Skills Library

Coaching and Developing Others

What this looks like:

  • Builds rapport with employees to better understand their career goals and takes steps to optimize the employee’s potential

  • Exercises courage when providing timely feedback, mentorship, and coaching to help employees learn and grow

  • Listens and asks questions to understand employee’s point of view

  • Helps employees identify their strengths and areas of opportunity and visualize how they’re going to achieve their career goal

On-the-job practice

  • Provide a hybrid learning approach. Everyone learns at a different pace so provide a range of avenues where people can learn at their best.

    • Try this: For self-paced learning, recommend your employees online trainings (Udemy, Lynda.com, Safari Books, etc.), articles, books, podcasts (use the Feed Learning Archive),

    • Try this: For on-the job practice, offer job-shadowing, allow the individual to join a task force, assign a project that helps the individual develop a particular skillset, or use these challenges from the Feed Learning Archive.

  • Facilitate a learning culture. As a manager, you set the tone for growth and development on your team. As much as possible, incorporate ‘learning moments’ throughout your meetings, processes, projects, etc.

    • Try this: Dedicate at least one 1:1 meeting per quarter to discuss each employee’s personal development. To guide the conversation, have your employee fill out this Career Development Plan and update it on a quarterly basis.

    • Try this: Hold a pre- and post-training conversation with the individual to discuss goals and items the employee hopes to learn (pre-training), and debrief on what the employee actually learned (post-meeting) and how he/she can incorporate the lessons on the team. These conversations can be during your weekly 1:1’s.

    • Try this: If an individual attends a training, seminar, conference, etc., encourage him/her to spend 5-10 minutes to highlight the key learnings during the next team meeting. Allowing the individual to teach the lesson to the team will help him/her master and apply the skill (teaching is mastery), and the team will benefit from the new information.

  • Ask more questions and give less answers. People retain information better when they go through the thought process of finding out the answers versus being handed the answer.

    • Try this: When an individual asks you a question or solicits your advice, resist the impulse to answer them right away. Instead, return the question back to them and allow them to share their thoughts—this will help them build their confidence plus give you time to think about your answer, too. E.g., What are your thoughts? What do you recommend? Why? The more opportunity you give employees to share their opinions and ideas, the more empowered they feel to continue to add value to the team.

    • Try this: Conduct a debrief after each project to help individuals learn from their past experience. There are three simple questions to ask: What went well? What could have been improved? What would you do differently next time?

  • Know your employee’s motivation. People are more productive and engaged when they enjoy the work they do and understand how they add value to the company. Learn more about your employee to help tailor their projects to their interests.

    • Try this: Ask each employee what they’re truly passionate about and what they enjoy most about their job e.g., What do you like most about your job? What type of projects interest you most? Why? In what type of environment do you do your best work?

    • Try this: Conduct an [anonymous] engagement survey to learn more about the temperature of your team. Use the results to help create a more positive environment for the employees to learn and grow. Engagement survey questions can include: What do you like most about your job? What do you need from your manager to succeed at work? What keeps you motivated at work?

Resources for more inspiration

Articles

BOOKS

PODCASTS

Videos

 

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