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Helping employees perform at their best is exciting, but it isn’t always easy. Well-meaning mangers can sometimes counteract their own efforts by approaching employee coaching the wrong way. Giving feedback constructively can be invaluable to employees' career growth and can help them develop critical skills they will carry with them as they ascend toward roles of greater responsibility. Through thoughtful coaching—and by avoiding the leadership pitfalls below—you can help set up your employees for long-term success.
Mistake #1: Not Giving Feedback at All
It’s human nature to want to be nice and avoid rocking the boat. Few of us relish conflict, but giving feedback directly is critical for your employees to be able to improve themselves. They need your help recognizing where they have fallen short, as well as their areas of success, in order to grow and reach their potential. Without that information, they are likely to continue along the same path.
Mistake #2: Letting it Pile Up
Because providing constructive criticism is uncomfortable, some managers wait until there is a laundry list of issues that need to be corrected before they set up meetings to coach employees. This is unfair to the employee, because he or she may have no idea that they were doing anything wrong, and now they face a long and overwhelming list of errors they must correct. Delays in giving feedback set up employees for failure. Instead, check in frequently with your employees to let them know how they are performing and how they are pacing against the objectives for their role.
Mistake #3: Not Setting Clear Expectations
Employees should not have to be mind readers when it comes to what is expected of them. Coaching employees effectively includes working with them to clearly define what success looks like for their role. Having well-defined goals and expectations gives the employee the opportunity to plan ahead and maintain control of their own progress. With increased clarity comes faster, better results.
Mistake #4: Giving Vague Feedback
When offering your employees constructive criticism, make sure to always be specific and offer examples. If you tell your employee, “I really need you to learn to write better,” it will be very hard for the employee to correct or improve the behavior—what exactly does “better” mean? Instead, say something like, "Before you turn in reports, please make sure to proofread for spelling and punctuation errors. Your last report had several errors, which could have been avoided with a little more time and attention paid to accuracy.” Giving feedback of this kind lets the employee know exactly what you are referring to and what they can do to improve.
Mistake #5: Doing All the Talking
Mentoring and coaching employees should be a two-way process. Employees should be given the opportunity to explain themselves, ask questions, and provide ideas. By speaking with, rather than at, employees, leaders gain perspective and allow employees the opportunity to clarify feedback and solutions necessary to correct their performance missteps.
Mistake #6: Prescribing Solutions
You’ve been around the block, and you probably have great ideas to help your employee improve his or her performance. At the same time, no one solution is right for everyone. While your ideas will certainly be helpful, they should be offered as suggestions rather than directives. Allowing employees to devise their own plans of action also helps them learn to be more self-sufficient going forward, and enlisting their help encourages them to look at problems from a different angle.
When employee coaching is done in a positive and collaborative way, managers find that employees become eager for feedback rather than fearful of it. Great coaching empowers employees by providing clear paths to success and opportunities to build on their strengths.
About The Coaching Habit: say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier
Coaching is an important skill for leaders, but often, managers are too busy or overworked to coach their direct reports well. However, author Michael Bungay Stanier argues that coaching can be done in increments of 10 minutes or fewer.
Drawing on years of experience on training managers through his consulting company, Box of Crayons, Bungay Stanier argues that coaching can be a regular, informal part of every day by asking seven essential questions:
Why Cydcor Recommends This Book
In 242 easy-to-read pages packed with anecdotes and explanations of the seven essential questions, Bungay Steiner offers a fresh and innovative take on the classic how-to manual. He combines insider information with research based in behavior and neuroscience to provide a new way to coach mentees. The book contains question-and-answer sections that will help readers identify old habits and start new behaviors.
The seven essential questions are also a great tool for sales professionals. They’ll help them get past the five basic objections to a product: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust. By using the seven questions to uncover what is actually important to a customer, it’s much easier to get to a “yes.”
Our Favorite Part
Each of the seven essential questions has its own chapter. The graphic design, including bulleted lists, pullout quotations, and other visual aids, helps readers to understand the highlights of each question. The book even has spaces and lines for readers to write about their thoughts and the actions they can take to develop the habits Bungay Stanier recommends. At the end of each of the seven chapters is a “Masterclass” section that helps to solidify the points the author made, allowing readers to strengthen their new habits.
Check out this book and tell us what you think. Share with us on Twitter and follow us @Cydcor.
We are Cydcor, the recognized leader in outsourced sales services. From our humble beginnings as an independent sales company based in Canada to garnering a reputation as the global leader in outsourced sales, Cydcor has come a long way. We’ve done this by having exceptional sales professionals and providing our clients with proven sales and marketing strategies that get results.
Here is Cydcor's review of 'Power Listening' by Bernard Ferrari!
About Power Listening:
Nothing causes bad decisions in organizations as often as poor listening skills. But Bernard Ferrari, adviser to some of the nation's most influential executives, believes that such missteps can be avoided and that the skills and habits of good listening can be developed and mastered. He offers a step-by-step process that will help readers become active listeners that are able to shape and focus any conversation.
Why Cydcor recommends this book to future leaders:
Ferrari claims that in a business setting, good listening is a critically important (albeit strenuous) activity and that one that must be purposeful, under control, and in possession of total focus and engagement.
The author focuses on how to avoid the common pitfalls in conversation, and explains how to correct them if they occur. To actively and empathetically listen is critical in any important interpersonal situation, social or professional.
Learn more about Cydcor by heading to our profile on Bloomberg Businessweek.
Our favorite part:
One of the best parts of this book, and its greatest value, lies in how skillfully Ferrari poses clusters of questions to accomplish two separate but interdependent and immensely important purposes: To sharpen the inquiry skills of his reader (i.e. how to learn what needs to be known) and to provide a context within which his reader can apply those skills.
For example, Ferrari explains that, whenever possible, he avoids interrupting another person unless it is absolutely necessary. And when he does interrupt, "any interruptions or responses I make as questions. If I disagree with a statement, I'll package my disagreement in a probing question." In advance of discussion of key issues, he formulates a few questions that he may need "to guide the conversation into areas that will be more useful for me and [conversation partner]."