As a diehard men’s U.S. college basketball fan, the four-week period between “Selection Sunday” until a U.S. national champion is crowned, commonly referred to as March Madness, is one of the most intense and exciting months of the year.

Sixty-five teams will tip-off in mid-March, all vying for the crown of “Best College Basketball Team in the Country”.  And while all of the teams have talented athletes, and have achieved successful seasons to reach this stage, it’s their coaches that often deserve the most credit. 

Coaches recognize the strengths and opportunity areas of every player, and help guide each player individually to improvements that will ultimately boost the overall performance of the team.  You don’t find coaches telling players to simply “score more points”; they actually help them understand how to score more points.  And the best coaches emphasize “in-game coaching”, taking a few seconds during the game to guide the player to better performance, without taking him fully out of the game environment.

And while coaching in the contact center occurs almost as frequently as coaching on the court, not enough “in-game coaching” is happening in most contact centers today.

Contact center “in-game coaching”, or integrated coaching (as CCC has coined it), is what the most effective coaches emphasize, by a more than 3:1 margin.  In fact, integrated coaching is by far the most effective way to improve team performance.  To be clear, integrated coaching occurs when coaches create real-time learning opportunities out of everyday scenarios on a regular basis – it’s more than in the moment feedback, it’s like a mini-coaching session on the floor.

Even though integrated coaching is more effective, most coaches still spend the majority of their coaching time in scheduled coaching sessions that happen away from the floor, away from the action.

Plus, although some scheduled coaching time is needed, many organizations have slipped into the rut of using this time for performance evaluation, or spreadsheet coaching, instead of focusing on the behaviors that are causing those outcomes to occur. (But that’s a whole other story for a future post.)

Why is integrated coaching so effective? It’s simply because reps get short bursts of real-time coaching at their workstation, surrounded by the tools and resources they use everyday, and based on the behaviors that should be improved to boost performance.  Taking them out of their environment for coaching is like a basketball coach waiting to give feedback until after the game has ended.  

And by that point, they’ve probably lost their shot at the championship.

So, how do your best coaches teach your reps?  Do you suspect they do integrated coaching (even if they aren’t even aware of it)?

CCC members, check out the drivers of effective coaching and learn how to increase integrated coaching within your organization.

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1. Will Applicant X be a Good Coach? Just ask her.