Mentoring and Coaching – A Perfect Solution
April 26th, 2010I recently had a fantastic opportunity to deliver some one-to-one management coaching with a very unsure and slightly demotivated, but ultimately competent employee.
He was well regarded within the organisation, but struggled to combine a huge workload with the need to develop a number of relationships with different people.
The result was he was causing friction, but was completely unaware of it.
No-one in the organisation wanted to have this conversation. So coaching was identified as a way to give him a chance to change and recognise what he needed to do to be more effective.
Cue a bit of psychometric testing, a couple of hours examining the results of his personality profile and a coaching conversation about how he managed at work.
The result? A motivated individual with an action plan focusing on the key relationships he has to build. Plus there has been a complete turnaround in motivation and will.
To ensure the change continues, an internal mentor has been appointed to continue the coaching mentoring, review progress on the action plan and apply focus where needed.
The impact of these simple coaching techniques reminded me how important it is to ensure employees know what we are thinking about them. Also the need to invest quality time to properly consider an individual’s performance, strengths and weaknesses.
A similar situation with another employer could easily have led to this person’s exit. And that would have been a waste of the 13 years’ investment in training and development.
As for me, I felt privileged to have been asked to spend a day with such a motivated individual and with an organisation that does not just hire and fire at will.
For more tips on managing performance see our new Performance Management Factsheet.
