Coaching Employees to Higher Performance

Coaching Your Employees to Higher Performance
By Danielle Gault

You are preparing for your employee and looking over your notes on their performance and as before, your employee has failed to make changes -- even after you spoke with them about the importance of meeting their goals. This employee has a great attitude and you know they can do better.

Why Develop Workplace Coaching Skills?
As a Supervisor, Manager or Employer, you probably often feel your hands are tied when working with your staff because you do not want to over step boundaries and be inappropriate. You are often baffled and being frustrated makes matters worse. What can you do? How can you be part of your employee’s journey to make changes that could improve their professional lives? How can you motivate your employees to make changes and assist then in reaching their goals?

The Role of A Workplace Coach
That is what a coaching role is all about. Coaches address issues with their employees on what they want to achieve, how to get there, and how to stay committed to their goals. Coaches assist employees in addressing obstacles that can sabotage their process and facilitate their employees in making better decisions. Coaching skills used wisely can help employees flush out the impact of their decisions and goals on their professional lives. Through the process of addressing obstacles in coaching sessions, employees reflect on their thoughts, feelings, and insights so that they can master any obstacles before they have to confront them as they strive to fulfill their goals.

It is important to know that when we change a work-related pattern, we have to understand that we are affecting the whole system that keeps individuals tied to certain ways of doing things and habits that they have developed over time. Some parts of the system include habits that involve other people such as co-workers, clients, peers. These parts of the system of our working lives can and will strive to keep people in the same place – a place of familiarity.
Change is not always easy and to make clear, consistent steps toward change requires fore-thinking and pre-planning. Coaches use proven techniques that help prepare their employees for these changes and to inspire them to achieve higher levels of personal and professional well-being and career satisfaction.

Workplace Coaching Skills
Coaching is a two-step process of relationship building and goal setting. How well you coach and mentor is related directly to how well you are able to foster a great working relationship with your employees through understanding them and through applying strategic goal setting practices.
Coaches motivate, inspire and engage their employees to achieve the highest possible performance that they might not have thought possible. Coaching sessions can assist any employee who has a problem, is frustrated with some aspect of their professional life, or has an issue they wish to address and requires someone to keep them on track and focused. Setting up coaching sessions with your employee can go a long way in improving performance evaluations at the end of the year. Everyone wins – the company, the employee, the team, and you, the supervisor, manager, or employer.

Summary
A Workplace Coach acts as an objective but involved person who has the employee’s best interest at heart and guides that employee through the professional development steps that assist in modifying habits, improving outlooks and helping to fine-tune their professional results. Workplace Coaches assist their employees in staying awake, alert, and aware not only of the goals but also of the employee’s overall career journey – motivating them to be winners.