How to Coach Yourself and Others How To Perform On The Job Coaching | Page 22

- Displaying a strong positive attitude toward training; they know proficiency can be achieved
and do not allow trainees to blame failure on unsolvable problems
- Monitoring training and noticing when it is not going well; articulating what is not going right
and developing an alternative course of action to remedy the problem
- Demonstrating control over the learning environment and experimenting with different OJT
techniques.

4.5 OJT Practices Reported by Coaches

In general, we found that most of the coaches were not aware of very many training techniques, and
that they were not very flexible in applying these techniques. That is, they did not possess a large
repertoire of strategies and they did not know when or how to switch among them.
An anecdote that we heard repeatedly went like this:
"First, I told him how to do the task. He tried it and couldn't do it right. Then I told him how to do it
again. He still couldn't do it right, so I told him how to do it a third time, but the fool still couldn't
do it right. Finally, I had to slap him in the back of the head."
Clearly, the trainer illustrated in this example did not see that the problem might be with himself
rather than the trainee. Perhaps, he did not know another way to approach the problem. Perhaps he

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