Management Guide: How to Coach Your Employees

Did you know that most managers don't know how to coach their employees? According to the Harvard Business Review, instead of coaching, most managers prefer to act as consultants. They end up micromanaging the employee instead of coaching them.

Why coaching is better than micromanaging

Employee coaching focuses on raising employee engagement, personal satisfaction with life and work, achieving personally relevant goals and productivity in general. Whereas, micromanaging focuses on instructing the employee on how to perform tasks instead of providing them with the chance to improve on their own.

In 2012, the University of Wollongong Research Online Sydney Business School did a study on how and why do managers use coaching skills. They concluded that despite the challenges which managers may face in deploying a coaching approach, the respondents were very optimistic about the benefits, for themselves, for the people they coached and for their organisations.

Additionally, BlessingWhite’s The Coaching Conundrum 2016 survey found that managers who coach regularly describe tangible benefits (for example: increased team productivity) and two-thirds of employees who receive coaching say it improved their satisfaction and performance.

So, how do you properly coach an employee?

Instead of micromanaging, consider coaching. It is not easier, but it will be worth it.

How to coach an employee

1. Build trust between you and your employee

Trust is the foundation of any coaching relationship. Without some degree of mutual trust between you and your employee in their day-to-day relationship, effective coaching is merely impossible. The employee should be able to feel like they can connect to you on a personal level despite the hierarchy.

2. Start with a meeting

In opening a coaching meeting, you need to clarify, in a friendly, non-judgmental, non-accusatory way, the specific reason why you arranged the coaching meeting. The employee should be calm, especially if this particular coaching is a result of poor performance.

3. Reach an agreement that your employee needs coaching

The most crucial step in the process of coaching employees is to get them to agree verbally that a performance issue exists before going any further, a step many managers often miss. You should specify and define the particular behaviour in question then and get the employee to recognise its consequences.

Cite specific examples of the performance issue.
Clarify your performance expectations on the issue at hand.
Ask the employee to share their understanding of the consequences related to the performance issue.
Ask them for verbal agreement on the subject.

Find out what the employee already knows; this can give you new information to work with and also help you correct any inaccurate data the employee may unconsciously have.

If the employee offers excuses, respond empathically to show that you understand their situation. If the employee thinks that your comment feels like an accusation, rephrase it as an encouragement.

4. Find solutions

Then, encourage the employee to find alternative solutions, specific alternatives at that and not generalisations. Don't jump in with your solutions, unless they can’t think of any. The goal is to give the employee the chance to come up with their own choices as well as judging the pros and cons.

5. Ensure employee's commitment

The next move is to help the employee choose an alternative. Don't pick it for them. You must make sure they get a verbal commitment from the employee about what action they plan to take as well as when and how they intend to do so. Support and praise the employee’s choice.

6. Assess their performance

Regularly check to see if they are correctly implementing the alternative they chose.

Effective managers make sure to gradually increase the time frame for checking on the employee, with the final aim of making the employee able to monitor and correct their performance.

7. Give feedback

Let the employee know if they have successfully performed what you both planned during the employee coaching sessions. If not, review what still needs some work. The employee should be praised or given some other type of reward for mastering any performance issue that required coaching.

Be quick and specific with your feedback. Avoid a tone that exhibits anger, frustration, disappointment or sarcasm as this closes the employee off.

Coaching employees is about creating a shared understanding of what needs to be completed and how it is to be. Unlike sports, with coaching employees, the coach doesn’t take an authoritarian path but instead looks to work with the employee to identify, target, and plan for better performance.

Remember, not all coaching sessions need to be scheduled. There are many ‘teachable moments’ that present themselves in the workplace regularly. These are moments or chances to provide coaching in real-time as a situation is happening.

Source: 6Q

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