Annie was excited about the promotion. Nevertheless, she was quite nervous to take on this new responsibility for the lack of supervisory experience. She worried she would lose friends at work and people would look at her in a different way. Also, she had never received any training on supervisory management and she was afraid she could not "manage" the staff.

Although she had not yet started to pick up the new responsibility, the increasing worry already affected her work performance. She even considers resigning from her job. As a supervisor of Annie, what would you do?

Bridging the Performance Gap

Most employees, like Annie, are capable to carry out their assigned job duties. Nevertheless, no employee is perfect and there is always room in employees for improvement. When an employee takes up new job assignments or encounters new challenges/ difficulties at work, they may not be able to perform as well as expected due to their lack of skills or knowledge. As a result, a gap is found between the employee's current and expected performance. Coaching is needed in this situation.

What is Coaching?

For a sport coach, his/ her job is to set challenging expectation for the sport team and then support them to get rid of all possible barriers and to carry out the expected performance; in other words, to bridge up the performance gap. All athletic, regardless how well they are performing, do need a coach to give them on-going guidance, instruction and feedback. David Beckham, the famous soccer player, performs very well already and remains working closely with Glenn Hoddle, his coach, who corrects him and pushes his potential to the limit.

Likewise, employees need a coach to ensure that they are on the right track and their potentials are realized. The role of the supervisor as a coach is not limited to corrective or remedial coaching for performance deficits. Rather, coaching at work is a conversation aiming at developing the staff by encouraging and assisting them to identify the most desired but realistic outcome and how it can be achieved. Ultimately, the outcome is achieved and the performance gap is bridged.

Benefit of Coaching

An international Coaching Federation survey of 4000 companies conducted in 2000 found the benefits of coaching are :

• Improvement in individual performance
• Improvement in client service
• Development of people for the next level
• Improvement in relationship between management and staff
• Increase in retention rate
• Better communication between management and staff

How to Coach?

The following is a simple framework for how to approach a coaching conversation.

1. Quick review of the performance of staff.
2. Describe the purpose of the coaching conversation
3. Let the staff describe the situation.
4. Pinpoint an area can be improved
5. Share your experience if necessary
6. Facilitate the staff to find possible ways to improve
7. Encourage them to recognize the benefit for them if they are successful.
8. Show your confidence in staff
9. Provided specific praise and ongoing feedback
10. Follow-up

Tips for Supervisors

• Know your staff
• Not blaming but acknowledging the change required
• Ensure the staff understand what is expected of them in their job
• Find solutions through a mutual problem solving process
• Mutually establish clear performance objectives
• Work collaboratively to develop a mutually agreed action plan

Remember: Supervisors with good workplace coaching skills have often been coached themselves either by their own supervisors or by an external coach. When you have further question or concern on how to coach and develop your staff or even yourself, please do not hesitate to seek advice from your own supervisor or consultants from your company's employee assistance service provider.