Companies and organizations have always measured the performance of their employees through one lens: results. As the world evolves into a younger generation and new work-place dynamics, this level of measurement misses an important factor; employee development.
Employees are becoming more selective of where they decide to work, and in turn they measure the “performance” of their company and managers. What individuals are most focused on is their overall experience, and if they face burnout from pressure, they often lose motivation to stay.
One major mistake that companies are making is a steadfast focus on the outcome and performance of their employees without acknowledging and supporting their overall experience. Ultimately, this is a lose-lose. Companies need to prioritize not only creating a great place to work, but a place of work that also supports a great experience of life for their employees.
Introduce Leader as a Coach
Company leaders should consider themselves coaches first and managers second. Not only does this allow them to develop deeper relationships with their employees, but it also requires them to pursue additional training that may not typically be in their job description. Great leaders have high emotional intelligence and are capable of being empathetic, curious, and humble. But not all leaders have this skill set naturally.
One solution is to provide training and development programs at the corporate level to ensure all leaders have the opportunity to be great coaches. Although the benefits are significant, this is a rarity. This need is becoming recognized worldwide as coaching for leaders is becoming more and more common. According to the International Coaching Federation’s 2020 study, almost three in four managers/leaders (74 percent) said they plan to enroll in additional coach-specific training in the next 12 months.
How to Be an Effective Coach
The most effective leaders, as coaches, learn to prioritize the whole person, inside and outside work. People are more connected than ever in this digital age; whether it’s through social media, reading news updates online, or being targeted with ads, people are equally overwhelmed by the amount of information they take in and digest regularly. In addition to this, people are dealing with personal situations in their lives daily that are often kept separate from work.
For a leader to be an effective coach, they must learn to understand these needs wholly, meaning understanding the teams’ needs at work and learning about what’s going on in their lives outside of work. This working relationship has been proven to positively impact performance and retention because employees will be more likely to feel seen, heard, and understood. And leaders will be more likely to identify the potential of every person that joins the team.
Coaching Outside of Leadership
Members outside of the leadership team may also benefit from coaching. As companies are growing their business and promoting their talent, mid-level managers often step into leadership positions. By providing these team members with coaching early on, they can practice coaching themselves before they are put into a management position. The key that will prepare them for leadership is the realization that they don’t have to have all the answers. They just have to be good at empowering their team to figure out the solutions themselves.
High employee turnover can be costly for an organization, and companies would reap immediate benefits in this area from a focus on coach training. Individual contributors and managers alike will often turn to their HR partners to get support with challenges at work. They’re counting on the HRBPs and the CHRO to be effective coaches to help them move forward with more clarity and confidence to handle whatever issues or opportunities they face.
Providing your HR director a coach will set an example for the rest of the company: be empathetic, curious, and humble.
Tech-Enabled Coaching at Scale
As most industries evolve into providing digital solutions, coaching has also headed to that space. BetterUp, for example, is a digital coaching company that utilizes data, technology, and AI in its services. BetterUp has uniquely created coaching programs with dynamic and personalized digital experiences to accelerate members’ long-term professional development and drive personal growth. Their results are measurable, as well. They reported that 95 percent of employees that utilized their program increased their individual goal attainment, and 130 percent increased their overall job performance. Plus, they found that team performance increased while team burnout decreased significantly.
Start Having More Coaching Conversations
According to ICF’s 2020 study, the number of managers/leaders using coaching skills is estimated to have risen by almost half (+46 percent) since the year prior. Much of these skills came from traditional coaching programs with Leadership Coaches.
As an HR executive or L&D professional, one of the best things you can do to immediately impact the growth, development, and performance of your teams is help your managers and leaders have more consistent coaching conversations. Effective coaching conversations bring a healthy dose of empathy and help people identify the root cause of their challenges, get clear on their goals, and move forward faster. They also open the possibility to discuss topics that, while they may not seem directly related to work, will ultimately impact an employee’s capacity and motivation to perform.
Start by setting up weekly or bi-weekly 1:1 meetings with direct reports, and create space in the agenda for non-work related conversations to get to know them as a whole person. Take it a step further and create quarterly “let’s talk” sessions without an agenda and specifically devoted to discussing whatever is on the employee’s mind.
