3 Best Practices for Performance Coaching

Written By Linda Allen-Hardisty, the lead facilitator for the Queen’s IRC Performance Coaching and Building Trust programs.

Fewer words in workplace language create a tighter cringe than “managing performance”. If this resonates with you, you’re not alone. In my observation, many leaders avoid these conversations mainly because they don’t feel equipped to initiate conversations with employees who have fallen short of expectations. They fear the experience will be negative. Leaders talk themselves out of taking action because they get caught up in the “what if’s” of how the conversation may go – “What if they argue? What if they get defensive? Cry? What if nothing changes?” And the list goes on.

Let’s instead reframe the opportunity into an optimistic perspective and focus on the ways leaders talk about, assess, and acknowledge the contributions of their employees.

Here are common scenarios that leaders share in our Performance Coaching program. It sets the tone for what they want to work on during the program. Any of this sound familiar to you?

• How to get better at following up and confronting staff. Some managers are afraid to have difficult conversations, such as addressing underperformance. They don’t know how to do this.

• How to manage a former peer who is now your direct report.

• How to incorporate a coaching component in performance appraisals. This includes making appraisals more positive with fewer surprises, having difficult conversations, and holding employees accountable before appraisals so people feel supported along the way.

Let’s instead reframe the opportunity into an optimistic perspective and focus on the ways leaders talk about, assess, and acknowledge the contributions of their employees.

Performance Coaching Best Practices

Consider these three factors to help you embrace your role of engaging in performance coaching conversations with your people:

1. Coach the person, not the problem: Take a growth mindset approach, believing that the employee can learn, adapt, and improve in their role. If you believe the person you are coaching has some experiences to draw from in seeking a resolution, shift the focus from the external problem to the person. The conversations may feel uncomfortable, but the outcomes are remarkable. It is a combination of providing support and challenge, with the goal of the employee feeling ownership over the outcome.

2. Your job is to notice: Focus on observing the person’s progress over time, noticing both effort and results. Between coaching conversations, your job is to notice and encourage observable behaviours that indicate the employee’s growth. Understand that progress builds with each coaching conversation over time. It’s myth to think that one coaching conversation can ensure an employee course corrects or is successful at using a new skill. Manage your expectations and adopt a feedforward mindset, which focuses on future actions rather than only talking about the past, which is unchangeable. Don’t make feedback the sole focus. An approach to embrace both effort and results was a key focus for a CEO I know and she regularly encourages her team to value the learning that comes from making a mistake, and that learning includes not repeating the mistake.

3. Assess yourself as the leader: The foundation of employee-manager relationships is crucial for employees to know how they are doing. If not you, then who? You are the leader, and that role’s foundation is to foster growth and performance of others. Here is some advice from an experienced leader who eventually gained the skills to embrace performance conversations. He reframed his role and explained, “I found an alternative path to the outcome. I thought that if I can find an avenue to do it, let’s do it together in our respective roles – my role is to use a coach approach, and the employee’s role is to find a path to owning their role in improving their performance. I found role clarity of the manager and of the employee, which helped us move away from taking it personal to taking an objective view.” Ask yourself, “What’s been my contribution to the current state of the employee’s challenge or failure? Did they hear from me before now? Did they have the skills, team support, and doable timelines?

Coaching is a skill and a mindset that develops over time. Keep these three factors in mind to excel at engaging in performance coaching conversations with your team: coach the person not the problem; continually observe; and regularly assess yourself as the leader.