“While performance review considers the whole body of work, effective coaching requires looking specifically at the task or assignment in question.”
- First, the manager needs to break the employee’s performance down into specific tasks – effective coaching requires this step. Once the performance issue is identified in task-specific terms, the second critical step in effective coaching is diagnosing the employee’s performance level. An employee’s performance level can be broken down into:
– Results: Performance results as they relate to acceptable standards for anyone in that specific job function. Are the employee’s performance results well below standard, below standard, at or slightly above standard, or consistently well above standard?
– Ability: Does the employee have the skill to accomplish the task at the acceptable standard? Could he or she do it if they had to? Often supervisors will confuse enthusiasm, potential or capability with ability. Ability refers to current performance – not the ability to learn to perform. If the performance issue is a true ability problem, then anything other than training will not suffice – and even cause more difficulties.
– Attitude: The combination of the employee’s confidence (to learn and/or work independently) that they can accomplish the required performance and the employee’s commitment (desire) to accomplish the required performance.
– For a manager, an employee suffering from a lack of confidence and one who is just not committed to the job can look the same: they can both lack initiative, seem hesitate, and wait to be told what to do. Yet, determining the difference between confidence and commitment issues is critical in determining the right coaching style.