Coaching For Team Performance: Guide to Boost Productivity

by

Efficiency defines a degree of performance representing a process that takes the minimum inputs to produce the maximum possible number of outputs.

On the other hand, the average metric of production efficiency is productivity. It can be stated as the ratio of outputs to inputs used in the production chain.

Managing a team is always complex, whether it has 10 or 100 individuals. Mixing people with differing temperaments can often result in conflicts, misunderstandings, and reduced productivity.

Performance Coaching: What Is It?

Since few companies actively use performance coaching, it is still a very rare phenomenon. Performance coaching, in our opinion, is the process of consistently pushing staff members to develop new skills, hone existing ones, and reach their maximum potential.

In a sense, on-the-job training is similar to employee performance coaching. It’s a collaborative process that happens during regular interactions between employees, staff members, and managers.

Let’s use sales as an example of how this might play out. When a manager can watch a salesperson engage with a customer, they may discuss what went smoothly, what didn’t, and why. They can discuss the event collectively.

The manager can push the sales representative to think of strategies to improve the effectiveness of client interactions. The outcome is an improvement in the worker’s performance.

Performance coaching should ideally be a key component of your organization’s workforce management plan. It may significantly affect worker morale and output, which can, in turn, affect how well the company performs overall.

How To Coach Employees For Improved Performance: Benefits

Performance coaching has the following advantages in the “somewhat more” traditional workplace.

Enhancement of performance

Obviously… The fundamental objective of performance coaching is to raise employees’ productivity levels. The best method to realize a person’s potential is to recognize their uniqueness.

Organizations can customize their talent management strategy and maximize each individual talent through performance coaching. This will, in turn, have a favorable impact on the organization’s performance levels and assist it in achieving its business objectives.

Better relationships

There must be trust for coaching to be successful. Employees must have faith in the company, their coach, and coaching as a whole. Once the coach and coach share trust, their relationship will be stronger, which will improve their capacity to work together.

More active participation

When employees receive customized performance coaching, it indicates that their employer values them and invests in their professional growth. In this way, people are more likely to feel inspired to improve their efficiency and embrace the goals of the company. Their overall engagement will increase.

A higher retention rate

Along with the aforementioned advantages, engaged employees are less inclined to leave the company.

Tips For Mentoring Employee Performance that works

Your team can achieve fantastic professional goals if managed with tact. Getting them on the same page is different, but getting them to coordinate to achieve mutual goals is no easy task. Regardless of how effective your team is, there are always ways to increase productivity at work.

  • Start with assessment
  • Create long and genuine relationship
  • Cultivate coaching culture
  • Identify where you need improvement
  • Talk about action plan
  • Show your support
  • Encourage ongoing support
  • Collect feedback

Start with an assessment.

You must first engage in a more in-depth conversation with and get to know your employees. Conducting an employee evaluation is the best approach to get going.

Create a genuine, long-lasting relationship.

It’s great that you completed the assessment and have more knowledge. Your interaction with the employee daily forms the basis of any coaching relationship, which you must understand. Effective coaching cannot be done without some level of trust.

Cultivate a culture of coaching

Work on creating a coaching culture in your company before introducing and implementing employee performance coaching. It manifests in the following ways: regardless of their position within the organization, people have a growth mindset and desire to support one another in development.

People also trust one another, have the capacity to challenge the status quo, and are willing to collaborate. There are more horizons regarding developing a coaching culture that demands its own post.

Coach instructors

Managers are likely to play a critical role in the success of your employee performance coaching program. It is a common error to believe that all it takes is to teach managers how to coach.

You can’t expect someone to be a good coach to others if they have never received coaching and experienced its advantages. Therefore, allow your managers time to receive coaching before giving them another further responsibility.

Keep in mind that you may require external assistance to facilitate the coaching of your more senior management. This could be someone like a performance consultant.

Do you require a huge budget in light of that? No, not always. Some excellent digital coaching tools available can automate some techniques while keeping human trainers there throughout the key moments.

Using a digital coaching platform might be a wonderful approach to scale your management coaching activities while keeping costs in check.

Identify areas for performance improvement.

Others could say “identify performance concerns,” but We prefer the expression “improvement opportunities” because the word “issues” implies that there is an issue.

Even while underperformance is a possibility, it isn’t always the case. Some of your top performers may be succeeding but still haven’t realized their full potential.

Then, how do these changes for performance improvement look? Here are a few examples-

  • Either an employee or their management has realized that the latter needs the development of particular technical abilities to execute a better job.
  • For employees to perform to their full potential, they must overcome several obstacles. Consider barriers like lack of resources or time.
  • An employee already contributing very successfully would like to do so even more.
  • A worker is not performing at their best.

A question that arises here is when a manager can identify these chances for improvement. This situation is too complex for the conventional performance management strategy, which calls for managers and team members to meet no more than twice a year for the annual performance review.

An Ongoing Process

First, employee performance coaching is a continual activity that we’re discussing. Second, a manager is unlikely to notice problems other than underperformance if they only meet to discuss their employees’ performance once or twice a year. On the other hand, employee performance coaching is intended to be a learning experience.

As a result, a manager should constantly coach their team members during the entire year. Performance management should be an ongoing practice as well.

A manager will find it much simpler to identify opportunities for performance development for their personnel once this type of ongoing communication has been established. On the other hand, it will be much simpler for the employees to discuss any difficulties they encounter at work with their management.

It builds trust, fosters a positive bond, and promotes a safe environment because there is this ongoing, open dialogue with their manager. People feel comfortable being open and honest in this type of environment without worrying that their performance may suffer.

Talk about the action plan with the employee.

Together, the management and/or employee can brainstorm potential answers once they have located the performance improvement opportunity. The actual approach will largely depend on the issue and the individual; even when two employees need to improve the same skills, for instance.

The action plan could include a mix of various educational and training techniques, such as an online training program and peer mentoring. The manager/coach and the employee must accept the action plan, and a follow-up coaching session date must be agreed upon.

As an example

Imagine a customer care team lead notices negative customer feedback about a deal with a specific, generally high-performing worker. As we’ve already discussed, the environment of trust makes it simple for the team lead to speak with the operator about the interaction.

In turn, the agent feels at ease discussing their difficulties with the manager. For instance, the agent might not be knowledgeable enough about a fresh product. After that, they can work together to determine areas where the agent might be improved in a practical way.

In this situation, it could be visiting a product demo and attending to call records of agents who are well-versed in that product. Instead of micromanaging, the team leader must be certain to promote collaboration. In this manner, coaching involves the worker and positively impacts their ability to advance.

The performance coaching initiative should also outline the results or achievement goals that the employee wishes to accomplish and the timeframe for attaining them. Everybody can b) see where they’re going, and you can c) assess and measure performance because of this.

Show your support

This relates somewhat to the previous issue we discussed on creating a coaching culture. People have mutual trust in a coaching culture. Everyone in the company has the philosophy of wanting to support the development of others.

Support doesn’t just come from an employee’s boss when a coaching culture has been successfully implemented in your company. They get it from their coworkers, HR, and their team. Performance coaching is now a shared responsibility that everyone shares a result.

In theory, this is really appealing. However, the truth is that a majority of firms, if not all of them, have yet to develop a coaching culture. Therefore, managers and HR should play a significant role in providing support. Here are a few ideas to encourage your team members:

  • Tell them you believe in them and that you are here to support them.
  • Ask them how they’re regularly doing and offer to help if you can.
  • Offer them one of these peer courses for further support if you have a peer counseling or peer support plan in place.

Encourage ongoing learning.

Continuous learning is a key component of a coaching culture. HR has a significant role in fostering a continuous learning culture. They must consider creating a workplace environment that inspires employees to keep learning and set a higher standard for their performance.

Performance coaching has a part in this. It also entails educating managers to serve as role models and leaders for learning. A significant part is also played by appreciating those individuals within the organization who show excellent conduct of constant learning.

Collect feedback

Any coaching process should include feedback, which should be given both ways. Managers should frequently ask their staff how they feel about coaching activities. To maximize the coaching’s efficiency, they should identify what could be improved.

These enhancements might apply to both the coach and the coaching activity. It’s crucial to hold these feedback meetings on a frequent basis in this situation as well; ideally, this should be an ongoing process.

By the way, it’s not just the management and the coaches who can provide feedback. People who work in coaching environments are accustomed to offering and receiving feedback on a daily basis.

Performance Coaching

Make performance coaching activities interesting.

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to employee performance coaching. People who are just starting their careers need a different tactic than senior leaders, depending on (among many other things) their ability, expertise, and training.

Here are a few cases of performance coaching practices to offer you some inspiration:

  • Collect and share feedback from all team members/people who work alongside the coaches; this will assist the employee in reflecting on how to improve, both in cases of underperformance and in cases where they would like to further enhance their skills.
  • As a follow-up to the prior point, when a mentor brings up a difficulty they need to address, allow them to think about it, ask insightful open-ended questions, and guide them through the procedures you would implement.
  • Ask people to reflect inside as a coach. Then, based on your personal experience, you can add your own solutions. Building a trustworthy relationship can also be facilitated by being honest about your own shortcomings.

Review performance routinely

It is important that you want to assess how your performance coaching efforts have affected the performance of your members of the team. This can be facilitated by the measurable targets you and the employee set together and outlined in the action plan.

The term “regularly” refers to more than once or thrice a year during the appraisal system. During the follow-up sessions that the manager and staff conduct after agreeing on the action plan, it would be simple to measure progress at this point.

Managers will find it simpler to monitor and review if your firm has an ongoing system for it and there is a free flow of information between them and their teams.

Keep track of the advancements.

The previous statement implies that you must keep track of people’s growth and advancements somewhere; the data should be documented.

A talent management system can be a good place to start. This integrated software system enables companies to oversee learning and growth and performance management (among other things).

Look into other options for the problem.

Encourage the employee to come up with more solutions and explore how the problem might be fixed or addressed. Except if the staff is incapable of thinking of any solutions, avoid jumping in with your own. Instead of generalizations, claim for particular solutions.

Instead of selecting a course of action, your goal should be to provide the employee with as many choices as possible to think about and consider in terms of pros and cons. This calls for the ability to expand and respond.

When an employee offers a recommendation, you should accept it, discuss its advantages and disadvantages, demand further ideas, and then ask the employee to clarify how to solve the problem.

Get a Promise to Take Action

Help the employee in making a decision. Avoid deciding for the employee. The employee’s verbal commitment regarding the course of action to be taken and the manager must verify the timing of that action. Make sure you applaud and support the employee’s decision.

Continue to follow up, be involved, and pay attention.

Coaching is not a miracle. It’s crucial to invest in the staff and keep mentoring them. The work never ends. To be effective, you must strive to be involved and coach on a schedule that works for you, the employee, and the scenario you are in. In actuality, this can mean daily, weekly, or monthly participation.

Conclusion

Teams should regularly do employee performance coaching. It shouldn’t be viewed as a one-dimensional fix for poor performance. Instead, turn it into a tool that helps you progressively boost every employee’s performance.

More To Explore:

Was this article helpful?