COACHING YOUR EMPLOYEES TO BETTER PERFORMANCE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Section I Section II Section III Section IV
Welcome Getting Started Getting Down to Business Appendix
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TRAINING GOALS
Coach Your Employees to Better Performance Today you will learn to be better supervisors and managers by becoming better coaches. In order for you to accomplish the goals of your job, you must rely on the skills, abilities and ultimately, the performance of your employees. You are only as good as your people. In order to maintain and enhance the reputation of USD, the desired level of performance from our employees is not satisfactory; rather, it is outstanding. Research suggests that the difference between satisfactory and outstanding is in the employees’ discretionary time and energy. Coaching allows you to tap this discretionary pool of potential by increasing employee commitment to quality and productivity. The purpose of this training module is to give you the skills and abilities to coach your employees to help them achieve their specific performance goals. Through practice of the methods that you’ll learn from this training, your performance as a coach will improve. SPECIFICALLY, YOU’LL LEARN HOW TO: ¾ Provide informal feedback that motivates employees to performance at higher levels. ¾ Effectively communicate with your employees to ensure the coaching process is a good and comfortable experience for both of you.
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What Is Coaching?
Coaching Clarifies Performance Expectations Coaching is a process by which supervisors stay in touch with their employees. Most of us respond to the personal touch. We want our managers to know who we are and our individual development needs. We also want to be listened to when we make suggestions. We do not want to be taken for granted or simply told to follow along when policies and practices change. Coaching involves carefully observing your employees as they do the various tasks of their jobs. Mere walking around will not help managers get the best from their employees. Coaching involves interpersonal interactions. In fact, every conversation with your employees is potentially a coaching conversation because it’s a chance to clarify expectations, priorities and competencies. It’s also a chance to hear ideas and involve employees in the processes of planning and problem solving. When you coach, you provide feedback on work actions that you’ve observed. You have to tell employees what they did right, wrong, and ways they can perform better. While a variety of coaching methods are discussed in this training module, there are two criteria for successful coaching: ¾ Hold one-on-one conversations. ¾ Focus on performance or performance-related issues. First, coaching is a personal conversation tailored to the specific needs of the employee. It is an iterative (repeating) process in which the manager discovers the employee’s needs and then matches information, guidance, understanding, and resources to these needs. One common supervisory mistake is to assume the circumstances of the situation and spend the entire discussion telling the employee what he or she should know, what he or she should do, and how he or she should change. This wastes the potential of a discussion that focuses on the specific needs of the employee because it never gains any input from him or her.
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Second, coaching includes any topic that concerns the employee as a performer. There are no topics or problems that a supervisor should not discuss with an employee if they affect the employee’s performance. For example, coaching about careers is a way to keep good performers at the University. Coaching about personal sensitivity to others is a way to help employees maintain an awareness of the social context of their performance. And coaching employees about particular skills provides them the opportunity to demonstrate accurately their special technical competencies.
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What Coaching Isn’t
Coaching isn’t bullying employees or asserting your authority just to show who’s boss. Coaching isn’t about differences in personality, likes or dislikes. If an employee’s problems do not affect the person’s performance, there is no reason for the supervisor to discuss them. In addition, coaching does not focus on placing blame. If your goal is to find blame, you will have to address the same issues time after time. Coaching does not focus solely on the negative performance behaviors. The result will be resentment for both you and your employee. Coaching should be a good experience for both your employees and you.
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USD’S Coaching Process
Each time you coach an employee, you’ll follow a specific sequence of events. Here are the components of the coaching process with a brief discussion of what’s involved.
Careful Observation
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In order to rate your employees on how well they are achieving their performance goals, you must observe firsthand how they carry out their tasks. Get the performance facts through spot checks, discussions with colleagues, and work-sampling techniques.
Confronting – Approaching, Providing Feedback, and Instructing Employees
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Once you have the facts, you need to confront the employee to discuss what you’ve observed, explain how you feel about what you’ve seen, ask the employee to respond to what you’ve said, and mutually develop a work plan to improve poor performance or to sustain outstanding performance.
Documentation – Maintaining Good Records
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You must keep regular notes on your employee’ s performance. Noting the work plan and general observations of their work in written form provides you with a way to keep track of both their developmental needs, as well as their performance throughout the year.
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Observing Employee Performance
Naturally, you have to watch what your employees are doing to ensure that they are performing correctly and safely. However, observing isn’t just casually watching employees as they perform their duties. It includes inspecting not just the results of their work, but also how they perform their work on a periodic basis. It is easy to observe from available reports that someone’s productivity has decreased. However, you still do not know what is causing the diminished productivity. As a supervisor, you must know what inappropriate behavior is causing the diminished productivity before you can select an effective solution to remedy it. One way to gather such information is to conduct spot checks. Spot checks involve focusing on a particular individual’s work behavior. That is, consider the employee’s: ¾ Sequence of actions as he or she carries out tasks. ¾ Utilization of available resources. ¾ Quality, quantity and timeliness of output. While you conduct these spot checks, it is important that you perform them at irregular time intervals. If you set a particular day within each month to conduct the inspection, your employees will perceive the pattern over a short period of time, and their behaviors at that time may not be representative of performance overall. In addition to spot checks, you can also gather performance facts by listening to and talking with others who are on the receiving end of that employee’s work. Such individuals may include colleagues, supervisors in other departments.
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When talking with others, be careful to focus on actual performance rather than on gossip or the employee’s personality. For example, don’t ask others how they are "getting along with Bob." Rather, ask them to comment on the final results of Bob’s work. The goal of observing is identifying both good and poor performance in terms of issues such as quality, timeliness, and efficiency. Another work-sampling technique is to gather reports, records, and other documents that the employee has completed. Although it is not necessary to maintain every single document the employee has completed, you should keep a few examples of both good and less-thansatisfactory examples of the employee’s work.
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Confronting
Approaching, Providing Feedback, and Instructing the Employee Now that you are armed with performance information through careful observation, you are ready to confront your employee to discuss your findings. During the confrontation stage you should: ¾ Approach the employee at the appropriate time. ¾ Tell the employee the work-related facts of what you’ve observed. ¾ Explain how you feel about what you’ve seen. ¾ Ask the employee to respond to what you’ve said. ¾ Mutually develop a work plan. Confrontation involves noting exceptional performance, correcting performance problems, developing commitment to continual improvement and maintaining positive relationships with employees. Confrontation is not criticism; the differences are outlined below.
CONFRONTING Objective Focus on Problem Specific Feedback Emphasize Change Goal is Fostering a Strong Relationship CRITICISM Subjective Focus on Person General Feedback Emphasize Blame Goal Is Venting Feelings
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The Approach
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One of the most important things to remember about starting the discussion with the employee is to pull that employee aside to ensure a private conversation. This is particularly important if what you are going to say is negative. Never embarrass an employee in front of others; you’ll create ill feelings, and the employee will be more concerned about being embarrassed than about improving his or her work. You should choose an opportune moment to approach the individual. Make sure that you and your employees have sufficient time to go through all the steps in the coaching process. At minimum, you should devote 15 minutes. However, if the problem is significant, it may take more time. Therefore, schedule your time accordingly; this may involve making an appointment with the employee. Also, make sure that you are in the proper frame of mind. If you are experiencing a bad day that has nothing to do with your employee, give yourself some time to cool off before approaching the employee.
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Employee Response to Your Feedback
As you tell your employees what you have observed, only discuss the work behavior. Remember to leave personality issues aside; they have no place in this discussion. Your employees need to know when they’ve demonstrated effective as well as improper performance such as not following the right procedures or using a piece of equipment incorrectly. However, when you relay the information you should remember to keep the following in mind: BE SPECIFIC You must state precisely what the goals are and how the employee either satisfied or fell short of the goal. Examples include: "I expect everyone in this department to attend our training sessions; I have not seen you at the last two sessions." And, "Unless there is an emergency, our rule is that time-off requests must be submitted at least two weeks prior to actual usage; you are not complying with this policy." LIMIT THE CONFRONTATION TO A SINGLE ISSUE OR PROBLEM Begin the conversation with the most recent example. Don’t store instances and then hit the employee with them in rapid fire. Consider the following positive example: "A colleague complained to me this morning about the way you responded to him on the telephone. According to my colleague, he said that he wanted to find me, and you just said that you had no idea where I was and then hung up."
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BE FUTURE-ORIENTED At the end of your presentation of facts, include a phrase about change. For example, "I need all project members present on time at our weekly status review; I’ d like to know what you can do to make sure that you attend these meetings on time; or your report was accurate, thorough and timely; I look forward to the same outstanding work in the future." You should provide this feedback to employees as soon as possible. Your discussion should take place when it' fresh s in both of your minds. Also, from a motivational point of view, it is important for individuals to make the connection between their actions and your feedback. Presenting them feedback shortly after their actions will strengthen this connection and reinforce strong performance in the future. This is important regardless of whether your feedback is positive or negative.
Explanation of Your Feelings Now is the time to tell your employees what you think of their performance. Remember, good coaches give both positive and negative feedback. If your employees are doing a very good job, it' important to tell them. This s ensures that they continue to perform well in the future. On the other hand, if employees are not performing up to USD' expectations, they should know this. In a later s section, we will discuss effective ways to communicate your feelings without encouraging employees to become defensive and angry.
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Employee Response to Your Feedback Because effective communication is two-way, it’s important to ask the employee what their reactions are to your feedback. When employees are confronted, they will react. Typical reactions are to make excuses or to rationalize their performance, to take the offensive, to deny the existence of the problems, or to become passive or docile. It’s essential to really listen to the employee to get more information. When you aren’t getting the performance that you expect from your employees, you need to find out why. Some possible reasons for poor performance are: ¾ Obstacles that are beyond the employees’ control. ¾ Insufficient knowledge. ¾ Negative consequences follow strong performance. ¾ Positive consequences follow poor performance. IS GOOD PERFORMANCE BEYOND YOUR EMPLOYEES’ CONTROL? Some employees are quick to point out that good performance is out of their control because of unreliable equipment or failure in the services or work of others, such as unfinished pre-work. Your role as a supervisor is to determine if in fact there are obstacles that are outside the scope of the employees’ control. One of the best ways to determine whether or not these obstacles exist is to discuss the performance problem with the employee. You must keep an open mind regarding your employees’ explanations. Often managers make up their mind in advance that the reason for poor performance is poor attitude, lack of self-motivation or stupidity. Instead of writing these explanations off as excuses, managers must investigate to collect additional facts. This is also true in situations in which employees’ performance benefits from circumstances beyond their control.
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Examples of valid obstacles beyond the employee’s control include: ¾ Nondelivery or late delivery of supplies. Late or incorrect reports or data. Conflicting instructions. Equipment failure. Inclement weather. Accidents. Illnesses and deaths of others. ¾
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If these problems exist, then it is unfair to place the blame on your employee. Rather, you should look for ways to help your employee by removing these obstacles as best as you can based on your knowledge, experience, and organizational influence. You may not be able to eliminate some of these obstacles, but you may be able to help lessen their impact on performance. By acknowledging and discussing these obstacles with your employee, you have recognized the problem and have shown your willingness to find a solution. DO EMPLOYEES HAVE SUFFICIENT KNOWLEDGE? Often poor performance occurs because managers assume that employee learning has taken place, and employees have adequate knowledge to do their jobs. You may want to examine your training programs to ensure that the proper information is included in the sessions, and the focus is on learning rather than teaching. Another reason for incomplete knowledge is the assignment of experienced employees to train new employees. Experienced employees are not always the best instructors. All individuals you place in "training positions" require training experience. As in the case with obstacles beyond the employee’s control, you need to acknowledge this problem and take action to ensure that the employee receives the appropriate training.
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IS GOOD PERFORMANCE PUNISHED? Just as behavior followed by positive consequences will increase in frequency, behavior followed by a negative consequence will decrease. Sometimes employees think that bad things will happen to them if they perform well. For example, your employee may see no benefit to performing well because then he or she has to do the work of others. Or if one employee is responsible for doing a less-desirable job such as performing extensive data entry or working on a project that requires many late hours, doing this well may mean that the employee is stuck with these jobs and has little opportunity to get more pleasant tasks. As a manager you need to be aware of this and may decide to distribute the workload more fairly. In addition, some employees may not want to work harder because of peer pressure. In work units at any organization a person gets in trouble with co-workers if he or she works faster or longer than the rest of the group. It’s possible that employees are more concerned about what friends think about them than what their supervisors think of them. While your employees may not come and tell you about such negative consequences to good performance, it’s important that you take this into consideration. To remedy this situation, you need to change the consequence by doing one of the following: ¾ Eliminate the negative consequence. ¾ Provide an immediate positive consequence for the same performance to outweigh the negative consequence. IS POOR PERFORMANCE REWARDED OR ENCOURAGED? Another reason for poor performance may be that your employee believes he or she is rewarded for poor performance. For example, some employees think that if they ignore a supervisor’s request, eventually the supervisor will give up and assign the task to another employee. The result is that poor performance is being unintentionally rewarded. This may also occur when an individual who performs a job poorly gets taken off that job and is given less-difficult tasks to do. Other employees may feel that if they do not perform their jobs well, they also will be rewarded with easier tasks.
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If positive consequences follow poor performance, the solution is to change the consequence by: ¾ Removing the positive consequence. ¾ Arranging for positive consequences to follow good performance. Hearing what your employees have to say is also important, because it’s possible that the employees may have information that you would not have access to through observation alone. The employee’s information may change the work plan. For example, you may approach an employee thinking that she doesn’t know how to perform a particular task correctly. After bringing this to her attention and then hearing her comments, you discover that the equipment is malfunctioning. The problem has now changed. Now you decide to act on two issues. One is to get the equipment fixed, and the second involves teaching your employee to recognize equipment failures more quickly and to notify you of such occurrences as soon as possible.
A Work Plan Charts a Clear Course
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As you can see from the last example, the work plan will naturally come from the discussions with your employees. Three things must occur before you can get to the work plan stage. DEFUSE RESISTANCE Each time managers confront employees, they introduce the possibility of change. And each time they introduce change, they introduce the possibility of resistance. Improving performance requires that managers accept the responsibility for managing the resistance they have created by introducing change to the employee. One way to manage this resistance is to reduce the negative emotions associated with resistance. By encouraging the employees to explore their opinions, feelings, reasons and excuses, managers can help them to transform their negative feelings into verbal behavior.
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GATHER ADDITIONAL INFORMATION A manager begins a confrontation session with a point of view; the manager has an opinion about a performance issue. However, there is the possibility that the manager’s perception is not accurate. By encouraging and stimulating the employee to explore issues and causes from the employee’s point of view, the manager may discover more about the actual situation. As a result, the employee is not inaccurately accused of a performance problem or praised for fortunate circumstances. AGREEMENT ON PROBLEM AND CAUSE Through the defusing of resistance and discovery of additional information, the employee and supervisor must come to an agreement on both the problem and the cause or causes. This agreement is facilitated through effective communication skills, which we will discuss in the next section. Once you have reached an agreement, you are ready to develop a work plan. The plan should outline the next steps that will be taken. This includes what the employee should do and what you will do to help him or her. For example, the plan may be that you spend more time going over the equipment with the employee so that he or she can better anticipate breakdowns. This is a learn-by-doing approach in which you actually demonstrate to the employee how she should perform the tasks. This instruction then becomes a key component of the plan. The employee is expected to perform as shown. It is crucial that the plan be mutual between you and your employee. If you want to improve performance, it’s important that the employee agrees with the plan. Even if you can’t get the employee to absolutely agree, it’s important that he knows what you expect and why you expect it.
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Doc um ent at i on – M aint a inin g G ood R ec or ds
Write It Down! It’s critical for you to keep regular notes on your employees’ performance. Noting the work plan and general observations of their work in written form provides you a way to keep track of both their developmental needs as well as their performance throughout the year. You can rely on these records when discussing past performance with the employee. In addition, you can check these notes to see if the employee is improving according to the work plan, or if he or she needs further instruction. Documentation is especially important when you’re concerned about potential disciplinary or safety issues. It’s important to remember to write down good performance as well as bad, so that you will have a balanced and fair picture of your employee’s work. It’s always important to recognize achievements when they occur. In order to ensure that your notes are kept together and can be found readily, Buck Consultants has designed forms to document your notes. Each form should be specific to a particular observation. Keep all of your forms together in a safe and confidential place. You will find a copy of USD’s coaching form in the Appendix.
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Adv ant ag e s t o G o od Coa ch ing
What’s In It for You, Your Employees, and the University of South Dakota? There are a number of benefits to good coaching. Good coaches tend to have positive relationships with both their subordinates as well as supervisors. Employees tend to respect supervisors who make clear their performance expectations and treat them in a respectful and fair manner. In addition, executives appreciate good coaching skills in their supervisors because these supervisors tend to cause senior management less headaches. That is, they are less likely to have personnel problems and tend to meet job deadlines. HERE’S A SUMMARY OF OTHER BENEFITS: ¾ Clarification of performance expectations
¾ Accurate descriptions of problems and their causes ¾ Identification of performance shortcomings ¾ Plans to improve performance ¾ Increased technical skills ¾ Increased learning pace ¾ Greater understanding of more-difficult tasks
¾ Commitment to continual learning
¾ Greater understanding and commitment to the University’s goals ¾ Changes in point of view ¾ Venting of strong feelings
¾ Good relationships between supervisor and employee ¾ Good relationships among employees within a department or division
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Com mun ic at ion s S ki l ls f o r Co ac hin g
Being able to communicate with the employee in a way that reduces defensiveness is the key to effective coaching. The skills required to reduce defensiveness are listening and accepting the employee’s point of view as legitimate, even when you disagree, and stating your own point of view without implying that the employee is incompetent. Good communication is honest communication - honest at a deeper level than just stating the facts correctly. At its most successful level, your discussion with your employee during the interview will be done so that there is: ¾ ¾ ¾ No defensiveness No need to play games A high level of trust.
Communicating Respect One of the key elements in gaining another person’s trust is demonstrating a basic and genuine respect for that person. This does not mean you must approve of everything the other person does. But it does mean providing ideas and asking for feedback, rather than scolding or demanding. It means being helpful rather than critical. This is called unconditional respect. Even though you may disapprove of or disagree with a particular action, you show basic acceptance of the individual and realize that like you, he or she is entitled to an opinion. EXAMPLE: Suppose you have an assistant who constantly turns in reports late or half completed. You don’t assume the person is lazy and ignorant, but you want to change the poor performance. You approach it as a problem for the two of you to solve together.
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The way you communicate unconditional respect is by being empathetic. Empathy is feeling the same way the other person feels. It is not agreement. It is just an understanding of what it feels like to be in the other person’s shoes. Active Listening The first skill in communicating is the ability to listen - not to just hear the words, but to understand the feelings and concerns underneath. The second skill you’ll need to develop is active listening. Active listening is more than just the ability to listen. It means letting the other person know that you understand, or at least are trying to understand. A key element of active listening is the ability to paraphrase what the other person has told you. This means that you relate, in your own words, the gist of what the other person has told you. You do not repeat what he or she has said, but instead you attempt to reach the emotional level of what the person has communicated and try to confirm the message. As an example, suppose you have told your employee that he spends too much time talking and doesn’t get his work done on time. You can see his temper begin to rise and he says, "I don’t talk more than anyone else. Why are you doing this to me?" You may be tempted to say, "I’m not doing anything to you. I’m just telling you what I saw." A statement like that, however, isn’t empathetic and doesn’t communicate any respect for the employee. It also is a good way to start an argument. A better response, using active listening, is, "You think I’m being unfair." In most cases, the employee will say yes (if that is what he was thinking) and will then give you his side of the story. Your active listening opens a dialog with him that allows the two of you to get to the bottom of the problem and solve it as a team. If the employee does not respond, you may go further and say, "I wonder if you could tell me how you view the situation."
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Using “I” Statements The second aspect of effective communication is asserting yourself in a nonjudgmental way so that the employee does not become defensive. To do this, you use an "I" statement. The "I" statement tells the employee what you feel and want, not what’s wrong with the employee. How would you respond if someone said to you:
You’re being obnoxious Just once could you shut up and listen? VS. VS. It makes me tense when you talk so loudly I get angry when you interrupt me because I want you to listen to my point of view.
Notice in the second example that there are three major parts to the "I" statement: ¾ Feelings: angry. ¾ Cause of feelings: when you interrupt me. ¾ Reason action causes feelings: I want you to listen to my point of view. The purpose of the "I" statement is to allow the other person to hear you without trying to explain why they did what they did, and without feeling humiliated or angry. That way they can enter into a more reasonable dialog with you. In addition, it is simply a more respectful way to speak to people. It assumes that they are your equal, that you are not given special powers to judge and criticize others. People will respond to you in a more open, trusting way than if you are critical.
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Common Barriers to Using These Skills Active listening and making "I" statements don’t come naturally to most of us. They are learned skills. And in our culture, there are several common barriers to using these skills successfully. By being aware of these barriers, you can overcome them. ¾ Yes, but. Instead of paraphrasing, you respond with "yes, but" as an introduction to your own differing point of view. Instead, you need to listen attentively, paraphrase and then go on to make an ’I’ statement. ¾ You may be too self-conscious and allow your discomfort to interfere with trying out the skills. Remember these are learned skills that take time to develop and master. ¾ You may see these skills as manipulative. Some supervisors are tempted to try to get the employee to think they are empathizing, when in fact they are just trying to soften the employee up. Over time the employee sees through the ploy and trusts these supervisors even less. Keep in mind that the reason you use these skills is to keep the conversation going. Your employees will see you as manipulative only if you aren’t honest. ¾ You’ll find yourself using "funny" language when you are paraphrasing. For example, you may say, "Let me share with you what I think" when your normal way of speaking is to say, "Here’s what I think. " ¾ It is sometimes difficult to paraphrase when you disagree with something someone has said. The trick here is to remember that you will have an opportunity to use "I" statements later in the conversation. There is no more important time to actively listen than when you disagree, because it is this kind of communication that makes it possible to resolve disagreements in a reasonable way.
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Su mm ar y
In general, coaching involves conversations between supervisors and employees regarding employee performance. The goal of coaching is two-fold: ¾ ¾ Improve poor performance. Maintain strong performance.
Coaching can also be viewed as a person’s management style. Typically it is used to describe supervisors who: ¾ ¾ ¾ Devote energy toward building commitment rather than controlling employees. Maintain high levels of interpersonal contact with their employees. Continually strive to enhance the development of their employees.
Not all managers are coaches - only the superior ones. The good news is that all supervisors can learn the coaching practices outlined in this training module. Learning and using these practices can be a powerful strategy to motivate employees to excel in their performance by enhancing their commitment to both their own development as well as to USD’s, in general.