Employee Coaching - The Powerful People Development Tool Leaders Avoid Like the Plague

Employee Coaching - The Powerful People Development Tool Leaders Avoid Like the Plague

The next step is to schedule your new employees to attend the department's new hire process and procedural training program. This is great news for your new employee because your corporate training department delivers a fantastic new hire program: one with pre- and post-training evaluations, feedback and suggestion forums, and real hands-on tasks strategically placed throughout the curriculum. To top it all off, after two to four weeks (considerably longer in some organizations) of intense classroom training, your new team members are ready for action! Or, are they?

A New Hire Training Program Alone Is Not Enough

It is normal for employees to feel a certain degree of excitement and anxiousness when learning new information, tasks and responsibilities. Did you know many new hires experience an extremely high level of anxiety during and after the new hire training program? Most organizations make it very clear that failure to successfully complete the training program "may result in immediate termination of employment." Adding another layer of anxiety to the equation, new hires are often told repeatedly about stringent performance goals and expectations required of them once they join their tenured team members in the work area. New employees often have horrific thoughts of failure and many times feel "thrown" into the work area unprepared and marginally supported. Employees working in fast-paced, heavy production-oriented and metric-driven environments, such as call centers, claims processing, and order entry departments, are most likely to fail due to lack of proper training.

Unfortunately for many new employees, the initial new hire training program will be the "only" formal training and personal development they will ever receive. This disheartening reality and familiar trend significantly limits an employee's ability to expand his or her knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs). Let's face it: even the most talented employees require some form of ongoing development to truly realize their full potential and achieve above-average results. Isn't above-average results what all businesses need in order to survive in today's competitive marketplace? You bet it is!

Leaders Must Provide Continuous Employee Development

In most organizations, the training department generally owns the new hire training and employee readiness initiatives. The department leaders must be willing and knowledgeable enough to accept these initiatives and the employee development "baton" from the training department. Regrettably, most leaders consistently fall short of this responsibility. They either lack adequate training and personal commitment or simply fail to recognize the invaluable impact coaching has on employee and business success. For some leaders all three categories appropriately apply! Regardless of the hurdles, leaders must genuinely embrace their responsibility to provide continuous development for their employees and take the appropriate action to do so.

A Leader's Training, Commitment, and Awareness Is Required

It is assumed that employee coaching and development is a top priority for all leaders. This is not the case. Quite frankly, far too many leaders simply avoid this powerful tool like the plague! Some degree of avoidance may be understandable for newly appointed and less experienced leaders. However, avoidance is extremely prevalent even among well-trained and tenured leaders as well. Lack of proper training, a supportive corporate culture, a leader who simply fails to realize coaching's direct impact on improving employee performance and increasing profitability clearly fuels this problem and affects the goals and objectives of not only the employee but the company as well. Let's face it, the absence of effective coaching leads to a business that fails to meet its true potential. And, in today's highly-competitive global environment, failure to deliver consistent and ongoing value to your customers and shareholders leads to corporate destruction!

The Ultimate Value of Coaching For Employees, Leaders, Customer, and Shareholders

Coaching provides a forum for one-on-one feedback and guidance, and is designed to help employees' correct deficiencies within their KSAs. Effective coaching leads to an empowered workforce as well as greater levels of employee commitment and contribution. It also stimulates quality outcomes. Effective coaching can also be linked to higher levels of employee satisfaction and employee retention.

Six Tips to Increase a Leader's Awareness and Effectiveness

In order to become an effective coach, it takes time and energy. It is a vital skill that requires training, practice, follow-up and most importantly, a leader's commitment to the betterment of his or her employees and the business as a whole. When training and coaching are absent or poorly executed, employees are denied the level of personal and professional development they deserve to fully realize their potential and the business suffers.

These six tips will help new and tenured leaders to increase their awareness and effectiveness as coaches:

1. Establish a relationship of trust with each employee

2. Focus on the employees' strengths as well as key areas of deficiency

3. Provide relative feedback timely and consistently

4. Explain how the employee's success aligns with the company's success (strategic goal alignment)

5. Customize coaching content based on employee's unique set of KSA's

6. Champion a culture that supports ongoing employee development.

Greg Jerralds is the Chief Operating Officer with ProfitInnerCircle. He is the author of the book, "The Leader's Guide to Performance Management" and co-author of "The Best Kept Profit Secret."

Greg is available for media interviews, speaking engagements, on-site training, consultations, and teleseminars and webinars. He can be reached at 210.497.1948 ext. 102, or Info@ProfitInnerCircle.com

http://ProfitInnerCircle.com

POST COMMENT

Steve Preston Total Muscle Mass - Build Muscle Mass Fast Review Teeth Whitening - Baking Powder Also Bleaches Teeth Yuri Elkaim Fitter Than The Pros – Build Muscle Guide Review 2011 Florida Tow Show Is Fast Approaching How to Make a Tissue Paper Easter Egg Wreath Beach Hotels Perth - Attached At The Hip To Fremantle Fast Muscle Building Techniques That Build Muscle Quickly Nitric oxide supplements - Do they really Encourage you to Build Muscles Fast? Approaches to Camaro Restoration Teeth Whitening & Bleaching How to build muscle fast - this is good for everyone Toothache--treatment of tcm Beaches Sevastopol