Coaching for Employee Performance and Development

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Coaching for Employee Performance and Development

• Barbara A. Board, Ph.D.
• Northeast District Director
• Virginia Cooperative Extension
• 2810 North Parham Road-Suite 300
• Richmond, Virginia 23294
• 804-527-4246
• board_at_vt.edu

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Objections of Todays Discussion

• Overview Coaching in Performance Management
• Basic Skills for Effective Coaching
• Resource A Coaching Model

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Performance Management

• Primary Purpose
• Help employees succeed in their current
  assignment
• Align the efforts of individuals with the goals
  of the organization
• Assess and provide constructive feedback to
  employees regarding their individual performance

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Performance Management is

• Not an annual event
• A continuous process
• The establishment of clear expectations
• Periodic feedback
• Instructing/Coaching
• Recognition for improvement and contributions
• Built on a foundation of a trusting relationship
  between leader/supervisor and employees that
  enable open two-way communication

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Coaching in Human Resource Development

• Has emerged as an important practice
• Helps individuals and groups to achieve needed
  goals and skills
• Helps employees get to know themselves better
• Helps employees contribute to their own
  development

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Employee Coaching Versus

• Mentoring
• Pairs employee with experienced person in
  professional area employee needs to develop
• No set agenda
• Offers advice and counsel
• Protégé takes advice or not

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Employee Coaching is

• A process focused on
• A determined performance agenda
• Changing skills/behaviors
• Involving employee in their self discovery and
  action planning
• Establishing benchmarks for accountability

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Why Coachre Motivation Strategies for
Entrepreneurs, Evan Carmichael

• Management Research Indicates
• Employees want managers to provide feedback,
  direction, coaching, recognition/reward for
  good performance
• Management behavior key factor in retention
• Key predictor for employees leaving insufficient
  coaching, feedback, learning and development
  opportunities

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What Do Human Development Coaches Do?

• Facilitate visioning and action planning
• Artful Conversationalist
• Good Listeners Use active listening skills
• Ask non-directive questions (open-ended)
• Curious, establish rapport and trust, unbiased
• Provoke employee to analyze and solve own
  challenges
• As needed teach, advise, encourage, give
  feedback, empathize
• Sets benchmarks for accountability

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Coaches Always Educators

• Education Reflection Connecting Coaching to
  human development
• and education and psychology
• Russian psychologist and social constructivist
  Lev Vygotsky (1896-
• 1934) promoted a view of learning whereby the
  ability of a child to be self
• directed and to solve problems independently is
  achieved by pairing them with a competent other.
  The competent other joins in the learning
  experience by asking provocative questions and
  joins in the learning experience as a guide an
  aid. The competent other evidently phases out.
  Vygotsky believed development was a life-long
  process which was too complex to be defined
  stages and that social interactions had a
  significant impact on a human development Other
  theories referred to this approach as
  scaffolding, likening it to the support provided
  during building and when the building is
  progressed the scaffolding is removed.

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Tips for Successful Coaching

• Utilize personality test and job competencies to
  set stage/establish direction
• Realize change takes time
• Conduct face to face sessions when possible
• Use email and phone for between short sessions
  for monitoring/evaluating/feedback
• Think before speaking Language is a powerful
  coaching tool

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Coaching..

• Works when the employee is willing to learn,
  grow, and take action
• Does not work when the employee is unwilling to
  take responsibility for change and actions
• Is not therapy

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Helping Employees Develop

• People remember best those things they discover,
  learn, and experience themselves. If you want
  someone to digest and remember something, he has
  to think of it himself. The only ways you can
  help someone accept an idea as his own is to ask
  him a question and let him give the answer back
  to you.
• Dorothy Leeds