Coaching An Employee To Increase Performance
By Maureen Moriarty
MA, ABS Professional Certified Business and Executive Coach
Many companies today are spending a great deal of time, money and resources on performance management systems. However, identifying and measuring performance standards is not enough. To actually increase performance of employees requires ongoing training and coaching. Managers need to learn coaching skills to get better results when attempting to increase performance of their employees.
Coaching is a skill set and performance improvement strategy to get the most out of the most valuable resource of any company - its employees. The goal of coaching is discovering and developing skills and new ways of doing things to yield greater effectiveness and results. However, turning managers into coaches is no easy task. Learning to coach is like learning a new language and requires significant training, opportunities to learn and practice and commitment from both the manager and the company. The best way to learn to coach is by being coached from a coach who models exemplary coaching skills.
Many managers are quite comfortable in their directive style of management. Other managers have technical expertise but may lack the necessary people skills to inspire, motive and support their employees. They see themselves in the role of supervising the work of others to include arbitrary assessments and evaluations, problem solving, and micromanaging tasks in a directive style. By contrast, managers with coaching skills partner with their employees to foster collaboration and expand their capacity to learn, grow and perform.
Managers with coaching skills guide employees towards solution focused action plans and gain trust through deep listening, objective observations and offering behaviorally specific feedback. Managers with these skills, help employees to understand how they can be more effective by learning and practicing new behaviors that at first, can seem awkward. Coaches must first create a safe relationship for the employee to be able to risk failing, this can be particularly challenging for employees to do in front of their "boss". It is up to the manager to create this safe container for learning and development.
A manager with coaching skills:-
Facilitates optimal future scenarios
- Works towards what is possible
- Fosters vision, imagination and motivation
- Promotes high performance and getting results
- Guides others through transitions and change
- Explores strategic action plans and future development
- Challenges mental models and outdated ways of thinking
- Validates and supports
- Confronts when necessary
- Is curious about the employee
- Creates space and room for the employee to think and find answers/solutions
- Reaffirms strengths of the employee, identifies strengths and builds on them
- Offers direct, open and honest feedback with the intention of helping/guiding
Coaching 101 - Basic Skills
Feedback
Feedback starts with the word "feed" or nourish. Think of feedback as a way to help nurture the other person. Yet feedback can be highly uncomfortable to both receive and give. It can be challenging to give candid feedback on someone else's behavior. Most people fear hurting the other's feeling and will work instead to "be nice." But when people confuse being nice with providing others helpful accurate observations about their behavior or style, their feedback is then useless.
Too often, leaders operate in a feedback vacuum and lack accurate feedback that could be helpful to them in developing their careers and improving their organizations. The reason's people give in not wanting to give honest feedback to the boss range from fear of the leader's wrath to not wanting to be the bearer of bad news (fearing the "kill the messenger" scenario) or wanting to appear as team players and "good citizens" who don't rock the boat.
To be effective, feedback must be non-judgmental. The best feedback is given with clear intent on the giver's part, is straightforward, honest and behaviorally specific. An example of effective behaviorally specific feedback would be, "You cut Amy off in the meeting today by interrupting her." In contract, poor feedback involves a criticism of the person not the behavior, is vague and given without clear intention to improve the situation. A poorly executed feedback example, "Amy you are so rude."
Honest specific feedback creates an opportunity for learning and development. Hostile feedback creates resentment that usually results in the other person shutting down to any learning involved. One good rule is to assume you were going to be the receiver of the feedback you are about to give. Ask yourself first, how you would like to hear it.
Listening
A coach's most important task is to be a good listener. This is more difficult than it sounds. It can be challenging to listen to someone with concern, sensitivity and an openness to understanding their world. Yet, listening well can provide a coach with valuable insight to understand how the employee views reality. When people feel heard, they also feel valued. This is critical in gaining trust in the coaching relationship, and trust is a necessary ingredient for successful coaching. Once the employee trusts you, they begin to take necessary risks to improve. Managers with coaching skills give permission to experiment and learn from mistakes. Fear of failure usually stops learning in its tracks. Yet, most of us learn best by failing first.
The Five Steps for Coaching-
Contracting- Setting the Learning Agenda
- To begin coaching, there must be an agreed upon contract. Coaching will backfire with employees who clearly don't want coaching. In the contracting session, clearly identify specific learning goals and actions your employee needs to work on. This would usually follow a 360-degree method feedback assessment. A 360-degree method assessment offers a full picture by collecting information about the person from many people-the boss, peers, and subordinates about how the employee acts and how others see it. These multiple views give a more complete image of what is really doing on. A good coach can use a 360-degree assessment to hold up a mirror to the employees behaviors or "blind spots" that they may not be seeing themselves.
From the 360-degree assessment, the coach helps the employee develop appropriate learning goals. Generating learning goals and outcomes are preferable to "performance" goals because performance goals typically evoke anxiety and undermine motivation. Developing a learning agenda with an employee allows them to focus on what they want to become-rather than on your idea of what they should be. Coaching works best when the employee takes ownership of their goals and issues.
- Take Stock of The Employee's Strengths
- Focusing only on one's gaps and weaknesses is depressing and demotivating. Help the employee to work at identifying their strengths, talents and skills and encourage them to build on these. How do their strengths correlate to their performance on the job? What skills can the employee learn or what experiences can they have to build on these talents? When employees do this, they will be more productive, more fulfilled and more successful.
Gallop recently asked over 198,000 employees, "At work do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?" When employees answered "strongly agree" to this question, they were 50 percent more likely to work in companies with lower employee turnover, 38% more likely to work in more productive companies and 44% more likely to have higher customer satisfaction scores. But the most shocking news from the Gallop survey was in what percentage of employees truly felt that their strengths were in play during work. Globally, only 20 percent of employees agreed.
There are many skill and talent assessment tools available to help employees further identify their strengths.
- Developing a Road Map
- Help the employee stay on track with an agreed upon specific practical action plan. This plan will also serve as a tool for you to use to promote accountability until your next coaching session. Use SMART goals with employees that are:
-
Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Time related
Example: "I will contact five clients this week in the financial industry to set up appointments". This action plan goal meets all the SMART criteria.
Use summaries to make sure you are both in agreement about what is to happen next at the end of a coaching session.
- Coachable Moments
- In between your coaching sessions, look for "coachable moments" with the employee to stay on track with the plan. Coaching is more effective when it is used in the moment to help illuminate either a different way of behavior or catching the employee doing something well and acknowledging their progress. Use e-mail to send notes following up on specific actions to help them move toward accomplishing their goals. Offer your ongoing support via phone, and email. The challenge is to be supportive without being overbearing. Let them know you are thinking about their coaching goals and you want to keep your communication going. Encourage them to communicate with you about specific problems or challenges they are experiencing.
- Follow up, Review, Revise and Celebrate Successes
- Following up on the employee's progress through weekly coaching sessions. Start with a summary of what was agreed to during your last session and then let the employee tell you how it is going. Review their challenges, learnings, obstacles, missing resources, and successes.
These coaching sessions are great opportunities to try role playing potential conflict scenarios or stuck places. Keep this time focused on their progress and provide support, honest and, when necessary, challenging feedback. Remember to celebrate their successes. This is a frequently overlooked part by busy managers. Recognizing and celebrating their wins, no matter how small, helps motivate the employee.
Finally, debrief your time together by asking the employee how you were as a coach. Ask them to provide you with feedback about how you better serve their learning and development. This is your opportunity to model being able to receive good feedback and an opportunity for them to practice giving feedback.
Copyright © 2007 Pathways to Change. All rights reserved.
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