CIOs understand that they are responsible for conducting performance appraisals with their team every so often. What many CIOs don’t realize is that they are also responsible for what comes next: coaching…
What Is Coaching And Why Do You Have To Do It?
Coaching is not managing. Instead, it’s a two-way activity in which you work with your team member to help them improve in some very specific way.
Your coaching activities are based on a goal that a member of your team wants to achieve. This goal was identified during the employee’s performance review; however, as their manager you realize that they are not going to be able to achieve this goal by themselves.
This is where coaching comes in. When you are engaged in coaching, you are sharing your experiences and knowledge with your employee in order to show them how they can accomplish their goal. A critical part of coaching is that the employee must want to be coached – you can never force someone to accept your coaching input.
The benefits of coaching when done correctly are immense. An employee’s job satisfaction and motivation can skyrocket when they feel that they are getting personalized attention from you. Additionally, by spending the time with an employee coaching them, you may be preparing them to take on management responsibilities later on.
How Does A CIO Coach Their Staff?
The first step in starting to coach an employee is to take the time to observe their actions. The goal of doing this is to allow you to understand what strengths and weaknesses they currently have.
You should also carefully watch how they interact with their coworkers. Taking some of these coworkers aside and finding out what they think of the employee who will be coached can also reveal important insights.
Your next step has to be to sit down and have a discussion with the employee. The purpose of this discussion will be to share with them the results of your observations.
You must be careful to make sure that everything that you say is based on what you saw. You’ll want to describe the behaviors that you saw and what their impacts were.
During this type of discussion what you hear from the employee will be more important than what you say. You need to work very carefully to be an active listener.
When you are an active listener you must maintain eye contact with the employee and repeat what they’ve just said in order to make sure that you hear them correctly. These types of behaviors will show the employee that you are interested in what they have to say.
During a coaching session you also have to be asking the right questions. By asking questions you are showing the employee that you are interested in what they have to say and want more information from them.
When you ask a question, you want to ask an open-ended question. This type of question can’t be answered by a simple “yes” or “no” – it requires a more detailed response from your employee.
Finally, the result of any coaching session needs to be an action plan. This is a plan that you and the employee come up with that will allow them to achieve their goal. This type of plan does not always have to be written down, but it should be created by the employee and it should contain clear goals and a timeframe that both of you agree to.
What Does All Of This Mean For You?
Good CIOs understand that their responsibility to develop their staff includes coaching the team members who need extra assistance to become better. By taking the time to coach team members, CIOs can help them both improve their job performance as well as boost their job satisfaction.
In order to be an effective coach, an CIO needs to start by taking the time to observe what the employee is doing right and where improvements are needed. Next discussing what needs to be done with the employee and doing a good job of listening is what will allow a plan of action to be created. Finally coaching can occur as you use the information that you’ve collected to offer constructive feedback.
Coaching is one of the most important tasks that you’ll do as a CIO. Take the time to study how to do it right, and you’ll have developed the skills that you need to turn a good team into a great team.
- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Department Leadership Skills™
Question For You: How soon after completing a performance evaluation do you think that you should have your first coaching session with a department member?
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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time
Sure you did all of the research, you talked with all of the right people, shucks you even followed up on every Google link that you could find on the company that you were thinking about going to work for before making the jump. However, now that you’ve made the jump you are finding out that perhaps you’ve made a mistake. Now what do you do?
