"COACHING CONTEST" What Would You Do?

The Challenge: Getting the employee to clearly see and take ownership of their performance issue. I love the King David story in the bible where Nathan gets King David to face the reality of his wrongdoings with his Bathsheba affair. If you don’t know it or remember it, it’s a worthwhile read. It’s also a great tactic to get this employee to face reality. I would apply the “Nathan” strategy and then utilize reflective coaching. Invite the employee to your office and explain that you need their assistance and advice with a management issue you are struggling with. Go on to explain the challenge you have with an employee that…(numbers are down, etc.) After they share their recommendations as to how they feel this other employee should be dealt with, you respond with “actually this employee is you”. Okay, this wasn’t two questions but I still feel it would be effective. Then I would shift immediately to a reflective coaching method by explaining that I want to give them some constructive feedback, and after I give them this feedback I do want them to provide me with an immediate response. I would go on to explain that after I give them my feedback I will leave them alone for 15 minutes to contemplate what I have told them and to prepare an answer to two questions: 1.) What they are going to do to learn with what I told them. 2.) What they will do to improve.

The Challenge There is not enough information to determine the specific challenge, but the employee’s feelings that he/she has “no need of performance improvement” and resistance to “the notion [he/she has] anything to improve” can stem from a number of issues: ? A fixed mindset (i.e., he/she believes you can only perform at a set capacity and cannot increase that capacity) ? A “good enough” mindset (i.e., things are getting done to a “satisfactory” level and therefore there is no need to increase productivity) ? A comparison fallacy (i.e., his/her performance is on par with peers, and is therefore acceptable) ? A “just a job” mentality (i.e., he/she does the work to draw a sufficient paycheck and has no intention of impressing anyone or asking for a promotion) Getting this employee to do a good enough self-assessment to help identify which one (or combination) of these issues is at the root of his/her performance will be important to address the situation. Questions for the Mirror 1) What do you feel would be the ideal attributes, attitudes, etc. of someone in this position? 2) How closely and in what ways does your description match your experience in this position? Creative Activities 1) After handing over a copy of his/her job competencies, description, and performance expectations accompanied by carefully selected metrics comparing how his/her current performance compares to the expectations, I ask him/her to fill out his/her own performance evaluation and indicating the changes he/she would like to see. 2) Once the completed performance evaluation is received, I request that the employee help me develop an action plan that will accomplish the changes he/she noted (with some careful selection and input on my part).

I love the feedback and solutions so far!

Trying again ... first time got an error message ...lesson learned copy and paste to avoid having to do things over. :-) Issue: It's about the employee's attitude and on a larger scale his/her EI (emotional intelligence) with my best guess being self-awareness issues. Specific Bar-On EQ-i competency I would guess would be "reality testing" that addresses congruence between objective data and subjective (self) assessment. Coaching Questions: (1) You've told me that you see yourself as productive, meeting goals, and no need for improvement. Help me understand how you have drawn that conclusion. I'm really curious. (2) Gosh, as I look at the goals that have been set (metrics) and your actual performance I'm confused. You see yourself as "here" while your metrics put you here (hand lower down on the imaginary scale). With this information in front of us how do you reconcile your assessment with the (hard) data? (3) I'm going to do one more – grinning: "Would you be willing to do something a little different?" (Employee says yes.) "Great. Let's switch roles. I want you to be me and I'm going to be you. As the manager/leader, you have all of my performance data in front of you yet I'm telling you something that is completely different. You're my manager. Tell me how you would help me (coach me) to see there is a discrepancy" Plan: #3 above could be part of the coaching plan. For example, "Gosh, you really made some great points and I appreciate your effort. What type of "road map" will you create that will be most helpful. We (plural OK here) can brainstorm right now to see what ideas will work best." (Brainstorm) (Ed Note: (I avoid using the term "action plan" since some associate that with HR corrective action / performance improvement plans which some find off-putting and I avoid using "we" here since it is the employee's responsibility and plan, not "our plan.") Related to the above I would emphasize previous successes from the past with something like "I have seen you put forth such great effort in the past and seen how successful you have been. What will you do this week to help you move your (numbers, deliverables, etc.) up? What strategies did you use in the past that helped you be successful? Pull in some of those to use right now." Baby steps ... when you see it (improvement) let the employee know. Set reasonable incremental goals while emphasizing the goal is consistent performance not ups and downs. To the "activities" I probably would coach the employee to come up with one activities and monitor that one. If that doesn't work would involve the employee and coach to another plan. We know that involving employees and coaching so they come up with ideas increases the likelihood of buy-in and follow through (taps into their motivation) rather than designing the activity for them. Tim, this is great ... love it.

1. How do you see yourself progressing in your role over the next 12 months? 2. If a new hire came into a similar position, where would you have them direct their attention over the first 6 months on the job? Activity 1: Create a general log of your work over the length of a month. Review the daily duties from the perspective of the CEO. Is there anything you would add, improve, or eliminate before presenting the information to a leadership role/CEO? Activity 2: Consider a 10 minute presentation to a class of middle school aged children. How would you get them excited about applying for your job?