25+ Tips for Effective Employee Performance Coaching

1. Build a coaching culture

If you truly want to enable and facilitate employee performance coaching, you need to work on building a coaching culture in your organization first. It can be

in the organization, people trust each other
they have the ability to question the status quo and;
the willingness to co-create together, regardless of their position in the organization
individuals have a growth mindset and want to help each other grow.

2. Coach managers

Managers are likely to play a crucial role in making your employee performance coaching initiative a success. A common mistake, however, is to think that you can simply train managers on how to coach and that’s it.

You can’t expect someone who has never received coaching – and experienced the benefits of it – themselves to be a good coach to others. So, before you give your managers yet another hat to wear, let them go through a coaching process first.

Bear in mind that you might need external help to facilitate coaching of your more senior managers.

3. Identify performance improvement opportunities

A traditional performance management approach where managers and team members meet each other maximum twice a year for the dreaded performance review doesn’t cut it here.

First, because we’re talking about employee performance coaching as a continuous process.

Second, because if a manager only sits together to talk about their employees’ performance once or twice a year, they’re not likely to spot any issues other than underperformance.

However, the goal of employee performance coaching is to be a learning process.

Therefore, performance management should also be an ongoing process and there should be continuous coaching conversations – throughout the entire year – between a manager and their team members.

4. Discuss the action plan together with the employee

Once the manager and/or employee have identified the performance improvement opportunity, they can come up with potential solutions together.

What the actual solution looks like depends on the issue and on the employee; even when two people need to develop the same competencies, for example, the best way for them to obtain those competencies may differ.

5. Show support

In a way, this comes back to the very first point we raised about building a coaching culture. In a coaching culture, people trust each other. Everyone in the organization has a mentality of wanting to help others grow.

When you have successfully established a coaching culture in your organization, the support doesn’t only come from an employee’s manager. It comes from their team members, HR, and other colleagues too. As such, performance coaching has become a shared responsibility for which everyone takes ownership.

This sounds lovely in theory. Yet, the reality is that many, if not most, organizations have not yet been able to establish a coaching culture. Thus, the ones who should play an important role when it comes to showing support are the managers and HR.

Here are a few ways to show employees support:

Express your confidence in them and let them know that you are there to support them.
Check in regularly to ask them how things are going and how you can help.
If you have a peer coaching or peer mentoring program in place, offer them one of these peer programs for additional support.

6. Promote continuous learning

A coaching culture and continuous learning go hand in hand. When it comes to the promotion of continuous learning, HR has an important role to play too. They need to think of how to create a work environment where people feel motivated to learn and improve their performance continuously.

When you’re a manager and one of your team members comes to you with a question, don’t give them an answer immediately. Instead, you should ask them to first think of what the answer or the solution could be themselves. If you want to, you can nudge them in the right direction but not more than that.

7. Gather feedback

Feedback is an integral part of any kind of coaching process and it should be a two-way street.

Managers should regularly talk with their employees about how they perceive the coaching activities. They should find out what could be improved to make the coaching more effective.

These improvements can concern the coach as well as the coaching activities. Here too, it’s important to regularly have these feedback sessions, ideally, this even is something that is ongoing.

8. Customize performance coaching activities

Employee performance coaching isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Depending on (among other things) their potential, skills, and experience, people who are just starting out their careers require a different approach than senior leaders.

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9. Regularly evaluate performance

You should evaluate the impact of your performance coaching activities once or twice a year during the performance appraisal to review The achievable goals you’ve set together with the employee and included in the action plan can help with this.

10. Keep track of the improvements

A logical consequence of the previous point is that you need to keep track of the developments and improvements of people somewhere; the data needs to be documented.

One way to do that can be in a talent management system. This is an integrated software solution that enables organizations to keep track of performance management and learning and development (among other things).

11. Ask guiding questions

This is where communication skills and emotional intelligence really come into play. Managers must guide conversations both by asking questions and listening, not by giving directives. Employees learn and grow the most when they uncover the answers themselves.

12. Recognize what’s going well

Coaching well requires a balance of criticism and praise. If the coaching session is all about the mistakes, that’s not good at all and it’s easy to lose motivation.

Instead, your recognition of what your employees are doing well can be a springboard from which they can build from which to improve.

However, praise also needs to be limited. If it is used too much, it will turn into shallow and insincere compliments.

13. Listen and empower

When you’re coaching employees to improve performance and engagement, You should approach things from their perspective, rather than your own, will help enormously with seeing the changes and results you want.

Then, employees will feel that they are respected and heard, valued, and therefore will work harder

14. Understand their perspective

When you’re coaching employees to improve performance and engagement, approaching things from their perspective, rather than your own, will help enormously with seeing the changes and results you want.

15. Talk about next steps

Please set up a plan to clearly define and outline what needs to happen next. This will ensure you and your employee are on the same page with expectations, and provide them with a clear understanding of the practical steps they can take to make changes and improve.

Also, these next steps should be mutually agreed upon – talk about what is reasonable to expect given their workload and the complexity of the changes being made.

16. Coach in the moment

Employees can have a lot of ideas, but the point is that you have to be patient enough to care and listen to them before they can share. Be open-minded and encourage your employees to share ideas. That might be a good idea?

17. Commit to continuous learning

Make a commitment to improve your own skills and competencies. If you’re not continuously learning, why should your employees?

Show your employees that you don’t just want them to do better so you look better, but that you’re actively interested in their career, accomplishments, and professional success.

18. Give employees regular, frequent feedback.

In fact, employees always expect to receive positive, constructive feedback from their managers. Because everyone wants to know how their performance is measured, what they do well and what they need to improve on.

Consider setting reminders in your calendar to consistently provide feedback to each employee.

19. Create a culture of team feedback.

Contrary to popular belief, feedback shouldn’t just come from the manager. Employees should be encouraged to provide feedback to each other and to you, their manager.

Strive to build a culture where 360 feedback is the norm. This creates an ongoing dialogue that gives employees at all levels of the organization an opportunity to be heard.

20. Push employees to their attainable limits.

While you don’t want to overwhelm employees, motivating your team to get out of their comfort zone can help them grow and perform at their highest potential employees

In many cases, they need to be challenged and provided regular feedback and recognition to grow and improve. Identify each employee’s experience and skillset, and have them take on new tasks or assignments that help them expand. Be available and willing to help when questions arise..

21. Encourage employees to learn from others.

Encourage your employees to interact frequently so they teach each other new skills or approaches. Welcoming differing perspectives and asking for all employees to contribute will help you foster a more diverse and inclusive culture at work.

22. Ask employees for opinions.

Collecting regular feedback from your employees shows you’re willing to listen and always looking to improve. This can make the workplace feel more like a democracy instead of a dictatorship. Make sure you take notes and follow up once you’ve heard from your team.

23. Build confidence.

In your office, there can be many people who have capacity. But they aren’t confident enough to show on the outside. So, you have to help them to look for opportunities to recognize employees for strong performance and extra effort.

Moreover, you should strive to make it public so that others in the organization can take note. Acknowledging employees’ contributions boosts their confidence and sets them up for success.

24. Don’t do employees’ work for them.

Sometimes, things don’t go according to plan. Mistakes will be made and deals will fall through. It’s just a part of work. But how you respond is what really matters.

Accepting failure and moving to the next task can create a lower standard for performance expectations. But you don’t want to crush employees’ spirits for their mistakes either.

Ask your employees to explain what went wrong and how they could have performed better. Encourage them to consider what opportunities exist and how they might improve in the future. Remain positive and solution-oriented.

25. Tolerate and support failure.

Mistakes happen, and so do successes! Oftentimes, managers get caught up in being a constructive coach instead of a celebratory one. When an employee succeeds or goes over the top, let them know that you noticed.

Recognition can be as simple as a thank-you note, a cup of their favorite coffee drink, or a shout-out during the next team meeting. Little acknowledgements can go a long way toward securing buy-in and building a stronger team.

26. Ask what you can do to help.

Good coaches don’t just throw their players into a competition and say, “figure it out.” They actively encourage their team and search for solutions to help athletes succeed.

Let your employees know they can come to you with questions or concerns. You’re there to help them, and they should feel comfortable asking for advice and or assistance.

Collection & Edit by Marketing Dept from Shasu Coaching & Shasu Mentoring

Reference

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