At Work Newswire

By D. Quinn Mills

Most employees can benefit from coaching, and when employees benefit the work group benefits, and we as managers benefit.

Generally coaching is about how an employee should relate to others in the work group and to outsiders such as customers and suppliers. It’s about interpersonal relations – about how to be effective at work. Managers can hope that the company provides them with a team of employees who are able to work effectively with others. But often employees are sadly lacking in interpersonal skills required by the modern workplace.

These deficiencies become apparent. These employees criticize others bluntly and often without good reason; they react angrily to any criticism of themselves; they are very judgmental about others, but think themselves perfect; they get angry easily and burst out furiously at others; they make excuses for themselves frequently; they don’t listen carefully to what others, including their managers and supervisors say; they blame others for whatever goes wrong; they anger others by their attitudes.

Many managers think that it’s not their role as managers to have to deal with the inter-personal aspects of employees’ behavior; and that’s right, so long as the behavior doesn’t interfere with work. But often employees work in teams that are disrupted by inappropriate behavior and the manager is forced to deal with it in some way.

If you’re a high level executive, you may want to have the company supply a professional coach to a key manager who is rising to higher positions and whom you recognize needs assistance in preparing for the job. But a lower level manager can’t usually commit the firm’s resources on that way, so he or she must either coach or suggest that the employee involved get a coach.

Becoming an effective coach

A good response by a manager is to become an effective coach for the employee. Often employees will appreciate a well-timed suggestion from the manager. In some instances, employees resist our efforts to be constructive, and then nothing can be done except to try to get another assignment for the person. This is an unfortunate result but one that is all too common.

But managers want employees to be successful, and if coaching will help, then we want to do it and do it well.

How can we coach employees? First and foremost by making recommendations that are not taken by the employee as an implicit criticism of his or her behavior. Criticism makes people defensive—it often causes them to not listen to constructive suggestions, but to seethe internally with resentment at criticism. A manager can gather his or her team together and ask for suggestions, or make them, about how to conduct a project. No individual need be singled out for criticism.

Second, even though criticism is a dangerous thing to do, because it can be easily misunderstood and deeply resented, it is still often necessary and a manager can learn to give criticism as constructively as possible. The art of constructive criticism is to criticize not the person but the act or behavior.

Thus positive coaching does not say, “You did that wrong,” but “Another, better way might be…” Not, “You messed that up,” but “You might have done this instead…It might have worked better.”

When should we coach employees? Timing is crucial to success in coaching others. Never, if it can be avoided at all, condemn or criticize an employee in front of someone else (peers, subordinates, supervisors, suppliers, customers, friends). Never even coach an employee carefully and diplomatically in front of others. The implicit criticism will not escape anyone and it will cause bitterness and resentment. Always try to wait for a time when you’re alone with the employee and when he or she is receptive to your comments. Then be careful how you coach, as we’ve said above.

Coaching in this way requires concentration and focus by a manager until it becomes part of her or his ordinary behavior. It’s a skill that can be learned with practice and one that will payback in improved employee performance and a more effective work group.

D. Quinn Mills is the Alfred J. Weatherhead Jr. Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He consults with major corporations and teaches at Harvard on subjects of leadership, strategy, and financial investments.

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Copyright © 2007 D. Quinn Mills

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