As a coach, you obviously want to keep your ongoing projects running smoothly and on schedule. But the reality is that work stoppages happen on occasion — it's part of life and part of business. What can a coach do to keep these bottlenecks — and squanderers of precious time — to a bare minimum?

The Solid Lineup

Serious work stoppages most often occur when an employee makes a significant mistake, or when somebody loses sight of his particular role in the framework of the team. When working as a team, it is essential that everybody be on the same page. Individually, team members have got to know what their respective job roles are — or else. Work stoppage!

When a group of very unique and diverse personalities are at work on the same project, it is essential that a coach not permit one wayward soul to take the whole team down. In baseball, a team can have the league's most fearsome line-up, but still lose more games than it wins because its pitching staff is short on talent. Likewise, work teams necessitate a solid roster — up and down — to meet their deadlines and achieve their goals. A coach is responsible for putting together the team.

As a philosophy applied to business management, coaching and mentoring works effectively as a molder of men and women. A coach who knows what she's doing gets her people to work in unison and to achieve common goals and reach productivity benchmarks. There are countless work stoppages that efficient coaching can prevent entirely or, at the very least, quickly correct when they happen.

The Groundwork

Competent coaching always lays a firm groundwork. It is deeply rooted in comprehensive instruction at the onset of jobs and projects. By building solid foundations, the chances of time-gobbling stoppages occurring are much less likely. As a coach, you are expected to educate members of your team on how best to perform their tasks and fulfill their roles.

In other words, a good coach never neglects those important “101” lessons, as it were. An employee shouldn't graduate into advanced work studies until he masters all of the rudimentary stuff. This all-inclusive instruction is fundamental to both proper coaching and mentoring and time management. Employees who thumb their noses at the basics are more apt to find themselves clueless at some point in time. And finding oneself clueless in the workplace is a bad place to be.