As a manager, developing coaching plans are an incredibly important way to establish both the long and the short term goals of your company. Developing these plans for your employees and monitoring their progress results in an incredibly positive environment for both you and your employees. Today we’ll be going through how to create a good coaching plan for your organization.
How to create a coaching plan
Establish the employee’s strengths
There’s something to be said for warming somebody up. There should always be something in the beginning that determines an employee’s strengths, so that you can identify beneficial tasks to assign them, and also put down a baseline of skills to further develop as they go along. By mentioning these tasks, you also are acknowledging the work that they do and will do to improve.
Locate any areas of improvement
By establishing the strengths that your employee possesses, you can also point out the improvement areas that an employee can possess. Be sure to remember that when you discuss these areas, you provide specific examples to help them understand where you’re coming from. It’s important to keep the conversation steered toward the positive. You’re confident that they can improve and overcome the obstacles that they have.
Ask the employee to evaluate their performance
There are two sides of this coin. When you explain your viewpoint, be sure to ask them to perform a self-evaluation. This brings the conversation back on your employees, shining a light on how your team members see themselves as valued employees. It also may show an insecurity, area of improvement, or a strength you may have missed. Be sure to talk to them about it as well.
Determine any obstacles in the way of the employee’s success and provide solutions
Obstacles are important to point out and work through before defining the goals of an employee. These could range anywhere from lack of focus and time spent on certain tasks to lack of tools available to educate themselves to work on certain projects or tasks. Spending time to fix these obstacles and showing the employee that they’re not alone is paramount. Ask the employee how they believe they can overcome the obstacle and then give your help if any assistance is necessary.
Develop short-term and long-term goals
Once you and your employee have worked through whatever obstacles there may be, you can work on establishing the correct milestones and goals you have set for their successes. Work together to focus on the areas of improvement that were previously mentioned to develop the goals necessary for their performances.
Build an action plan
You don’t want to give your employee a list of goals and then push them out into the wilderness. This will only create more obstacles than is necessary, pushing back the steps and the work your employee could do. This action plan should list the steps that the two of you can work on to reach each goal, where you can show the work and improvements based on meetings you have with that employee.
Follow-up is necessary
One on one follow-up is necessary to check in on any progress being made. In these follow-ups, you can talk about any new obstacles that your employee may face and provide necessary feedback. These follow-up meetings can be incredibly motivating to your employees as they work towards their goals.
This is just the starting point of creating a coaching plan. You can put your own spin on it, making sure it works with your employees. Get creative! Your employees will only benefit from your help.