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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 Getting There: A Book of Mentors by Gillian Zoe Segal
What makes a good mentor? In Getting There: A Book of Mentors, Gillian Zoe Segal interviews thirty leaders in their fields to provide tips and tricks on how they were able to make it to the top. These potential role models describe hurdles they had to overcome in life, setbacks they had to handle, and the lessons they learned even in their lowest moments. The mentors give practical career advice as well as wisdom they’ve acquired over the years. Getting There is the perfect read for anyone attentively focused on their future or facing challenges in getting to the next level in their career. Finding success is never easy, but a great mentor can make the path toward achievement easier to navigate.
Cydcor decided to review this book after discovering an excellent Forbes.com article on door-to-door selling as the first step to billions.
Why Cydcor Reviews Recommends This Book:
Segal interviews people from many different fields: art, politics, science, and business. Each mentor walks the reader through their journey of making it big, explaining that the path isn’t always easy. Failures happen and difficulties arise, but it’s not impossible to outlast these complications. Almost all of the mentors in this book have experienced a moment that let them transcend these challenges.
This isn’t a book filled with research or studies. Instead, it offers narratives that put an emphasis on being human, and how that allows people to face anything. The advice the book Getting There offers is top quality, from real people who started out ordinary and became extraordinary. Although these people may all be from different fields, the advice is still sound and applicable for anyone looking to make something of themselves. It’s truly a great and inspirational read.
Our Favorite Part
Of all the different mentors interviewed in the book, John Paul DeJoria (co-owner of Patron Spirits and Paul Mitchell US), Sara Blakely (owner of @SPANX), , and worldwide recognized artist Jeff Koons have the most insights applicable to the business and sales industries. All three began their careers as door-to-door salespeople, and that experience made an impact that affected them permanently. Like the rest of the book, these chapters feel like an intimate one-on-one talk where wisdom is easily absorbed. The struggles these mentors faced can help shed light on many of the challenges everyone faces while trying to build a successful professional life.
What do you look for in a mentor? Tell us about the qualities you value when searching for a role model. Share a photo on Instagram 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.