The Five Steps of Effective Employee Coaching

In the AMSINSURE monthly newsletter HR Advisor June 2008 addition from HRANSWERLINK.

New employee orientation and job-specific training serve important purposes. Coaching, however, is a critical key that is set aside unfortunately once too often. A business owner may think that spending the time to coach is too difficult, but it is his or her leadership that helps create a great team of inspired, productive, and loyal employees.
Employee coaching involves the managers and employees meeting regularly to discuss and explore each employee's career goals and development. There are five basic steps in facilitating employees to become high-performers in your team. Discuss the employee’s expectations of the job. Whenever a new employee is hired or an employee’s job functions change over time, always address any questions or confusion the individual may have about the job. To help confirm or clarify the employee’s perspective of the job expectations, review together a copy of the job description, department’s goals, and company’s goals.

Understand the employee’s expectations of the manager. While different employees have different communication styles, learn about what each employee expects from you as a manager and come to a reasonable working agreement.

Learn about the employee’s expectations for professional growth. Some employees work for just the paycheck, and some have specific professional development interests and ambitions. Recognizing and gathering relevant resources to help support and build a plan for each individual’s interests help strengthen employee loyalty.

Give feedback about the employee’s performance. Consistent and constructive feedback becomes effective when focused on raising awareness and on improving performance results.
Get feedback about your performance. You are a manager as well as a member of a team. How well you respond to feedback from your teammates will make a significant influence on your team’s synergy and success.

Each employee should come out of every formal and informal coaching meeting with a strong picture of both the specific performance goals to achieve and how his or her contributions impact the department and the company as a whole