Using the Power of Judgment in Your Coaching
Because you are a coach in good standing, you must utilize the tools and techniques outlined earlier. You must establish healthy dialogues with your underperforming employees that crisply focus on finding solutions (positive outcomes) to poor performances. Instead of delivering judgmental broadsides (such as “Boy, you are really stinking up the place”), you lay the groundwork for civil, productive dialogues with your employees.
You make it clear to them that you're seeking to correct their performance problems, and that you're not there to pass judgment in any way on their personalities, but to make things right on the job, which is, of course, your job. “Can you think of any ways to get your project back on track? Are there any changes that you feel can be implemented to put you back on schedule?”
Your job as a coach is to effect positive outcomes in all areas of your managing. You accomplish this by examining every problem in the office — big or small — and finding optimum solutions for them. In other words, you address every problem from the angle of its best possible solution.
Remember, also, in this positive outcome posture of yours, to avoid discussions with employees that become debates. Leave the debating to the forensic club in high school, or aspiring politicians promising their way into office. Coaches never debate members of their staff. And, really, there's no quicker way to snuff out positive outcomes to problems than by engaging employees in contentious disputes.
Civilized dialogues are the best breeding grounds for real solutions to tough, even seemingly intractable problems. And very often, this give-and-take, free-flowing exchange of ideas leads to people owning up to their mistakes or performance slips.
The coaching and mentoring methodology seeks to mold employees who can think for themselves and take initiative. This encompasses an ability to solve problems on their own, even righting their own wrongs and seeing where they've messed up, or why they are not performing as in the past. Positive outcomes are more often the result of employees figuring out how to rectify their own problems, than of a coach dictating solutions to them. Dictated solutions to problems are often received with resentment. And resentment doesn't inspire self-motivation, nor enhance job satisfaction.
