Performance Coaching

Performance coaching is an important organization consulting intervention designed to help an individual or team to assess and improve their own performance.  The presence or absence of effective follow-up performance coaching is often a key determinant of whether the skills learned in a training session are transferred back into the workplace in the trainees’ job performance.  Performance coaching helps the persons being coached to explore for themselves their respective performance issues, their potential performance improvement developmental activity options and how they might move forward with them. Performance coaches typically work in a non-directive manner so that the persons being coached acquire the ability to think about their performance in a more effective way, increase their self-reflection and self-responsibility, and take full ownership of performance improvement strategies that they themselves develop.

Our performance coaching methodology is grounded in the lessons learned and the best practices distilled from more than three decades of coaching experience in more than six dozen government agencies and scores of private and non profit organizations.  It is closely aligned with the standards of professional practice promulgated by the International Coach Federation.

The key elements of our coaching approach are: collaborative relationships; structured processes; leadership focus; customized assessments; conceptual tools; appreciative inquiry; appropriate confidentiality; limited duration; and progress measures.

Collaborative Relationships. We treat each of our individual coaching assignments as a collaborative relationship between ourself and the manager being coached—a relationship that supports the achievement of targeted results based on goals set by the manager.  Through the coaching process we give the manager an opportunity to focus concerted attention and effort on the skills and actions needed to produce results relevant both to the manager and to the manager’s supervisor.

The manager chooses the focus of conversation while we listen and contribute observations and questions as well as new conceptual frameworks that can help the manager identify and execute targeted performance improvement actions.  Our coaching is designed to accelerate the manager’s progress in achieving the clarity needed—through self-observation and self-reflection—to choose wisely among alternative changes in behavior and to take focused and effective performance improvement actions.

We concentrate on where the manager is now and what the manager is willing and able to do to get where the manager wants to be in the future.  We recognize and understand that the results of coaching are primarily a matter of the intentions, choices and actions of the manager being coached, supported by our application of coaching skills and methods.

 Structured Processes. We typically begin the coaching process with up to three face-to-face personal interviews—one with the manager to be coached, another with the manager’s immediate supervisor, and sometimes another with the Director of HRM—to assess the manager’s current performance-related opportunities and challenges, define the nature and scope of the coaching relationship, identify priorities for action, and establish specific desired outcomes within the context of a detailed, time-phased performance coaching plan.

We conduct subsequent coaching sessions either in person or over the telephone, with each session lasting a pre-established length of time.  We usually ask the manager to complete or try out specific actions between coaching sessions that will support the achievement of the manager’s personally prioritized goals.  Often we incorporate into the coaching conversations additional resources in the form of relevant articles, checklists, criteria, practices, activities, and the like to support the manager’s performance improvement actions.  To the extent authorized by the manager, we include the manager’s supervisor in the coaching progress review and report cycle, because the supervisor is invariably a key factor in the performance issue and in the improvement process.

 Leadership Focus. Our approach to performance coaching emphasizes the individual manager’s development in the context of the organization’s strategic priorities and the leadership needs which those priorities dictate.  We focus on the key objectives of the organization as well as on the unique performance areas where the manager needs to improve in order to maximize professional growth and to be an effective leader within their particular organization.

Customized Assessments. We find that instrumented assessments provide the manager being coached with objective information that can: enhance their self-awareness as well as their awareness of others in varying circumstances; provide us with a benchmark for creating focused coaching goals and practical coaching strategies; and offer both the manager and us a method for learning from and evaluating the manager’s progress and identifying any blocks to progress.  

We therefore make use of a variety of assessment instruments and feedback formats to support the coaching process, depending on the needs and circumstances of the individual manager being coached (MBTI, FIRO-B, generic and customized competency models and self-assessment instruments, 360 feedback reports, etc.).  However, we offer no packaged or computerized systems, preconceived solutions, preferred theories or proprietary assessment methodologies of any kind that would impair our open-mindedness or objectivity concerning the use of assessment instruments in coaching. We either tailor or customize all of our coaching-related assessment instruments to the particular performance issue and set of circumstances we are helping the manager to address.

Conceptual Tools. We typically incorporate into our coaching conversations a variety of concepts, models, principles and typologies drawn from management literature and the behavioral sciences in order to foster shifts in the manager’s perspective, promote fresh insights, provide new frameworks for looking at opportunities and challenges, and help the manager structure and focus self-directed performance improvement actions going forward.

Appreciative Inquiry. The theory or framework of behavior on which our coaching is based is known as “appreciative inquiry”.  This approach is grounded in a positive exploration of what is right, what is working, what is wanted, and what is needed to get there.  Using an appreciative inquiry approach thus defined, we model constructive communication skills and methods that the manager can utilize to enhance their own interpersonal communication effectiveness.

The appreciative approach that we use in our coaching incorporates discovery-based inquiry, proactive ways of managing opportunities and challenges, constructive framing of observations and feedback, and envisioning solutions instead of focusing on problems in order to elicit the most positive responses from the manager being coached.  In our experience, the appreciative inquiry approach to coaching is the most reliable and effective way to reinforce and maintain a manager’s positive thinking, goal-oriented action and self-directed performance improvement.

Appropriate Confidentiality. Our own effectiveness as coaches depends in large measure on the personal respect and trust developed between ourselves and the managers we coach.  Therefore, our goal prior to or at the initial coaching session is to demonstrate to the manager being coached that we are an individual they can rely upon to be sensitive to their person and position; to honor their interests, perspectives and priorities; and to help them resolve their own performance issues through a safe and supportive process.

Toward this end. we make it clear at the outset that we will respect the confidentiality of the information drawn from the manager during the coaching, and that—except as authorized by the manager being coached—we will not release that information to another person compensating us, to the manager’s supervisor, or to any other third party; use that information to evaluate the manager’s performance or to provide performance evaluation reports for anyone but the manager being coached; or release the manager’s name or any other identifying information about the manager either as a recipient of coaching or as a client reference.

Limited Duration. The duration of our coaching relationships varies depending on the needs and preferences of the manager we are coaching and those of their supervisor.  For certain types of focused coaching, such as coaching in which improved performance in specific job element(s) is the goal, we have found that working with a manager for three to six months is often sufficient to achieve the desired performance improvement outcome.  For other less focused types of coaching, we have found it necessary to work with some managers for up to a year.

Factors that typically influence the length and frequency of our coaching relationships include the types of coaching goals; the way the particular manager likes to work; the frequency of face-to-face coaching meetings; and the financial resources available to support coaching.  As a rule of thumb, we find that face-to-face coaching sessions are most effective when they occur on average every third or fourth week and are appropriately supplemented or reinforced with between-session action assignments, e-mail follow-up and telephone “sounding board” conversations.

Progress Measures. In coaching as we practice it, any contribution we make to the outcome desired by the manager being coached (or by their supervisor) is through our on-going interaction with that manager.  Our role typically does not include producing a contracted product or result outside of the coaching sessions themselves.  However, we do use specific, time-bound and measurable or observable goals to ground each individual coaching engagement and guide the areas of focus in each coaching session.

Measurement of the progress of the coaching sessions can be thought of in two distinct ways.  First, there are the external indicators of the manager’s performance: results or changes which can be seen and measured in the manager’s organizational environment.  Second, there are the internal indicators of progress or success: changes which occur within the manager being coached and can be observed or “sensed” and measured by the manager, with the help of the coach.  Typically, in consultation with the manager being coached we develop and incorporate in our measurement of coaching progress both external and internal metrics.

Examples of external indicators include: specific observable behavior-change goals established at the outset of the coaching relationship; number or frequency of errors or audit findings; the outcome of a promotion decision; performance feedback obtained from a 360 degree process; and performance data on the manager’s operational unit or work group (e.g., productivity, efficiency, etc.).  Ideally, we try to select external measures that focus on things the manager and the manager’s supervisor are already measuring and that the manager has some ability to influence directly.

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