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The Genesis
As
learning and development experts who had designed hundreds of workshops
and seminars and conducted as many leadership, coaching, feedback, and
management training programs, we were -- along with others in the learning
industry -- feeling frustrated that our "good work" wasn’t
always making the difference it should make. So we asked ourselves if
there was something that has never been done before -- but that could be
done now -- that would really improve results and performance and
thereby revolutionize the learning industry.
A Breakthrough Approach
What
we concluded was the genesis of e-coach
-- a breakthrough solution that answers familiar questions such as these:
·
How can
knowledge learned in seminars, workshops and on-line courses be more
easily applied to real on-the-job problems and situations?
·
How do we
make certain the training we do is effective – and that it delivers an
appropriate return on our training investment?
·
How can
individuals get the coaching and feedback they need to actually use skills
on the job, and hence develop competence in new skills?
·
How can we
best teach and support competencies associated with emotional intelligence
such as self-awareness, social skills, empathy, and others that research
consistently suggests make the true difference between average and star
performance?
·
How can we
help people get opportunities for support when they need it -- not just
when their managers or coaches are available?
·
How do we
help people to use the Internet, organizational intranets, and other new
technology to approach learning differently and learn to interact
effectively with others?
The Need
e-coach is needed today because increasing changes in the
workplace and fewer workers to do the work have created ever-growing needs
for people with broader and stronger skills. Companies have responded to
these needs by spending increasing amounts of money on both technical- and
interpersonal-skills training. Despite this increase in spending, however,
many programs have failed to make a real difference in competencies and
performance.
The
reasons for this shortfall are varied and complex. One reason is an
overemphasis on technical training that assures skills required for
threshold competence but does not provide everything that is needed for
workplace success. Other reasons include inadequate feedback, no
opportunity to practice new skills on the job, and a lack of cultural
support for learning.
The
need for more support is not new. Human support has always been an
important element of effective training, and many consultants, including
ourselves, have routinely recommended it. We suggest that trained managers
supplement training by being available to coach, structure- learning
opportunities on the job, and support on-the-job learning and the use of
new skills.
The
publication of Working With Emotional Intelligence (Goleman,
1998) gave new urgency to the need for more support for workplace
learning, especially in areas related to emotional intelligence. It
crystallized what many of us have long suspected -- that a new model for
learning is needed if training and educational efforts are really going to
be effective in creating better, more skilled workers.
The
new model incorporates many of the suggestions of earlier training models,
but it goes beyond them by presenting new challenges to the learning
community. It spells out what is needed to support training if it is to be
truly effective in creating "differently-skilled" people. These
"absolutely essential" elements include preventing relapse
through practice," "giving feedback," "encouraging
practice," "reinforcing change," and "arranging
support."
e-coach
-- The Winning Solution
e-coach is a breakthrough in workplace learning because it
offers an effective way to provide these essential elements. For example:
·
If people
need more support and more coaching and practice, e-coach provides it.
·
Even within
the highly charged, political environment of many companies, e-coach makes it possible to provide people at all levels with
the individual support they need.
e-coach provides a
cost-effective, user-friendly, and highly effective way to use new
approaches to learning and new technologies -- including the Internet and
internal intranets -- to help with these and other pressing human
resources and organizational concerns. |
