Imagine you’re sliding floaties onto the arms of your 2-year-old daughter, preparing her for the first swim with 
mommy or daddy. She’s had no swim lessons. So you let her know you’re going to put her in the water to learn.
“I want you to swim to that line, okay sweetie?”
You jump in and stand in the shallow end just a few feet away. Your daughter plops in the water. Instinctively, she begins to kick her legs to stay afloat. You have a smile on your face…. waiting for your child to swim her first few feet. She doesn’t get any closer… she’s just kicking.
After an hour’s time, you give up.
“Next time you have to swim to daddy,” you tell her on the drive home.
Sounds mean, heartless and downright senseless, doesn’t it? We would never send our own children into an unknown, challenging environment without coaching them through. So, why is it that we don’t recognize that sending employees into a challenging environment without any support along the way is like setting them up for failure?
“About half of the organizations out there don’t pay attention to managers’ coaching conversations for goal setting. I think it is safe to assume that efforts to promote coaching and feedback likely get similar levels of attention in these organizations,” says Chris Bergeron at Salary.com.
If you really care about the people you lead, you don’t throw them in the pool and let them sink, do you? If you can’t quite relate to the father-daughter swim experience, how about:
- Going to a class on the first day and then showing up at the final exam.
- Showing up for your first basketball practice. Then coach cancels practice and conditioning until the first game.
- Showing up for a personal training appointment, only to find a note waiting for you that reads: “Your weigh-in will be in five weeks, see you there.”
Your employees likely have competent skill sets, independent minds and motivation to contribute to the success of the business. They have the resources. But where’s the substance between goal setting and the review process?
Coaching is the most important variable in the performance process. Bergeron gives these tips to for moving “coaching” to the forefront of performance management:
- Coaching starts with senior executive sponsorship
- Create explicit expectations for the coaching conversation for all employees
- Finally, identify your best coaches and hold them up as examples to the rest of the organization
Read more at http://blog.salary.com/hr_voice_salarycom/2010/04/coaching-made-important.html?contactID=96334734&gwkey=H6MKLJ4DFI.
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