The Importance of Coaching Employees
April 12, 2010 by Publisher
Filed under Management
Coaching employees is a key element of management, and can help you develop a better relationship with your workers, thus resulting in higher productivity and greater morale. Beyond simply managing, coaching your employees can help them better fulfill their potential, develop their skills, and better utilize the ones they have.
The managerial skill of coaching involves helping employees overcome limitations. It means focusing not on the specific tasks, but rather on the actual person. There are several recommended components to doing this properly:
- Provide advice and direction–on career path, on dealing with organizational politics, on completing the tasks at hand.
- Let your employee speak. Ask questions that will allow him to “find his own answers,” so to speak.
- Schedule coaching sessions with each employee. This will help you find out his goals and personal challenges.
- Explain to your employees how coaching works, and get their feedback on the areas they would like to be coached in.
- Determine the outcomes your employees are looking for, and the perceived difficulties in achieving them.
- Ask your employees for a game plan to help keep everyone on the same path of overcoming obstacles and reaching goals.
Certainly, not all coaching needs to be this formal. Always being open to feedback from your employees is what counts, and can be the deciding factor in running a smooth operation for any independent retailer.
There is an epidemic spreading across retail as a result of the recession. With so many people out of work you would think that the caliber of employee staff in retailers should be of a higher quality. Instead the quality of staff has dwindled down to robotic people more interested in talking and texting on their phone than helping a customer.
It is very sad to see for someone who has been involved with retail as a consultant for designing stores and keeping them great. I truly believe that service will become the point of difference between retailers and the store that can provide energetic,knowledgeable, and caring staff members ( such as the Container store ) will remain alive to serve their customers.
This kind of staff associate comes from corporate training and not allowing bad service to prevail at store level.
Jerry Birnbach F.I.S.P.
Parter Retail Design Experts
Thanks for the comment, Jerry. It’s odd and ironic that the recession would result in a lowering of the quality of employees, especially when the amount of people out of work has risen. Customer service, as you’ve indicated, is extremely important to the success of any retailer.