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Employee Coaching
Leadership is like athletic achievement. Natural ability helps, but coaching is needed for peak performance. Whether you are a new supervisor or experienced manager, our free coaching tips can strengthen your leadership skills.
EMPLOYEE COACHING TOPICS
Do you hate talking with employees about performance issues? Most managers do. But when you view coaching conversations as problem-solving discussions, the task often becomes much easier.
In an exceptional coaching discussion, both the manager and employee participate actively, sharing perspectives and ideas. Here are ten steps that will help you have your own exceptional coaching conversations:
Managers become very frustrated with employee performance problems, but often don’t take time to do “detective work” on the cause. Before talking with someone about a performance issue, give some thought to possible reasons for the problem. And here’s a key point to consider: as the manager, you may inadvertently be contributing to the situation.
Every job is the responsibility of two people: the employee, who is accountable for producing desired results, and themanager, who creates the environment in which the employee works. When confronted with a performance issue, the questions below may help you sort things out.
Everyone needs to give feedback to others from time to time. If the feedback is positive, it’s a pleasure. But sometimes constructive feedback is required to suggest a change in someone’s actions or behavior. While these discussions can easily turn into arguments or conflicts, they should really be viewed as problem-solving conversations. The following suggestions can make feedback more comfortable and productive.
As a manager, you need to differentiate between employee problems that simply call for a coaching conversation and those that require a corrective action discussion. Corrective action should only be taken for serious performance issues. These occur when an employee either exhibits behavior that cannot be tolerated or does not live up to agreements made in previous coaching sessions.
All successful managers learn how to shift their leadership style to work effectively with different types of employees. While most people fall within the “normal” range of behaviors (whatever that means!), some have characteristics that are rather extreme. When confronted with these behaviors, managers sometimes aren’t quite sure how to respond.
In this topic, we look at several types of employees that present specific management challenges, including Challengers, Clingers, Drama Queens, Loners, Power Grabbers, Space Cadets & Slackers.
Secrets to Winning at Office Politics
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