My Employees Won't See Their Performance Gaps
“My employees will never identify a real gap in their own performance. I simply have to tell them.”
Without a doubt, this is one of the most common concerns I hear from managers as they embark on the process of incorporating coaching into their management style.
I recently concluded the second round of coaching for a client. They have 40 managers that are going through this process with me. In the first round, I did the coaching and they observed. In the second round, we co-coach, but I let them primarily lead and then we de-brief and I coach the managers on their own coaching. (For this particular client, we are able to listen to the sales calls that the employees made.)
In this round of 40 coaching sessions, the managers did a very good job of asking good questions of the employees. They used questions like, “So, when you listen to that call again, what is one thing that you could tweak?” or “In listening to the call is there something that you would change if you could?” or “After listening to the call is there something that you could have done that might have led to a better result?” (These are just a few examples.)
In 39 of the 40 coaching sessions, the employee immediately responded in the affirmative. Not only that but they had very specific and very relevant ideas for what they could have – and likely should have – done. In these 39 sessions, when the employee left the room, the managers turned to me and expressed both delight and astonishment that the employees identified a genuine area of opportunity. In the majority of cases (I didn’t count), the managers admitted that the employee had singled out on their own the exact same issue that the manager had identified.
In the one instance, when the manager asked the question regarding what the employee might have done differently, the employee said, “Nothing. I thought it was a very good call.” The manager handled this perfectly. This is important: he didn’t argue with the employee and he didn’t resort to trying to telling the employee what he had done wrong (this only leads to defensiveness). Instead the manager said, “You know, I think it was a pretty good call, as well.” They then talked a bit more about the things that the employee had done well. Then the manager said, “There is something that I’d like to explore with you. Maybe I just missed it when we were listening to the call, but can you tell me why the customer decided not to buy today?” There was a pause and then the employee smiled and said, “Well, no. And the reason I can’t tell you is because I never asked the customer! I can’t believe that I didn’t even try to find – let alone address – the barrier!” With that, they then had a very rich discussion.
In the end, 40 out of 40 employees identified real growth opportunities and left the coaching sessions with some level of plan for addressing them. (I say some level of plan because this tends to be an area that is difficult for managers: helping the employee formulate an action plan that is unique to the employee’s learning style and that the employee is actually energized to work on.)
This mini-case study illustrates the power of raising the self-awareness of the coachee. By asking questions and getting the employee to self-discover, we are helping them build the capacity to make adjustments in the future on their own. Significantly, according to John Whitmore, a legend in the coaching field, “you cannot raise awareness without also raising responsibility” in the coachee. This explains the buy-in that comes from coaching versus the short-term compliance that comes from telling.
In this round of coaching is that about 85% of the managers reported to me that since the last round of coaching they have seen significant – and sustained – improvement in those that we coached. They were thrilled! By contrast the managers are used to seeing the short-term compliance that is almost always followed by a return of the bad habit (or performance issue). The other area of excitement for the managers is that since employing the coaching approach they have been able to help more of their employees move up on the sales performance chart by at least one level and sometimes two. The coaching just started about 6-8 weeks ago. Not a bad investment in terms of time or money.
© 2011 Bobbi Kahler. All rights reserved. Developing Leaders, Creating Possibilities: Kahler Leadership Group
>> How to Activate Employee Initiative
Permission to reprint articles is granted, once the following conditions are met:
- Bobbi Kahler is given proper recognition as the author of the piece.
- The piece is not modified in any way.
- Bobbi Kahler is informed of the re-publication via submission of the contact form.
- A link to Kahler Leadership Group homepage is included. The link text should read "Developing Leaders, Creating Possibilities: Kahler Leadership Group"
