Coaching Skills: A Guide for Supervisors

The author has provided a really effective, yet easily understood overview of performance coaching. Included are many activities, tips, models and other useful tools to help in coaching employees on the job. This is an excellent resource for self-study or use in a classroom environment.

Supervisory roles are changing to match new market demands, specially organizations that have moved from a mechanistic structure to a team structure. For example roles have changed from a directing, dictating and competing behaviors to a more guiding, participating and cooperating approaches. A supervisor success depends on the ability to work effectively through people. Similarly, employee's abilities to grow personally and expand professionally depend on the encouragement of their supervisors. Coaching is defined by Robert W. Lucas as "a simple process used to develop employees through on going one-on-one communication, where supervisors and employees jointly strive to identify, develop, and reach performance goals". Where effective coaching does not exist or fail to be continuous, then issues such as high turnover, disciplinary and performance problems arise affecting the employee/supervisor relationship and the organization as a whole. By using coaching, you set up a potential win-win environment for yourself and for your employees. The major characteristics of an effective coach are cited: excellent communication/listening skills, technical proficiency, receptivity to feedback, goal orientation and team player mentality. Some of the most common benefits of coaching are a reduction on costs and turnover, improved quality and quantity of work, enhanced employee growth, improved problem-solving ability, increased likelihood that goals will be reached, and enriched transfer of training. When you have any type of change in your organization then you must consider using coaching (For example, a merger, downsizing expansion, or relocation is ocurring within the organization). One of the changes that every organization faces is when a new employee join the team. The initial taks of greeting and orienting new employees are very important for you to delegate, so ensure that general company orientation and specific work-unit related guidance is provided. Another opportunity for coaching is by encouraging employees to strive for more responsibility and potentially replacing you on a temporary or permantent basis. It would help a coach to take vacations, special assignments and even promotions since a qualified association is ready to step into his/her position. The Coaching Process Model (CPM) as a systematic process needed by supervisors when coaching. Eight phases compound this model: 1. Establish Goals 2. Collect Performance Data 3. Analyze Performance 4. Review and Modify Performance Goals as Needed. 5. Identify Developmental Resources 6. Develop an action plan 7. Implement Strategies 8. Evaluate Performance. Most of the above tips deal with communication skills, so a solid on-one communication needs to be present. A two-way communication model is described where a sender, message, reciever and feedbak are key elements. If any of these elements are missing, interpersonal communication