Performance Coaching: The Missing Link to Level 3 Impact

Condition 3: The Person Must Work in the Right Climate
Kirkpatrick delineates five climates, which are relative to and determined by the learner’s immediate supervisor or manager. These range from “preventing” (forbidding the participant from doing what they have learned in the training) to “requiring” (knowing what the participant has learned and making sure the learning transfers to the job). The other three climates are the ranges in between. When coaching is tied to training as a mandatory experience, the expectations of training—explicit behavior changes—suddenly have much greater weight. The rules for engagement shift, placing much more focus on the participant to achieve the changes regardless of outside circumstances or the gray area. The climate, so to speak, becomes an internal issue more than an external issue, driven and therefore controlled by the learner. (What’s the desired change, and how bad do you want it?)

Tying coaching to learning and development in and of itself fundamentally changes the gray area in that the company now bears witness to the fact that it’s serious about the training it provides and is raising the bar of expectation by supporting an employee’s individual learning curve and successful lift. The climates, as described by Kirkpatrick, become irrelevant to the overriding organizational expectations of training and development, as well as the desires of the individual learner. They no longer require the support of the immediate supervisor or manager as they are supported by the coach and are self-driven in their desire to change. This isn’t to say that supervisors and managers who hang out on the low end of the support-and-encouragement continuum shouldn’t be confronted on their own poor performance, or that there will be no trouble, or that participants who don’t invest in the coaching experience won’t be part of the picture. They most certainly will. The capability of the coaching team is what makes or breaks the success of the coaching and the degree to which the gray area can affect success of the training and the ultimate degree of Level 3 impact.