.EMPLOYEE COACHING

Text referenced in this week's show is: Robert H. Kent, 25 Steps to maximize productivity, Winnipeg: Pragma Press, 1994.

If you supervise other people, your role is not to bark out orders, sit back, critique and then pronounce judgment at the annual performance appraisal ordeal. Your role is to be proactive and develop your employees. By this I mean that, as much as possible you should:

• help your employees to improve their performance by coaching them to diagnose and resolve most of their own problems or development needs;
• help your employees to be successful in their work and to achieve expected results and the required levels of performance.

Why does this fall on the supervisor's shoulders? Presumably this is because you might be more experienced than your subordinate employees or at least you have a different, broader perspective of the task at hand and access to other resources. Hopefully you would have the skill to coach and help others problem solve. Also, as supervisor you're the one responsible for the performance and development of your group of employees, and for maintaining and improving the "human capital" in your part of the organization. Lastly, you have a degree of clout to use (your formal authority) to help your employees overcome occasional procrastination, fears, uncertainties, and perhaps even the rare bout of laziness or disregard for the interests of the organization.

The Need To Coach Employees

Ideally, direction to employees is clearly understood and thorough, and the employee has the ability and motivation to perform. But ideally isn't reality. Some times your direction will be misunderstood, insufficient or out of date and inappropriate. Employees may not have the skills and knowledge originally assumed or the necessary desire to follow through with the task at hand. There can be many reasons why the job doesn't get done the way it was expected and if the employee doesn't initiate corrective action, you must step in and coach.

In particular, inappropriate performance, poor work, bad work habits and any form of unacceptable job behavior cannot be condoned or accepted. To do so is demoralizing to the rest of the organization, sends confusing or mixed messages to the work force and to the offending employee, and eventually it makes the unacceptable work "acceptable" because it was "accepted."

Continually refusing to resolve poor work will make the problem increasingly difficult and expensive to solve. Most importantly, every action or activity which is inappropriate is, in essence, diverting resources and attention of the individual employee or the work group away from the intended purpose of the organization. This is ultimately diminishing the organization's net worth. Confronting and resolving performance problems, no matter how small adds value to the organization.

A common executive frustration is the lack of follow through by lower level managers. Directives are issued or agreements are made for work to get done. But nothing ever happens, momentum is lost, leaving anxiety and stress especially for the frustrated executive. Here is a classic example where coaching must take place, if for no other reason than to reinforce "accountability." If the executive doesn't step in, and with a coaching process (later in this Chapter) enforce the manager's accountability to meet expectations, the following destructive situation develops. Manager's learn that if they procrastinate long enough they can successfully avoid new assignments or commitments, with no consequences other than the boss' morale takes a dive. And unfortunately for the organization, managers begin to ask the following question whenever the Boss assigns a project:

"Is this something I really have to do? Or is this something that if I hold my breath long enough, I won't have to do because the Boss will have forgotten about it and be off on another tangent next month?"

The net result of this accountability avoidance can be disastrous for any organization, and it's the Boss who has to prevent it - by coaching his senior management!

From: Robert H. Kent, The Mansis System: Common Sense Management For Everyone, Winnipeg: Pragma Press, 1996, pp. 8.1 - 8.3.

BE DIRECT ABOUT AN EMPLOYEE'S POOR WORK

One of underlying principles of The Mansis System is that there should be no "game playing" in a work situation. But sometimes we do it anyway. For example, do you use the "sandwich approach" when you interview an employee about some poor work he or she is doing? Don't! It's a costly procrastination, it's game playing and it leads to problems in the future. The sandwich approach means you sandwich discussions of the employee's poor performance between supportive statements about his good work. Unfortunately, the nice-to-hear pieces of bread become so thick that the not-so-nice-to-hear meat in the middle gets lost. As a result the employee misses the real point of the meeting.

But let's face it, the real reason we use this hide and seek approach is because we don't like confronting employees face-to-face. We'd sooner procrastinate and let the problem solve itself. But it never does. It only gets worse. With the sandwich approach we can honestly say that we warned the guy, but be relieved to know it never upset anyone.

Employees aren't dumb. They recognize the old sandwich routine a mile away. When you say nice things about them, they of course don't believe it and sadly, they never will. They are hearing what they think you are saying, and they are answering what they think you want to hear. A good formula for communication failure.

The solution is to come to the point and don't beat around the bush. To stay with the analogy, use an open-face sandwich. Forget the first piece of bread and focus directly on the poor performance. If you're enforcing agreed-to performance standards, then there's nothing to feel guilty about. But probe sufficiently to uncover the real cause of the poor performance.

And as a final note, the one remaining piece of bread doesn't have to be extra thick gooey pumpernickel. A piece of Melba Toast will do.

PROGRESS, CHANGE AND THE ESSENCE OF BUSINESS SURVIVAL

Organizational change and progress are different. Your company is changing regardless of what you do, but in today's economy if you can't make your business progress it will die.

On the one hand, your business and the people influencing it change simply because of the passage of time. Whether your technology changes or not, your employees change with time as do their expectations, their work habits, their priorities, their preferences and their moods. Your clients and their expectations change as well.

On the other hand, these changes are not necessarily in the direction you want. These changes may not represent progress for your business.

Organizational progress means improvement, and improvement means value being added to your business. Since your business will improve only because of what you and your people do, the activities of all your employees either add value to your business or they drain value. If you can manage your employees so that all their activities add value, your company will progress at no extra cost and with a significant impact on the bottom line.

For example, when your employees waste their time or waste your resources, when they cause problems with clients, when they fail to follow directions and make mistakes, get sidetracked and head off in the wrong direction, or when they de-motivate others and mismanage staff - each of these activities drains value from your business and cancels out some other behavior that is trying to add value and move your firm ahead.

If you can identify these inappropriate behaviors and correct them, the resulting activities such as doing the job carefully and correctly, making best use of time and resources, interacting with clients constructively, concentrating on the appropriate task, or motivating and supervising others properly - these will all add value to your business without requiring you to spend a penny more on human resources!

Determining whether employee activities add or drain value depends upon how these activities move your organization towards some chosen goal, purpose or mission. For example, suppose you want "Total Customer Service" to be a new direction for your business. First make sure that everyone clearly understands the implications of "Total Customer Service" in their jobs. Then, ensure that each and every activity performed by your employees contributes to "Total Customer Service," and that there are no activities which inhibit, negate or run counter to this goal. This really means that progress results from paying attention to a lot of detail.

The essence of progress and business survival is first of all, clarifying and communicating the direction of progress for your company to all your employees. Unknown or unclear goals are useless direction. But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it is making sure that each activity of every employee moves your business in the desired direction. Route out the activities which drain value and reinforce those which add value.

An analogy often used is "You've got to make sure that everyone is on the same train, going in the same direction!" I go beyond this idea. It isn't just "people" you have to watch out for. It's the individual activities of each person. When the whole person is "off the train," or dramatically doing the job wrong - that's easy to spot and correct. People are either on or off the train, nothing in between. Often, most of an employee's activities are appropriate, and only a few activities are "off track." But it can be these few activities of each employee which drain value and prevent progress. So for your business to progress and survive, you have to ensure that your employees are not only heading in the right direction, but that all of their activities are "on track" as well!

From: Robert H. Kent, The Mansis System: Common Sense Management For Everyone, Winnipeg: Pragma Press, 1996, pp. 8.19 - 8.21.

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