The Effective Manager as a Coach: Coaching Your Team Members For Outstanding Performance

This highly interactive Webinar offers you and your team an array of practical tools to coach effectively in today's work environment.

You'll learn practical techniques for making your direct reports feel welcome, trust you to maintain confidences, to listen and develop an Action Plan collaboratively with each f your team members, enhancing your overall team performance!

By attending, you will understand how to even more effectively:

• Mentor and coach
• Teach
• Determine your Mentor/Coaching Goals
• Maintain confidentiality
• Define Areas of Limits
• Define Communication
• Discuss Time Commitments
• Openness and Respect
• Keep it Professional
• Continuous Self-Improvement
• Communicate the Knowledge
• Allow for Failure
• Provide a System of Rewards

What We Will Address:
Keys to being a successful Mentor / Coach: Being a mentor/coach is an important informal and ongoing portion of being a successful manager. To better help you understand how to be a good mentor, follow these characteristics of what a successful mentor/coach might practice.

Be a Teacher
Mentor/coaching decisions should never interfere with your managerial decisions. The employee is not necessarily bound to take your advice, and some may choose not to. Do not get discouraged; rather keep providing opportunities for them to improve. Managerial decisions should focus on the business aspect, while the mentor/coaching aspect should only focus on the improvement and success of your employees.

Determine your Mentor/Coaching Goals
Determine what you want to accomplish through mentoring. What goals are you setting for yourself to achieve by mentoring your employees. It is important that you communicate these goals with the employee.

Keep Confidentiality
Both parties need to feel confident that discussions will remain between them. Both parties must also feel confident that discussions are only for the area of improvement for the employee, not as a disciplinary action. This will keep the lines of communication open for the flow of honest information.

Define Areas of Limits
It is important that areas off limits for discussion are clearly defined. Some areas of improvement may spill into your employee’s personal life and either of you may feel uncomfortable discussing those areas. It is important to define those areas of limits before, or as close to the beginning of the working relationship as possible.

Define Communication
How will you do your one-to-one level of being a mentor? Will you have regularly scheduled meetings? Will you do it at yearly reviews? Both parties need to make their preferences known at the beginning or as close to the beginning of the working relationship as possible. If there are different preferences, try to reach an acceptable compromise. Remember, you are trying to provide and atmosphere for improvement. You do not want to shut down the lines of communication before you even begin.

Discuss Time Commitments
A mentor must give employees adequate time for improvement. Setting a schedule at the beginning avoids irritating misunderstandings later. This especially could be utilized during every review.

Openness and Respect
Both the mentor/coach and the employee being mentored need to be open and honest, yet respect the other. A mentor/coach that withholds important information or comments does not contribute to the employee’s improvement. However, such comments should be delivered with tact and courtesy – and (even if somewhat hurtful) received with an open mind. Both parties need to understand this, and observe it. It is important that this be expressed in the beginning, or as close to the beginning as possible, of the working relationship.
Keep it Professional
The relationship between the mentor/coach and their employee is a professional one, not a personal one. It is particularly important that the employee understand this point. Both parties must understand that the goal is to provide an avenue of success for the employee, and any comments are made in an effort to achieve that goal. No comment should ever be considered, or made, as a personal attack.

Continuous Self-Improvement
Every mentor/coach must continuously be improving themselves as well as the employee, especially in areas of communication and interpersonal relationships. We all have areas that need improvement; and advancements in communication and interpersonal styles can improve the mentor/employee relationship. Good communication and interpersonal skills will improve employee acceptance, and limit the feeling of being criticized.

Communicate the Knowledge
You want to accelerate the employee’s ability to accept more and bigger responsibilities and mange them successfully. Create a way to get them involved in business outcomes as soon as possible. Make a point of including them in a decision process. Explain where their thinking is not in alignment with yours. Remember, you are trying to create confidence in the ability to make good decisions and carry them out. Try to play to the employee’s strengths and interests.

Allow for Failure
Make sure the employee knows that they can come to you if they feel things are not going well. Acknowledge the fact that they had the ability to see the problem, and if things happen to get to the point of failure before you are made aware, ask for an analysis of what went wrong and the lessons learned.

Provide a System of Rewards
When an employee reaches an improvement goal, have a set system of rewards. You would be amazed how well received a simple acknowledgement of a job well done can be. Make sure you convey the importance of the accomplishment that was achieved, and begin focus on the next goal.

Are you feeling a bit overwhelmed when it comes to coaching? Could you use a ‘coaching refresher", to help you get a better handle on things? Would you like to brush up on your coaching and mentoring skills?
If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then come laugh, listen and learn as Chris DeVany leads us all through those important topics, key questions and answers we all need to be able to address effectively to improve our communication effectiveness, improve our team members’ and team’s performance, adding to the bottom-line!

• CEO
• Senior Vice President
• Vice President
• Executive Director
• Managing Director
• Regional Vice President
• Area Supervisor
• Manager

Chris DeVany is the founder and president of Pinnacle Performance Improvement Worldwide, a firm that focuses on management and organization development. Pinnacle’s clients include organizations such as Microsoft, Visa International, Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Sprint, American Counseling Association, Aviva Insurance, U.S. Patent, and Trademark Office, Big Brothers and Big Sisters, Hospital Corporation of America, Schlumberger, Morgan Stanley, Boston Scientific, US HealthCare and over 500 other organizations in 22 countries.

He has published numerous articles in the fields of project management, management, sales, team-building, leadership, ethics, customer service, diversity, and work-life balance, in publications ranging from ASTD/Performance in Practice to Customer Service Management. His McGraw-Hill book, “90 Days to a High-Performance Team,” is replete with hands-on tools, templates, and checklists which managers use effectively to improve performance.