Every so often I come across articles on coaching in varied trade magazines and newsletters. I’m a firm believer in the strengths and positive results that come from positive coaching and communications up and down the employee chain. I’ve used the talent management and coaching method for many years and have always had tremendous success. So, I’m passing along some bullet points to those of you that manage your biggest asset: people.
The Society for Human Resource Management defines talent management as “the implementation of integrated strategies or systems designed to increase workplace productivity by developing improved processes for attracting, developing, retaining and utilizing people with the required skills and attitudes to meet current and future business needs.”
It’s essential to any company to not only recruit the best talent, but also retain it. One of the crucial strategies involved in effective talent management is to define competencies (knowledge, skills, experience and attitudes) that are needed to get the work done, the project completed, and then to coach various individuals toward that end. In essence, you need to assess the skills of your managers, and then provide them with the proper training so that their staff members are performing their jobs effectively.
Are your managers doing all they can to positively and consistently coach individuals in the areas that they need to be competent? Are you sure they’re matching what is needed for your business results to what is being coached? Are they also coaching the influencers on the staff? Are they tracking their results?
Some Perspective
Effective coaching is a challenge for today’s leadership. It’s tied directly to your overall talent management plan, which aligns your human capital and business strategies to support your financial/sales goals and positively impact your bottom-line results. In order to drive this, all your managers need to:
–Understand job skills.
–Learn the coaching process.
–Identify coachable performance problems.
Coaching experts say that anyone can benefit from coaching. Coaching involves observing, analyzing, demonstrating and giving feedback. Managing the talent you have is a continuous, long-term process. A talent mindset goes beyond an awareness of the importance of leadership. It includes a broad spectrum of the ability of all individuals to contribute to organizational success now and in the future.
With that in mind you need to:
• Reassess business issues in your market and your industry
• Start with assessing the talent in your company
• Develop a plan to increase performance by leveraging talent against current levels of performance.
• Provide coaching training for your supervisors….coach the coachers.
I heartily advocate you learn more about coaching and talent management (there are many books and online sources on the subject) and making sure that all of your managers are able to:
• Understand what coaching is, why it’s important, and how it supports individual and company goals
• Use observation and analysis to build a plan for successful dialogue with staff members
• Hold coaching conversations that improve an individual’s performance and increases productivity
• Use coaching as a way to build a valuable sense of teamwork between the team leader and team member through communication, shared goals, and collaboration
Walk out of your office away from your computer, your smartphone and your tablet and walk into the middle of the sales cubicles, the employee lounge, the IT department, the kitchen, anyplace where staff gathers.
Through intelligent and perceptive talent management, along with positive coaching, you will surely be able to build and keep your staff, reach the sales goals you need to reach and, ultimately, take your company to new levels of success.
