QALMS Overview

QALMS stands for questions, activities, learning projects, motivators, and supplemental coaching. Questions drive self-awareness and create clarity. Activities facilitate change and can be knowledge-based or skill-based. Learning projects are assigned for the next coaching session and promote continuity. Motivators are discussed separately and tied to coaching goals. Supplemental coaching involves creative strategies like mentoring or reading assignments. The QAL in QALMS refers to the conversation model. Results are achieved through effort, progress, and sustainable change over time. The S in QALMS stands for supplemental coaching that doesn't require personal time. This framework accelerates talent development. When pursuing coaching through our QALMS videos, remember QALMS, Q-A-L-M-S, stands for the following, questions, activities, learning projects, motivators, and supplemental coaching. Now, let me cover the Q-A-L, okay? Questions drive self-awareness. They also create clarification for you as the coach. Now, when you're meeting with people, you're going to ask questions. The activity is where you're going to facilitate change. So if you have someone who is struggling with conflict, or if you have someone who is struggling with public speaking, the activity could be knowledge, let me teach you, and you can teach it back, or skill, let's simulate, or let's practice it together. Activities happen when you are together with the person or the persons that you're coaching. The Q are questions, build self-awareness, build clarification for you. The activities drive positive change. The learning project is done at the end of the coaching session, which is something that you basically prescribe or assign to be due at the next coaching session. Such as Tom, next week I want you to come in with two examples where you handled conflict well, and maybe one looking back that you felt like it didn't go as well as you thought, and what you might do differently the next time. When you get to Tom the next time, you're gonna start off with the L. The learning project will start the next coaching conversation. That's how you build continuity between coaching sessions. That's your QAL, so what I would basically do is say, well Tom, last week I asked you to do the following learning project, let's start with your two successes. Now you're in a conversation, you're at the Q stage right away. Now, when it gets to the difficult one, you might say as an activity, well let's practice that conversation, let me go first. That's the QAL. Now the motivator is really something that you should do as a separate conversation. Now you can bring it into the qualms conversation, yet essentially we would advise you to have a conversation with all of your employees asking, what's your desired state? What's your goal? Where do you want to end up? What would you love to be doing? What would you like to be doing more of? And when you find out what somebody's motivator is, you can tie it together with the area that you're coaching to. So again, I'll use Tom, I'll use handling conflict more comfortably and readily. I might say to Tom, in my conversation, I might bring in the motivator and say, well Tom, what if we continue to practice and we continue to pursue handling conflict more readily and comfortably, how do you think that might help you become that team leader, that future promotional opportunity that you said was your goal? When you bring in someone's motivator, you create emotional attachment. You create emotional attachment to the thing that most people avoid, and that's called change. Now the S, this is the cool part, supplemental coaching. Supplemental coaching, you don't physically have to be present. So let's take our friend Tom, who's struggling with conflict. You might pair Tom up with Peter, who handles conflict really well and you might set up a mentoring relationship. You might have some other people besides Tom struggling with conflict and you might create peer-to-peer practice sessions. By the way, it doesn't take any of your time at all. Now you might also buy Tom the book Crucial Conversations and say, Tom, every week I want you to read one chapter and email me what you learned and what you've applied as a result of that reading. You might also find videos where people are demonstrating how to have these conversations. Supplemental coaching is creative coaching strategies that allow you to drive talent development and facilitation of positive change, taking none of your own time. So let's review. The QAL, the Q and A is when you get together with your person, you're going to ask questions, you're going to have activities. The learning project ends and starts all coaching conversations, such as next week coming with an example of, and maybe another example where you were struggling with, and then you have a conversation. The L, the learning project, is typically tied to the area that you're coaching. Typically that should be done over a period of time of eight to 12 weeks. So think about our hypothetical with Tom handling conflict. He's not going to be doing this comfortably within one or two sessions. Remember, people change in three levels, effort, progress, and results. So when Tom is showing effort, I'm going to praise it. I'm going to stay away from constructive feedback. When he's progressing, I'm going to pinpoint where I think he's getting better, as long as he's showing that. Then you can move in the direction of the third stage, which is predictable, sustainable results. It's called progress over time. Typically each one of those stages require three to four sessions each. So again, QALMS is a framework of coaching. The QAL is your conversation model. The M is you're going to tie the conversation into what specifically motivates them, as long as you know what that is, and what I would encourage you to. And then the S is I'm going to accelerate my direct coaching, my QAL, with things that don't require any of my own personal time. And that accelerates talent development.