Coaching a Team Member
Valuable Coaching Skills to Improve Amy’s Performance
To be a successful coach, one needs knowledge and an understanding of the coaching process. A managerial coach also needs to understand the styles, skills, and techniques appropriate to the context in which a coaching exercise occurs. Coaching skills help the manager develop the right attitude to help their mentees improve. In this case, valuable skills include empathy, respect, and reflective coaching.
Empathy
Empathy refers to the ability to put oneself in other people’s shoes. In this case, a coach must tentatively explore their subject’s thoughts without personal prejudices (McMahon, 2008). That will enable the manager to determine why individuals do things the way they do and how to help them improve. Empathy allows the concerned employee to explore their thoughts without fearing judgment and improve.
Respect
Also, respect will improve the coaching process. It is the ability to refrain from judging the affected individual’s actions. If individual employees anticipate being less favorably judged, they may refrain from providing accurate information to the manager (McMahon, 2008). Avoiding antagonism is important, especially when coaching an employee to help them improve their performance.
Reflective Coaching
Barnes et al. (2017) also emphasize the need to adopt reflective coaching. Here, the coach should approach the process as a thinking partnership, whereby the two parties figure out ways to improve. Reflective feedback shows the affected employees that the coach listened to their perspectives. In the end, reflective feedback aligns employees’ thinking with the organization’s new frames.
Areas Amy Should Improve Based on the T-sheet
As per Amy’s T-sheet, one of the areas that Amy needs to be coached about is improving customer service. At one point, she visibly turned away an elderly couple who needed assistance. A coach would want to hear why she did that and help her improve customer relationships. Amy also needs to improve her communication skills. At some point, she interjects her supervisors’ conversations in the presence of customers, which is inappropriate.
Steps to Support Amy
The first step to supporting Amy is to help her identify her problems. Since coaching is a thinking partnership, the next step is to select the goal and consider the consequences. In Amy’s case, one of the goals may be to improve her communication skills. After that, a decision is made about the objective one will pursue to become a better communicator. An evaluation to follow up on whether or not the action plan was successful is necessary. If not successful, a new action plan will be introduced.
References
Barnes, C. D., Bullard, M. B., & Kohler-Evans, P. (2017). Essential Coaching Skills for Affective Development. Journal of Education and Culture Studies, 1(2), 176. https://doi.org/10.22158/jecs.v1n2p176.
McMahon, G. (2008). Coaching Skills for Managers. Employee Well-Being Support, 69–78. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470773246.ch6.
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Question
Scenario: Amy Anderson, a Dennigee’s Store Team Leader – Assistant Store Manager, has received feedback in the past, but her performance does not seem to have improved. As the Team Leader – Store Manager, you have decided to provide Amy with more focused feedback and coach her on the important skills she needs to develop to be successful. For reference, see her T-Sheet:
Coaching a Team Member
Once again, assume the Team Leader – Store Manager role, then use course content and additional research to complete the steps below. Post your answers for this discussion assignment.
- Select and support what you feel to be the two most valuable skills that will help you provide beneficial coaching to improve Amy’s performance.
- Based on Amy A’s T-Sheet, what two issues will you coach Amy on to help her improve? Explain.
- Describe the steps you will take to support Amy. Be sure to include a follow-up component to your plan.