411 Locals: An Internal Team Coaching Program for Better Team Performance

A study provided by the International Federation of Coaches shows that an internal live coaching program can improve the productivity and performance of the team at any company. The survey was conducted among 150 enterprises across the globe that are already running an internal live coaching program. All of them reported the internal coaching managed to increase the employee performance with 10% to 30 %and to lower the level of work-related stress with 15 to 22 points. 

Initially, the coaching was offered only to senior managers or individuals at specific grades - middle-level manager or employee with high potential. Nowadays, in most companies, including 411 Locals, the internal live coaching is delivered to all employees. An investment of such rank is quite reasonable as it offers high return on investment. 

External or Internal Coach? Which one is better?

411 Locals knows well, that both approaches have their supporters, so there is no right and wrong answer to that question. It is believed that the main advantages of the external coach are the experience with leadership and multiple tasks that were performed previously in different organizations. External coaches are supposed to have better training and tend to have the higher level of accreditation compared to internal coaches. However, the main drawback of hiring an external coach is not only the higher cost but the lack of understanding of the company’s internal structure and culture.
Internal coaches are considered to have a better internal understanding of the company processes and structure. Also, they are familiar with the company culture and are seen as an accessible and free resource within the organization. 

Internal coaching program for better team performance 

Employees and teams are the engine that drives most companies or organizations. The levels of efficiency, the work done, and the delivered outcomes are the results of how the team works together. 411 Locals reminds, that Indicators such as performance and productivity could suffer when the team members are lacking the knowledge how to work together. A crisis such as conflicts, hostility, or unclear expectations could lead to poor results and ineffective handling of the internal resources. Starting an Internal coaching program can prevent such undesirable events and harmful effects of unhealthy teams.

Understand and accept the team dynamics and establish behavior expectations 

According to 411 Locals, A great place to start an internal team coaching program is by understanding what is the role of the employees within the team and if they work well together. It is about different styles of working and interpreting the information, as well as verbal and nonverbal skills. Reaction on one and the same stimulus could be totally different. No matter the difference between the team members and their unique features, the team has to be synchronized. Some personal assessment tools can be of a great use to determine and uncover individual patterns - communication approach, conflict resolution, a capability of multitasking, and problem-solving. The main role of the Internal team coaching program will be bringing the team members together and finding a way to improve their performance. The coaching tools and mastermind groups are a great way to understand others people point of view. Once the point of view is clarified, is time for setting up internal rules, acceptable for all team members. Maybe, most important aspect of the internal team coaching is to develop a clear set of communication and behavior expectations. Using a team charter can easily formalize and visualize all expectations and agreements. 

Evaluate the achievements and set up a proper reward system

In general, people have different values and these create a dominant obstacle to team effectiveness and unification. To overcome this the Organization or the Company should set up a rewarding system, evaluating both individual and team contribution. Here steps in the team coaching once again. With group and role play games, the rewards expected by every team member can be clarified and then the expectations evaluated. It is important the coach to find overlapping between expectations, reality, and the company values. Next is to find goals that both individuals and the team share. Great tool for achieving that could be mastermind sessions focused on the team and individual values. 

What works well for one particular team, may not necessarily work for another department or team. One of the goals of the internal coaching is to create effective relationships between team members. However, the effective work relationships are build by revealing employee’s needs, style of work, and preferences. An internal coach can easily use them to identify the differences between team members and then to focus their attention on overcoming them and bettering the performance of the team.

4 Mistakes That Make Your WordPress SEO Inefficient

You're convinced that your writing talent and impeccable design skills will make your WP blog the next big thing? You think that covering viral topics, finding awesome images and using the social media to spread the word is all that it takes?

Running a blog like 411Locals takes more than the aforementioned efforts. Small WordPress details can cast a big shadow – you can boost the rankings of your posts or on the contrary, lose the advantage and remain unnoticed. More often than not, it is all about ignoring opportunities. Here are the WP features that you shouldn't miss:

Ignoring XML Sitemap

As Google clearly indicates, sitemaps are telling the search engine which pages to crawl. Moreover, not using a sitemap means that some of your site's pages can remain undiscovered. Sitemap's features allow you as a webmaster to point out how often you update your pages. This works well for relatively new sites and ones with too few backlinks pointing towards them. Building and updating a sitemap is quick and automated. The usual options are those two plugins: Google XML Sitemaps and WordPress Seo by Yoast.

Ignoring Categories And Tags

Categories and tags are usually referred to as taxonomies. Their role is to increase engagement and traffic. The wrong use of taxonomies makes your WP site less user-friendly. The cause is that basically a site category works as a table of content and tags are the site's index. Taxonomies also give a good impression of the keywords that are important to your site.

Ignoring Canonical URL Defining

Instead of awaiting Google to determine which version of your page is meant to index and rank, you can deal with this problem by setting a canonical URL. It is a simple process that requires three steps: telling WP what URL represents your site; setting the URL as you want it in the options of Google Search Console; use WordPress Seo by Yoast to set each and every canonical URL of your site;

Ignoring The CTR Features Of Your Posts

To make sure that users see where your post is only half the job done. The rest is to suggest what they are going to see by telling Google how to describe it. You can optimize the latter easily by using a plugin like Add Meta Tags or the well-known WordPress SEO by Yoast. Those plugins give you control of the content that appears on the results page. It is all about the titles and the description of your page. Creating a custom meta title will put a text that will be displayed on the SERPs in place of any headline you choose for the post onsite. In addition, making your description more than a random combination of sentences will lead to a better click-through rate.

411 Locals earned another Ranking

411 Locals earned another Ranking

411 Locals advertising agencies from Las Vegas, earned a Great place in another ranking. The company received 93 from 100 points possible in the Best Local SEO Companies for March 2016. 

The previous ranking was 21 place at TOP 50 SEO companies for 2015 in US

The methodology is based on:

• Local SEO Company Ranking Services
• Quality of On-Page Work
• Link Building Quality
• Local Search Rankings

• Press Mentions
• Customer List
• Secret Shopper
• Activity in the SEO World