Using webcasts to coach

There are so many ways people are using webcasts from sales presentations to thought leadership to traditional training. Many organizations use webcasts as a platform to facilitate meetings. All of this is perfectly appropriate.

When we think of coaching we often think about sitting down with an employee and facilitating a one-to-one conversation. Coaching is about building awareness and giving another person a choice to change and improve in a particular area. This does not need to always happen with a one-to-one conversation.

Here are five creative ways to use webcasts as a coaching platform :

  1. If an employee needs to possess knowledge have them teach via a webcast to the rest of the group. The old cliché is to know something is to have the ability to teach it.
  2. If a group of employees need to possess knowledge from a presentation test them before they can start practicing the actual skill. This can be accomplished in a webcasting platform easily.
  3. Use video to facilitate an in person and online discussion. For example, shoot a simple video but delivered via webcasting platform in a live or on demand version to facilitate observational coaching. For example, a sales team could watch a simulation a role-play in action and literally use the video as a basis to facilitate conversation of what the salesperson did well and what they did not do well. In addition a coach could ask people what they observed in the video that they found in themselves that they have an opportunity to improve.
  4. Create a sequence of events to be learned and ultimately tested for knowledge understanding. For example if you have a customer service team needs to understand five very specific things the organization organization in the way it handles customers you can create a webcast or series of webcast to address this. Each employee can take the webcast to ultimately pass a test and receive in an automated certificate of completion.
  5. One of the things that I absolutely love about a platform we use is to have the ability to facilitate tools within the webcast to facilitate a coaching experience. For example, if I'm teaching a group of managers how to coach to a very specific situation but I want them to be engaged I can load into the platform evaluation sheets along with what we call what would you do coaching sheets that are easily accessible. One thing I like to do is literally have these sheets completed and emailed and/or uploaded within 10 minutes of the webcast being completed. This prompts absolute engagement and not passive participation.

We are all busy and the number one objection we get when it comes to coaching for managers is that they don't have time and that's understandable. What we do with progress coaching is look for creative ways to apply coaching principles using tools and resources that facilitate the ultimate coaching experience: That is giving someone a choice to change and improve and facilitating that improvement with them. Webcasting is an absolutely fantastic and create a platform to do just that. Think about employees who need to increase their knowledge or awareness of the skill they need to practice? What are some things that people need to behaviorally change such as attitude or self-awareness where webcast or a video within a webcast could help facilitate? These are all opportunities to improve the coaching experience.

We have used a variety of platforms when delivering webcasts. I think I have personally used over seven different platforms and they all have their positives and certainly some drawbacks. Recently we signed on with a company out of Seattle called Workcast. This platform provides organizations some of the most unique ways to facilitate not only events but webcast sessions that allow you to almost have like a live e-learning experience. The tracking and simulation of what I try to do with coaching is so easy to implement with their platform. I would encourage you as a training or thought leader or coach to check out whatWorkcast.

We are not a reseller of work cast but have found it to be the most effective platform for what were trying to accomplish: if interested contact Doug  Cardinale at doug.cardinale@workcast.com or check out their webcast platform:www.workcast.com