How do you coach an employee to improve performance?

Create a feedback culture for the team. Lead employees to reach their attainable limits. Encourage employees to learn from others. Coaches must be effective at building meaningful relationships, inspiring employees to solve problems, and providing feedback and guidance focused on the future.

In addition, managers should understand the practical implications of the training program, such as how often they are expected to meet with employees and how this affects the existing performance management process. To address skills gaps and prepare managers, organizations must prepare a combination of training resources, consider in-person and “always-on” e-learning content to establish fundamental skills. Learning experiences should include “real examples” of coaching opportunities and scenarios to help managers practice key conversations about coaching. Ongoing training should also be offered, taking into account microlearning and how to integrate coaching content into other development programs, such as training new employees and joining manager-level positions.

Organizations should also consider creating networks of management colleagues to support each other, share ideas, and further develop their skills as they begin training their employees. To reinforce the development of coaching capacity and clarify the expectations of coaches, talent leaders should consider how to create accountability in coaching. Many organizations address this issue by combining positive feedback, identifying and tracking key coaching metrics, adjusting managers' performance criteria, and even considering training capacity before promoting employees to management positions. While this level of continuous and committed training has been a basic expectation of sports coaches for years, this is a relatively new change for many organizations, starting with a fundamental reinvention of performance management strategies and philosophy.

With the support of their trust-based coach, employees understand that, even if they fail to try something new or difficult, their coach will still be there to help them seize failure as an opportunity for learning and personal growth, instead of using that failure as a cuddle during their next performance review. Organizations can anticipate the challenges of changing responsibilities and better prepare their coaches to ease the transition. The organization can anticipate the challenges that come with the change in responsibility and better prepare its coaches to facilitate the transition. Establishing TrustTrust is the foundation of any coaching relationship; when employees have the ongoing support of someone they trust to support them, they develop the psychological security necessary to honestly reflect on what drives and inhibits their performance.

The capacity and training of a coach are just as important as the development of the person they are addressing. Just as training is necessary to train the best athletes, training employees in the workplace is crucial to prepare the organization for the changing nature of work.