Finding the right tech stars is just the first stage in building an incredible team.
Once a recruitment specialist like ROD has presented you with the appropriate candidates for your role, you need to conduct the interviews, onboard your new employee and set them up for success in the future. This doesn’t just mean giving each team member the right tools they need for their new data analyst or Blockchain role; it also means ensuring that they have the proper support to help them excel in their position.
Even the best recruits can improve their skills, productivity, and performance with a little coaching. A coaching strategy makes team members feel more satisfied in their role, which reduces turnover and improves motivation.
So, how do you boost your coaching skills?
1. Tie Coaching to Clear Goals
Coaching provides employees with a channel through which they can discuss what they want to achieve with your business. By combining the ambitions of your team members with your business targets, you create a development roadmap that keeps your people engaged and your company competitive.
For instance, if your new data analyst wants to become a manager somewhere down the line, ask yourself how you can deliver leadership skills that will make them more efficient in their current role too. For instance, the ability to be agile and respond to issues quickly is useful for both a future manager and a data scientist.
Goals will also give you a way to measure the development of your employees over time.
2. Develop Your Coaching Process
A great coach isn’t just committed to teaching; they’re focused on continually learning too. Coaches know how to evaluate their work as a motivational leader and respond to the changing needs of the people they’re working with.
Building accountability into your coaching strategies is crucial. If someone isn’t reaching their goals quickly, sit down together and analyse why that is. If the employee just isn’t doing the work required to develop their skills, ask them why. Maybe their personal goals have changed, and you need to adjust your coaching strategy accordingly.
The best way to continually improve your coaching skills is to open the lines of constant communication. Schedule regular follow-up appointments with the employees you’re coaching, and ask for their feedback, review their input, and discuss opportunities for the future.
3. Provide Developmental and Corrective Coaching
When bringing a new employee into a team, many managers start by focusing on the issues they need to correct with their coaching strategies. Corrective coaching concentrates on overcoming old habits that your staff might be holding onto from previous jobs. It also includes regularly analysing each employee’s performance and giving them useful feedback.
Corrective coaching ensures that you overcome any issues with a team member’s work quickly. However, “developmental” coaching is essential too. Developmental coaching is when you pay attention to an employee’s goals, listen to their questions, and help them grow accordingly.
A corrective coaching process might mean teaching someone how to use software more efficiently so that they can meet business deadlines. A developmental coaching process considers the goals mentioned above and ties the training your people receive today, to their targets for the future. For example, if your employee wants to get into blockchain technology eventually, but they’re currently a finance manager, you can enrol them on a course on blockchain available outside of their working hours.
4. Avoid Enabling
Coaching is an excellent experience for both the coach and the employee. The person receiving support gets to improve their skills, while the coach sees an increase in business success and team productivity.
The desire for coaching to be a smooth and successful process, however, can lead to problems when leaders attempt to solve other people’s problems for them. Mistakes are learning opportunities, and if you do too much for your employees, you short-circuit the learning process.
Allow staff members to find their own solutions to problems. Provide insight and guidance but encourage the individual to be creative and uncover the answers themselves. This creates a competent team of people who can trust their own ability to overcome hurdles, rather than turning to tech leaders for help.
5. Stay Positive
Finally, some people respond better to coaching than others. While certain employees will improve rapidly, others will need different types of training and support before you begin to see results. Even in the toughest situations, it’s important to remain positive.
The best coaches show confidence in their employee’s abilities, even when those staff members doubt themselves. They encourage each to get to the heart of their problems, improve their emotional intelligence, and respond to issues with a “growth” mindset.
Great coaches highlight a person’s strengths and remind them that their weaknesses are just new opportunities to learn. The result is an innovative and confident technology team that doesn’t let anything hold them back.