How to Coach Yourself and Others How To Perform On The Job Coaching | Page 28

Contrast #2:
"The rest of the employees will always gang up on the new hire. I've never seen it to fail. They'll
find something the new one isn't good at and they'll just pick and pick on them. I yell at them to
stop it, but I haven't been successful. I had a new person quit recently because they couldn't take it
any more. As for store meetings, I tried those too but they just became bitch sessions."
To summarize our descriptive account, we think that good OJT is characterized by OJT providers
who see themselves as responsible for managing the learning of trainees — actively seeking ways
to help them learn
- not just going through the motions (e.g., endlessly repeating themselves);
- or expecting trainees to pick it up pretty much on their own (e.g., throwing them in the pool to see
if they can swim);
- or backing into the training process either hostilely (e.g., "you can't expect these people to care all
that much")
- or apologetically (e.g., "we pay such low wages, you can't expect that much from them").
Another characteristic of a good OJT provider is their knowledge of the importance of a good
learning climate, along with their reported ability to set it up, maintain it, and take readings on its
health along the way. These are the OJT providers who talked about practices that create an open,
supportive climate which encourages trainees to explore and question, and which (in our words)
promotes in them a sense of ownership in the learning process and in their progress towards
excellent performance.
Although it is doubtful that any of the OJT providers we interviewed would disagree with this
philosophy, some of them clearly do not have the skills to put it into practice, and some violate this
philosophy without knowing it.
Another characteristic of good OJT in this company is the reported ability to tailor instructional
practices to the trainee's needs while still meeting the training goals. Behind this ability lies a
sizeable repertoire of instructional practices, and the flexibility to select among them in accord with
their assessment of individual trainee needs and progress. These are the OJT providers who could
identify ways they work with trainees to diagnose the problem if learning was not progressing as
expected, or if performance was subpar. Related to instructional practices is the s ensitivity of good
OJT providers to teaching more than the basics, and incorporating expertise into training.
One example concerns the OJT provider who made sure trainees know who is particularly good at
certain skills so they can go to them in the future when they're ready to tap into their expertise. It is
important to note that we heard the least amount of information about sharing expertise of any of
the OJT functions. We believe one of the reasons is that much of what gets trained is procedural and
routine.
Another reason is that those skills that do require expertise—customer relations and selling skills—
are seen by most of these OJT providers as difficult or impossible to train. Only a few of them were
able to describe ways they pass on their selling expertise (e.g., going over selling episodes in
enough detail to uncover weaknesses and then helping trainees to generate alternative ways of
handling the situation.)
Finally, good OJT providers in this company take a holistic view of training. This is one of the
aspects of learning management which is more than the sum of abilities on individual OJT
functions. In several cases, OJT providers described the way they used a practice and the way they
were thinking about its use, which meant a single practice was serving many functions. For
example, open-ended questioning was used as an assessment and as an instructional practice.
Further, there was a sensitivity to the way these questions should be asked (in our terms, to maintain
good climate, and to promote trainee ownership). These OJT providers were sensitive to the need to
watch for the effects of this question asking—to be sure it wasn't being received by the trainee in a

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