Ed Batista recommends a variety of techniques to coach a struggling employee, drawing from his extensive experience and insights into the coaching process:

1. Building Trust: It is crucial to develop a trusting relationship between coach and client. Batista notes that coaching can often be confused with therapy, but the distinction lies in the degree of severity of the issues being addressed. He emphasizes that employees must view coaching as a supportive and non-threatening process. This involves managing early interactions to build up the employee's status and identifying appropriate roles, as noted by Edgar Schein in "Helping" [Getting Coaching for Your Team].

2. Agency and Choice: Employees should feel a sense of agency and choice in the coaching process. Batista suggests that while it may be tempting to make coaching mandatory, this could undermine the process. Instead, he advocates for indicating that there are problems that coaching could address and allowing employees to choose their own coach, which can lead to a more candid and trusting engagement [Getting Coaching for Your Team].

3. Avoiding Deference: Batista advises against coaching relationships characterized by deference. He stresses the importance of asking questions and sharing information that could be useful to the employee. He also highlights the necessity of flexibility in conversation style and paying attention to interaction patterns to ensure there's a healthy fluidity in the coaching process. Regularly assessing the usefulness of conversations and making adjustments is key [Deference Kills Coaching].

4. Role-Playing and Feedback: In situations where a leader is contemplating firing a senior team member, Batista's role as a coach is to help the leader sift through all available data, including their intuitive and emotional responses. He engages in role-playing difficult conversations and provides feedback, while emphasizing the importance of asking tough questions to facilitate the leader's decision-making process [On Firing a Senior Team Member].

5. Employee-Owned Agenda: Batista recommends that employees own the agenda for one-on-one meetings. This ensures that discussions focus on issues important to the employee, fostering efficiency and revealing preparedness. He also suggests that leaders can give feedback on the quality of the agenda to ensure time is well-spent and to encourage a more meaningful dialogue [How to Have Better One-on-Ones].

6. Coaching as Methodology: Even though there are limits to how much a leader can act as a coach to their employees, Batista believes that coaching methodology can be employed effectively. By asking questions and facilitating the employee's expression of their concerns, the leader can learn and coach without necessarily having all the answers. This approach allows the leader to add value even when dealing with senior employees who have specialized expertise [How to Have Better One-on-Ones].

In summary, Batista's techniques for coaching a struggling employee involve creating a supportive and trusting environment, empowering the employee with choice, maintaining a dynamic and non-deferential coaching relationship, providing role-playing and feedback for critical decisions, encouraging employee ownership of meeting agendas, and utilizing a coaching methodology to facilitate meaningful dialogue and problem-solving.