CHAPTER 6
Coach Your Employees to Close Performance Gaps
Coaching is a powerful way to encourage your employees’ growth and a practical approach for developing new skills. It can also be used to close performance gaps. But coaching—an ongoing learning process in which you help your direct reports build mastery—usually won’t bring about a quick fix. When you need a fast turnaround or immediate results, feedback is your best bet. When an employee is driven to improve and wants your help tackling a problem or building mastery, however, coaching is a rewarding and effective option.
Coaching is a supportive rather than a directive approach that relies on asking questions. According to executive coach Ed Batista, coaching is “asking questions that help people discover the answers that are right for them.”1 As a manager, you’re often in the role of expert, providing answers and guidance. But in coaching, it’s important to adopt a different mindset. Rather than suggest what your employees should do or explain how to do it, you should prompt your employees with questions to help them solve problems in new ways themselves. As Candice Frankovelgia of the Center for Creative Leadership says, “If you keep providing all the answers, people will keep lining up at your door looking for them.”2
Since coaching is an ongoing time commitment, target your coaching to situations where you will get the highest return on your time and effort. The most-productive opportunities generally arise in these situations:
- A new employee needs direction.
- A direct report is almost ready for new responsibilities and just needs a bit more help.
- A newly minted manager under your wing is still behaving as though they were an individual contributor.
- A strong performer is eager to develop a new skill or explore career development opportunities.
- A significant performance problem has arisen in an employee’s work.
As indicated in this list, coaching can be an effective way to help employees learn new skills so they can reach the next level in their career. But it can also be a powerful tool when it comes to closing performance gaps. As with feedback, the goal of coaching is not to reprimand your employees for shortfalls but to catalyze their growth and improvement. Your objective is not to simply identify what they did wrong (thereby draining motivation) but to elicit positive change. Because coaching requires that your employee be an active participant in their own development, it can have a deeper impact than outside-in sources of information.
Coaching may not be a fit for every employee—and it won’t succeed unless the person is willing to do it—but it is broadly applicable and can be used with everyone from high-potential standouts to underperformers. As a manager, you set the overall direction for your employees; with coaching, you can help them figure out how best they can get where they need to be.
Get Your Employee Onboard
When you’ve pinpointed a coaching opportunity, talk it over with your employee to make sure they agree there is indeed a problem to fix or room for growth and that they are willing to tackle it through coaching. Agreement is the foundation of successful coaching: For it to work, the person must take ownership and responsibility of the process. If you intuit that an individual isn’t invested in this approach, do some digging before expending more of your time. Do the two of you see the problem or opportunity the same way? Do they seem to want to improve?
If there’s a disconnect, discuss how they would prefer to address the problem. It could be that they are open to coaching but would prefer to work with an outside coach rather than with you, their manager. Or perhaps they’d rather try taking a class before embarking on an intense one-on-one learning experience. On the other hand, if they are open to coaching with you, identify at the start of the process exactly what they’re hoping to get out of it.
Define the Purpose of Your Coaching
Encourage your employee’s participation by finding out what they hope to achieve and how they think coaching can help address the performance gap. You may want to begin by asking them to share their thoughts before you offer your own. By opening with a question, explains executive coach Amy Jen Su, “you’ll begin as you hope to continue: with your employee talking, you listening, and both of you then building solutions together.”3
Identify an explicit goal to target with coaching. This should be a separate goal from the performance goals your employee identified in section 1 and should generally be focused on learning. For instance, a coaching goal may to develop a new skill, learn a new behavior, or improve in a specific area, rather than to deliver specific work results.
Perhaps the two of you determine that your employee’s performance gap can be closed or minimized by, say, improving delegating skills, running meetings, or prioritizing requests with tight deadlines. Once you nail down the purpose of your coaching, you may be tempted to fix the problem right away by sharing your hard-won wisdom, giving advice, or offering your opinion on what’s going wrong. Resist that temptation. Encourage your employee to find their own answers. Instead of offering (unsolicited) solutions, ask questions to get more information.
Understand Your Employee’s Perspective
To help your direct report, you need to learn more about their point of view on the performance gap and which skills they need to master in order to close it. Getting background information is critical in assessing the root causes of their challenge—and identifying an effective response.
Skillfully worded, open-ended questions can help draw out answers. Yes-or-no questions and those that begin with “why” can make people feel defensive. Start your questions with what, how, when, or tell me more. For example, you might ask the following of someone interested in developing their comfort around presenting to senior management:
- What was different or similar about the situations in which you were effective compared with those when you were less effective?
- How would you describe your effectiveness in presenting to this audience in the past?
- When have you been more or less successful in these types of interactions?
- Tell me more about what you think holds you back in these situations.
Listen deeply to your employee’s answers. When someone senses you’re completely focused and actively listening to what they say, it can be a deeply validating experience that helps build rapport and trust (see the sidebar “Building Mutual Trust”).
BUILDING MUTUAL TRUST
Your people need to trust you. Otherwise, they have no reason to respect your judgment, do what you ask (especially if it’s difficult), or put in the extra effort that results in high-quality work. Managers must earn—not demand—their employees’ commitment. Establishing trust takes conscious effort. You can develop trust with your direct reports in a few different ways.
First, demonstrate ongoing concern for other people’s well-being and success. People trust those who have their best interests in mind, so show empathy for your employees. When asking someone to work extra hours on a weekend to complete a strategic project, for example, acknowledge that it’s an imposition: “This is an important initiative for the company, and I know that this may be an inconvenience. Would this upset any plans you’ve made with friends or family?” You can also build trust over time by demonstrating a genuine interest in an employee’s career. Help them find opportunities to expand their horizons and develop skills that align with their professional aspirations.
You can also show your expertise in the matter at hand. According to Linda Hill and Kent Lineback, authors of Being the Boss, “You need to know not just what to do and how to do it but also how to get it done in the organization and the world where you work.”4 Ultimately, people grow to trust you through your accomplishments—the savvy decisions you make, your ability to garner necessary resources to make things happen, and your mastery of the concrete details of getting things done. For example, the person you are coaching with sales techniques will trust you if you yourself have a reputation as a successful salesperson.
Finally, be true to your word. Whenever you say, “Here’s the plan: I’ll do X and you’ll do Y,” be sure to hold up your end of the bargain—every time. This includes practicing discretion where appropriate. Don’t disclose information held in confidence. Discussions with an employee about a performance problem in a feedback or coaching session may inadvertently dredge up personal information that the employee would not want shared with others. Always respect their privacy.
See the Problem in New Ways
With a stronger understanding of the situation, you can open a two-way dialogue to help your direct report consider new choices, strategies, or skills they might develop. This is different than offering a solution—instead, it leads your employee closer to developing their own answers. Try these tactics to establish a productive dialogue:
- Hold up the mirror. Redescribe the situation they have outlined to you, paraphrased from your own perspective, and ask for their response. For example, “Based on what you’ve told me, it seems that two things might be creating the issue. Do those ideas resonate?”
- Reframe the situation. Offering another angle can help your employee see things differently. Say, “Could I offer another perspective on the situation?”
- Rehearse. A coaching session is a safe environment to role-play an upcoming interaction, such as how they might interact with senior management. You can also review a presentation that they delivered well to this audience and discuss what made it effective. Or you can go over how they should prepare for these kinds of meetings and fine-tune preparation techniques.
The observations, suggestions, and practice opportunities you offer are the heart of your coaching session. To be effective, they need to be tailored to your employee’s particular situation—and they likely should be complemented with ongoing “homework” that will help your direct report prepare for your next meeting.
Agree on Next Steps
Near the end of your coaching session, assess whether your employee is ready to move forward by asking them to summarize what they’ve learned. “What are the top two or three things you’re taking away from this conversation?” Inviting them to articulate their gains, rather than doing it yourself, increases their engagement in the process and also helps you gauge what they’ve taken in and what they might still need to learn.
To maintain momentum between coaching sessions, set a date for when you’ll meet again, and identify any tasks to be completed before then. Rather than assigning tasks, build your employee’s accountability by asking them to formulate and implement their plans, and establish associated deadlines for each clearly defined action. Perhaps, for example, they’ll outline a forthcoming presentation for the group that the two of you will rehearse in your next meeting.
It could be that you leave the session with homework, too. For instance, you may need to provide your employee with additional resources, like potential training programs, or introduce them to a colleague who will make a great mentor (to read more about setting your direct report up with an appropriate mentor or sponsor, see chapter 9).
Keep the Relationship Going
Coaching doesn’t end after the first meeting. Effective coaching to close performance gaps and encourage growth includes checking in to track progress and ensure understanding. Doing so gives you an opportunity to prevent backsliding, reinforce learning, and continue individual improvement.
Your employee may have found it motivating to set a target date for mastering a new skill, but don’t wait until then to assess how things are going. In a fast-paced workplace, it’s easy to lose track of longer-term plans and agreements. Hold yourself and your employee accountable by sticking to your planned check-in dates, and follow through with the resources or introductions you agreed to provide. Your employee is more likely to take your coaching efforts seriously if you keep your commitments.
Then, observe growth and communicate impact. Over time, are you seeing progress in your employee’s results, behavior, or relationships? Explicitly communicate to your direct report the impact of the progress you observe—it may be hard for them to recognize it themselves. Helping them acknowledge changes and growth can increase their motivation.
It’s unrealistic to expect an employee to immediately master skills they’ve been without for years, so expect a few stumbles in the process. Perfection isn’t necessary for someone to make real progress. Remind yourself that you may not see results right away. When you do see improvement, celebrate a direct report’s successes, even if they still have room to grow.
Of course, there’s no one single right way to coach employees. What works for one person may be ineffective for another. Try different approaches, and make needed adjustments. And don’t expect to master the practice of coaching right away, especially if you’re new to it or to management. Like any new skill, it requires practice and stepping out of your comfort zone, which can feel awkward at first.
Not every manager will choose to use coaching as a performance management tool on a regular basis, but for the right employees, it can be a rewarding experience.
NOTES
1. Ed Batista, “Introduction: Why Coach?” in HBR Guide to Coaching Employees, Harvard Business Review Press, 2015, xii.
2. Candice Frankovelgia, “Shift Your Thinking to Coach Effectively,” HBR Guide to Coaching Employees, Harvard Business Review Press, 2015, 4.
3. Amy Jen Su, “Holding a Coaching Session,” in HBR Guide to Coaching Employees, Harvard Business Review Press, 2015, 41.
4. Linda Hill and Kent Lineback, “To Build Trust, Competence Is Key,” HBR.org, March 22, 2012, https://hbr.org/2012/03/to-build-trust-competence-is-k.