trainers often draw parallels between their own experiences, therefore, they need to be comfortable sharing this type of information. When people are physically together, trust usually comes more easily and is built through common relationships, which are more difficult to develop at a distance. The pandemic has brought us several adaptation needs and in this case, it can still be difficult to develop trust through phone calls or video conferences. As a result, trainers can often face the difficult task of having open and meaningful dialogues needed for a productive training environment.

This way, transporting face-to-face interaction to a remote coaching context may seem extremely difficult, however, some key points can be explored to bring remote training closer to what we were used to.

Exposure

The first step in remote coaching is to have an honest and open discussion about the challenges faced by the group in an attempt to establish and maintain an efficient formative relationship. Recognizing problems will place both trainer and trainees on the same level, towards defining expectations and helping to understand each other’s behaviours. At the same time, it builds harmony and trust by creating shared experiences – working together to overcome the training challenge.

Office culture

In remote coaching, it is important to use a structure with realistic objectives and implement processes that compensate for the difficulties brought by subjects that are more complex to understand, as well as to organize and maintain regular meetings. In a face-to-face session, body language makes it easier to understand when all the trainees are aligned with the trainer in the addressed topics. A predictable pace is a key factor to build confidence. Planning ahead and establishing a fixed schedule that guides the frequency of interaction can help to bridge the gap.

Technology

The absence of social interaction in remote coaching can also be overcome through the use of the right and appropriate technological tools. Let’s take Teleperformance’s Cloud Campus as an example, for which concrete solutions were developed to enable the most appropriate environment possible for the trainer to be successful: allowing the transmission of the desired information and also recreating the group environment experience. How? The specific creation of innovative platforms allows trainees and trainers to be constantly connected. All members of the group are able to see each other and their work teams in all their video calls. In addition, it is also important to provide trainers with training in interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence so that they can achieve a socially rich training environment.