Coaching and Performance Management
When Performance Management replaced Performance Evaluation in
Organizations, it was going to give leadership a different
definition and much more credibility and accountability to all
members of a team. Instead of having little control over
personal development within the organization, leaders and team
members could begin to create relationships that would develop a
workforce with skills needed to compete in a globalizing world.
Because this approach looks towards the future rather than the
past as the Performance Evaluation does, team members and
leaders began to receive constant feedback from relationships,
giving everyone a maximum amount of control over their own
performance.
The major component of the Performance Management Process is
"Coaching." There are three important steps to this process and
each step seeks to answer just a few critical questions. By
using coaching at
every step, the team becomes more aligned with the goals of the
organization.
The first step begins at the Organization's Fiscal Year where
objectives are established. The basic questions to answer are:
What are we going to do? What are our goals for the next fiscal
year? What needs to be developed?
During the year, team members and leaders will have follow-up
discussion(s) to provide feedback on their ongoing performance
and answer the following questions:
How are we doing? Are we accomplishing our goals? What are the
areas for improvement? What else needs to be developed to meet
our goals?
These follow-up discussions (The second step of the Performance
Management Process) are aimed at improving performances in order
to achieve objectives. During these discussions, the leader will
coach the team members to help team members develop in areas
identified at the beginning of the year (during the first step
of the process) or during the actual follow-up discussions.
The third step of the process is a final discussion between the
team member and the leader that will be put into writing in
answering the questions:
How did we do? Did we accomplish our goals - where did we come
up short? What should we concentrate on next year? The success
of this approach is dependent on two conditions: the way the
leader handles the coaching discussions
and the commitment of both the team member and leader to improve
and develop skills to meet objectives.
Effective coaching relationships between team members and
leaders can improve the performance of human resources within
the organization. The outcome is better performing employees
producing better results.
So what do the "coaches" consider to be an effective coach? What
was their definition of coaching? The one thing we knew for sure
(based on years of taking surveys) is that employees need and
want effective coaching on a regular basis. This was true in the
past and is still the same as we gain a better understanding of
coaching in the workplace for Performance Management.
Coaching is a
"process" used in developing partnering relationships. I am not
debating the fact that shareholders need results, I am simply
suggesting that the results achieved as an outcome of an
effective coaching relationship is long lasting and much more
appealing to team members in today's organizations. It may even
be an important strategy for the challenge in regards to keeping
and attracting employees.
Based on the last two decades spent with thousands of leaders at
all levels in different organizations, I have often heard the
following sentence from team members: "Walk the talk" and "I
will commit to doing everything I possibly can to improve my
performance."
Still, many leaders experience difficulties with the Coaching
approach when this program is first implemented. Their
difficulties are often the result of:
Misunderstanding of the coaching approach. Too many leaders and
team members still believed that Performance Management was just
another name for what had been done in the past (Performance
Evaluation). They were convinced this was simply a different
stationary form. Therefore, discussions were still done in a
top-down method i.e.: Here is what you are not doing well and
here is what you will do to improve it. Now, go to it! Not very
useful for helping team members and developing partnering
relationships...!
Misuse because leaders using coaching concentrated on the end
result rather than the process to use to obtain this result.
There was little or no relationship development between team
members and leaders. Talks often sounded like the ineffective
coach in professional sports i.e.: A basketball coach demands to
see a higher score on the scoreboard in order to win. When a
player asks for feedback on how to do that, the answer is: I
don't care how you do it, just do it! This results in the team
members feeling manipulated. They will start to do as little as
needed to keep their job. So when a new leader joins this team,
the new leader is convinced that the team members were not
committed. This brings to mind the term "self serving biases."
Misleading because the word "coaching" has been used in so many
ways, many team members believe that it is just another way to
get all the juice out of them in order to satisfy the
shareholder regardless of the impact it has on human beings and
ultimately the organization. Unfortunately, coaching is used to
describe many different things, it was hard to be clear about
it. Often, the word "coach" and "mentor" are interchanged. Some
advocate that coaching is a skill needed by the boss, and others
seemed to believe that coaching is a process that should be done
by someone else other than the boss. coaching is a
process delivered to a group of employees informally rather than
individually. "Coach" is the new title for a leader.
Yet, when leaders regularly use coaching discussions
effectively, it becomes very easy to determine what should be
going onto the final document for the year. It is also easy to
determine what the answers to the questions of the first step
for the following year will be. That is true Performance
Management!