Hello. Today is an exciting day. We’re beginning to connect the dots. Today we’ll start bringing together each of the previous topics and addressing how you and your management team can work with your employees to build this performance culture you’re after.
Coaching Versus Managing
Coaching is an integral part of onboarding, establishing a career path for each employee, and the day-to-day management of a team. It is the manager’s job to ensure everyone on the team performs successfully in their role. To do that, employees need ongoing feedback on how they measure up with expectations and what they need to do to improve. That feedback should be provided during coaching. Coaches should also encourage an employee to grow beyond their existing role towards the next step in their career path.
When managers coach their direct reports based on the outputs they actually need to produce, it creates an environment in which employees can:
- Clearly understand the expectations of their role.
- Improve performance based on consistent feedback related to the quality of their work.
- Work toward career goals under the guidance of their manager as part of performing their normal work duties.
- Gain clarity on their progress on a regular basis, rather than having to wait for less frequent performance reviews.
When it comes to performance, the performance profile and any job aids or performance support related to a role tells the performer how they are expected to perform. Their career path provides areas where growth needs to happen based on the role listed as the next step in their path.
The Coach Evaluates Performance
The coach evaluates performance based on the standards, key tasks, and best practices identified in the performance profile. The coach should also provide opportunities for growth that match career path goals. In a coaching session, the coach can provide constructive feedback on how performance measures up to the relevant performance profile.
By using a coaching guide as a reference, the coach can build a plan to improve performance that identifies where improvement can happen and suggests how to make that improvement happen, such as:
- Trying a different technique.
- Incorporating a best practice.
- Developing a practice routine to deliberately build up performance until it is at or above expected standards.
- Completing a remedial training program through the organization or a third-party vendor with expertise in their problem area.
- Tackling an output outside of the normal expected performance in their current role.
- Pushing the performer outside of their comfort zone.
The coach should monitor progress and note improvements in performance as they happen to motivate continued growth. Specific coaching conversations should reflect the performer’s needs and overall performance.
Move Performance from Average to Excellent
Coaching can be a powerful tool for bringing performance from average to excellent. It can also be a waste of company resources. To ensure the success of your coaches, put the focus on the actual outputs produced by the role and those behaviors, skills, and knowledge required to meet expected standards. That slight shift in perspective makes all the difference.
Of course, as you build a performance culture, it won’t be all rainbows and unicorns. While everything we’ve addressed so far will help build a solid foundation, there will be challenges and changes along the way. The tendency is to rely on training to “solve” the problem. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about why that’s not the best choice—in fact, training is not the best solution almost 90% of the time!
See you tomorrow!
