Coaching Skills for Managers and Supervisors

One of the most important tasks for Managers and Supervisors is coaching their employees. Good Coaching:

• Helps employees understand what they should be doing and how.

• Provides employees with important information on whether they are performing up to expectation and if not, how far off the mark they are. 

• Helps employees develop and enhance new skills needed for future positions.

Yet as important as it is, for many Managers and Supervisors, it’s also one of the most dreaded.  Managers and Supervisors often worry that their employees will react negatively to a coaching discussion.  Without the proper ground work employees may feel caught off guard, and indeed react negatively to what they consider as unwarranted criticism. 

Despite these reservations, the ability to effectively coach employees and help them attain the desired level of performance and/or development is often the difference between a successful or unsuccessful Manager or Supervisor.  Consequently, as a Supervisor or Manager, the ability to successfully coach your employees is one of the most important skill sets you need to develop.

Successful Coaching Efforts

Successful coaching involves a number of key ingredients.  Some of the most important are:

• The Manager/Supervisor has credibility in the employee’s eyes that the Manager/Supervisor knows what they’re talking about.

• The employee trusts the coach’s opinion.

• The Manager/Supervisor sets an environment conducive to effective communication.

• The Manager/Supervisor makes sure that the employee receives the needed training on how to perform as expected.

• Performance expectations and measurement criteria are clear.

• Feedback on the employee’s performance is accurate.

• The Manager/Supervisor provides feedback on things done well as well as areas needing improvement.

• The Manager/Supervisor actively involves the employee’s ideas on how to make needed improvements.

 
Coaching Efforts That Fail

When coaching fails, it’s also often for some key reasons.  Some of the common ones are:

• The employee doesn’t trust the Manager/Supervisor. 

• The Manager/Supervisor hasn’t established credibility in the employee’s eyes that they know what they are talking about.

• The Manager/Supervisor sets a threatening atmosphere for the discussion.

• The Manager/Supervisor hasn’t trained the employee how to perform as expected.

• The employee doesn’t feel they’ve been told the applicable performance expectations and how they’re going to be measured.

• The employee doesn’t feel the Manager/Supervisor’s feedback is accurate and objective.

• The Supervisor/Manager can’t provide specific examples of what the employee needs to improve.

• The Manager/Supervisor only concentrates on what the employee needs to improve and doesn’t praise things done well.

Because be able to effectively coach your employees is such an important skill, KAW Consulting developed “COACHING SKILLS FOR MANAGERS AND SUPERVISORS”, an electronic handbook that will help you learn these vital skills.

You’ll learn how to:

• Establish the groundwork to have an effective coaching relationship with your employees.

• Determine expected performance levels for your employees’ major tasks and responsibilities.

• Provide your employees with the needed training.

• Analyze your employees’ current level of performance against expected levels, and identify areas needing improvement.

• Hold an effective coaching discussion to provide employees with feedback on how they are doing, and develop plans for making needed improvements.

Why it Works

Most books on coaching employees focus on the wrong thing.  They are often modeled on sports coaching or other non-work related situations rather than the type of day to day situations that both Managers/Supervisors and employees face. “COACHING SKILLS FOR MANAGERS AND SUPERVISORS” is exactly the opposite. The skills you’ll learn are meant to be used in the work environment, not the athletic field.  

What’s more, it’s written in easy to understand language that walks you step by step through the process of how to coach your employees effectively.  We’ve even included sample forms you can use to identify how you want to define expected levels of performance, develop training plans, analyze how well your employees are performing, and plan an effective coaching discussion.

Like any great handbook, “COACHING SKILLS FOR MANAGERS AND SUPERVISORS” is something you’ll want to use over and over again.  And unlike paper handbooks, that get lost easily, it’s an electronic book in PDF format that you can store on your computer so you have it accessible each time you need to use it.  Just call it up and it’s ready to use. If you want hard copy, you can print what you need.  To save you time, we’ve even included hyperlinks in the Table of Contents so you can jump right to the page or section you need without having to spend time scrolling through unneeded pages.

 You can buy single copies for the low price of $21.95.

Sharing with additional users is also easy–just purchase additional licenses at $19.95 per user.

To view a sample and instructions on how to purchase online click here.

Note: Available to only U.S. customers at this time.