In many organizations today, a management approach still prevails, which is not effective at all. According to that approach, the manager wastes a considerable amount of his working time REACTING … reacting to the “urgent” issues, to non-stop questions and emails by his/her employees. As a result, the manager spends an entire day without taking time for his own priorities, and without completing his own tasks for the day.
This brings forth the dissatisfaction of the manager and triggers tension in the relationship with the team-members.
The most innovative and progressive companies today have found a wonderful tool to solve the above-mentioned problem. Her name is COACHING! The latter is absolutely valuable for managers to raise their own productivity & performance levels and those of their team-members.
Coaching focuses on the continuous improvement of each employee’s performance, both at professional and personal level. In those organizations, which have integrated coaching culture, employees realize that their managers see them not as mindless performers of the tasks commanded to them, but as a full part of the organization’s mental capital, who are truly trusted and who are capable of starting, developing and finishing any project, big or small. The role of the manager is to oversee the whole process, guide their employees, transfer their own skills and expertise, as well as provide all the necessary resources for the employees so that they can best realize their professional and personal potential.
As a result, employees start taking more responsibility for their work, they become initiative, they come up with more and more ideas.
Coaching in the organizations takes place in a form of a tête-à-têtes meeting, between the manager and the employee. During a coaching session the progress of the employee in the current project/s are measured according to the set goals, the issues and the challenges brought up by the employee are thoroughly discussed, the upcoming phases of the project are reviewed, as well as the professional growth opportunities for the employee are looked at.
The manager takes this opportunity to talk about the setbacks caused by the employee, not for the purpose of criticizing or blaming, but for supporting the employee to deal with them. The manager also takes the chance to say words of praise to the employee for the work well done and encourage him/her to accomplish even more. The frequency of coaching sessions depends on the team size, as well as the scale of the project. I personally would recommend having a session every other week, lasting around 45-60 minutes.
Many managers often complain that they don’t have enough time to make coaching sessions with their employees. But I can assure you that if you decide to switch on coaching mode, you will save considerable amount of your valuable time, you will crush your own goals and you will also greatly contribute to the increase of the performance levels of your employees.
Below I would like to introduce just a few of the many advantages of making coaching your managing style. I will write more in detail about each of the points below in future blog-posts at Kaizen Mastery. So the advantages of applying coaching in practice,
Each employee has a scheduled meeting with their managers (for example, every second Monday, at 2 pm).This brings some kind of certainty to the work of the employee, as she knows that there is a specific time when she will have an opportunity to address to the manager all the questions & issues which come along every now and then during the work-process.
The manager manages her time much better and raises her level of effectiveness, as there is no such an overload of emails and questions by employees, thus no need to spend all day reacting to them. The reason is that employees learn to define priorities, tell the difference between truly urgent issues and those which only seem to be urgent. Thus, employees put aside most of their issues, which can wait to be discussed with the manager during the coaching session.
Employees feel important and appreciated, which makes them work with even more dedication. For each human being, for each employee in this case, it is truly important to know that they are given an opportunity to raise the issues that bother them and feel that their voices are heard. From psychological perspective, it encourages employees and contributes to the transparency of communication between the manager and the employee.
The manager gets the chance to listen to the viewpoint of each employee about what’s happening inside the team, get to know about issues, far before they have become problems. Thus the manager has an advantage of getting valuable insights, understand the team dynamics, and deal with the issues at the right time.
All the employees are paid equal attention by the manager, there are no favorites, as all the employees have coaching sessions of the same frequency, of the same length, and of the same format. This definitely helps to form a culture of mutual trust and cooperation in the team, which in turn contributes to both the manager’s and the employees’ effectiveness and performance.
According to the famous saying, employees leave managers, not companies. Couldn’t agree more.
It is not only the results the manager brings in to the organization, that speak about his/her value as a manager, but also the scale of the investment, he or she makes in the professional development and personal growth of each employee. The latter is a way more valid criterion for me to evaluate the qualities of a manager.
Be the manager, who is a true promise of professional growth and development for any employee who happens to work with you.
Be The Masterpiece,
Arevik