Coach your Employees to Success!

Coach your Employees to Success!
Susan, an engineering director, was feeling very
overwhelmed and frustrated. She had recently been promoted
to a bigger job and was not sure how she would be able to
manage more projects and more people. I was hired to be
her coach and together, we realized that in order to
succeed in the new position, she needed to start coaching
her employees. She did, and is seeing the benefits
already. Her employees are taking on more responsibility
and are therefore happier. She has more time to focus on
long-term planning for the department.

Coaching your employees is crucial. Some managers
mistakenly believe that coaching only applies to "problem"
employees, but nothing could be further from the truth. You
need to coach all of your employees, especially your stars.
By comparing "traditional" management with a coaching
model, you can see the benefits of coaching:

- Traditional management assumes the manager has all the
answers, while coaching assumes employees have knowledge. -
In traditional management the manager gives advice, while
in coaching the manager listens closely, and then asks
appropriate questions to help employees find answers. - In
traditional management it is difficult for employees to get
anything done when the manager is physically gone. With
coaching, employees have knowledge and can continue working
when the manager is not physically there. - In traditional
management, the manager is constantly fixing problems. In
coaching, employees fix the problems and managers spend
their time developing the employees. - With traditional
management, managers say, "Here's what you should do." With
coaching, managers say, "Tell me the options you have
considered."

The result? When you manage traditionally, employees feel
like they leave their brains at the door when coming to
work. When you are coaching your employees, they are
happier, more motivated and more productive.

One of the first steps you can take to start coaching your
employees is to switch from a "tell" mentality to an "ask"
mentality. When your employees come to you with an issue,
resist the urge to quickly give them the answer. Instead,
ask them questions about it. If you haven't been doing
this, it may seem quite unnatural at first. Let your
employees know what you are doing and more importantly, why
you are doing it. Once you start asking more versus
telling, you learn which questions resonate with different
people and it becomes more of a habit.

Of course, this is more easily said than done. Coaching
requires some specific skills, like observation and
assessment, questioning, listening and feedback. Initially,
coaching takes more time than traditional management.
However, when your coaching results in employees solving
issues themselves versus you giving them the answers, you
will find that they are more likely to come up with the
solution on their own the next time. In the long run, you
will save time and have a stronger team.

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Kerrie Halmi of Halmi Performance Consulting specializes in
increasing women's success in business through speaking,
coaching and facilitation. Kerrie has over fifteen years
of experience in the Human Resources field with such
clients as eBay, Wells Fargo and Kaiser. She received her
MBA from the University of Michigan. To learn more about
coaching, join a teleclass on March 5, 2008. Register at
http://www.HalmiPerformance.com