Performance Coaching

Abstract

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.

—John Quincy Adams

Over the years I have attended and taught many management and leadership classes. I have also received and written countless performance reviews. I have overseen the ratings and reviews for literally thousands of employees, starting when I ran a call center for a large retailer back in the late 80s, before I attended graduate school. One thing that is clear to me, after so many years participating in these annual and semi-annual corporate rituals, is that there is the potential for considerable ambiguity, particularly when assessing soft skills, those that cannot be measured using hard metrics such as the ability to meet deadlines or deliver revenue commitments.

This ambiguity makes it hard for employees to understand how to meet their manager’s expectations. It makes it hard for them to understand the factors that may be limiting their progress from a junior player in the organization to a more senior role. I believe this ambiguity can be clarified, although there will probably always be some qualitative differences in perspective between employee and manager, and even among different managers.

For these soft skills, I believe performance coaching needs to be emphasized over performance management. This is because at many organizations, performance management focuses primarily on promoting the fittest and eliminating the weak. The process looks at who is getting the best ratings and who is getting the worst. Managers then work to remove the lowest performers from the organization. This selection process is a natural cycle, and one that should continue to play a role. However, I believe that coaching can yield better long-term results, both for individuals and for the organization. Coaching focuses on helping everyone in the organization, including ourselves, reach their full potential. The ultimate goal is to create a high-performance organization in which everyone performs to the utmost of his or her ability.

To effectively coach people, we need to be able to define the soft skills that are required at each level of the progression from entry-level employee to executive. Then we can coach them about how to acquire these skills and move up the organization. The tables in this chapter are intended to provide those definitions, to provide some clarity in these areas of potential ambiguity. They are based on tables that I have used, adapted, tested, and refined over many years in a wide variety of roles. Although I created the tables for my own employees, the skills listed in the tables are not specific to information risk professionals; they may be equally applicable to employees in other disciplines.

The soft skills in the tables generally describe how people work, which can be almost as important to the organization as what they do. How people behave and communicate affects not only their own ability to achieve goals but also the performance of those around them. An individual contributor who interacts poorly with others may impair the performance of his or her team, and cause interpersonal problems that the team’s manager has to spend time fixing. A senior manager who lacks these soft skills can have an even broader impact, hindering the performance of the organization.

I have published older versions of these tables to my employees, in the belief that feedback should be multi-directional and that leaders as well as employees should be measured using the same publicly available criteria. I have also shared these tables with industry peers. I am providing them in this book in the hope that they will be beneficial to others, and that they will generate comments and feedback that I can use to improve future iterations of this living document.

How to Use the Tables

Each of the 11 tables in this chapter focuses on a specific area of soft skills, such as initiative, commitment, professionalism, or communication. Each table follows the same format, with five columns representing the skills required at progressively higher levels of the organization, from junior employees to emerging executives. The leftmost two columns represent individual contributors: entry-level employees and more seasoned intermediate professionals. The rightmost three columns represent increasingly senior management positions: a line manager responsible for a team; a senior manager who may be responsible for multiple teams, each headed by a line manager; and a leader who is responsible for an entire information risk organization and should be able to work directly with the company’s board and top executives.

As one might expect when discussing soft skills, this is not an exact science. The columns show a progression, but they do not represent a precise scale, and there is overlap in some areas. An implicit assumption throughout the tables is that someone in a more senior role has already acquired the skills needed in less-senior positions (i.e. in the columns farther to the left). The skills required at more junior levels tend to be more narrowly defined and constrained; those required at more senior levels tend to be broader in scope, with more far-reaching impact. For these reasons, the tables may be easiest to absorb by reading down the columns (to see all the skills for each role) rather than across the rows.

Over the years, I have used these tables in various ways. I have used them to help employees understand where they need to enhance their skills and abilities if they want to move up to more senior positions. I’ve also used them to help employees self-assess. Here are some examples of ways to use the tables in everyday work situations :

• An employee believes he or she should be promoted to a more senior position. You ask them to assess their own skills in each area. You also do your own assessment of their skills. Then the two of you discuss any differences between those assessments, and pinpoint areas that the employee should work on in order to acquire the skills needed for a higher-level position.

• You provide an entry-level employee, enthusiastic but fresh out of college, with a roadmap of the skills they’ll need to acquire if they want to progress to VP level in the future. This gives them a practical tool that they can use to guide their personal and career development.

• You use the tables to identify your own Achilles’ heel, the weak spot that hinders your progression to an executive level. You notice that even though your skills mostly match those in the Emerging Executive column, the skills in a few areas correspond to those that you’d expect in a more junior manager. Those are skills that you need to improve.

• During a coaching session with an employee, you count roughly how many of their skills are already at the next most senior level, the next column in the table. If 80% of their skills match, they may be ready to move up. If there’s only a 20% match, they need to work on bringing the rest of their skills up to scratch.

The tables cover the following areas: independence and initiative, efficiency and effectiveness, commitment, professionalism, discipline, teamwork, problem-solving, communication skills, and goal-setting.

Independence and Initiative

This category, as its name suggests, is all about someone’s ability to act independently and take the initiative. As you’d expect, the expectations increase dramatically as one progresses up the organization. An entry-level employee may require very specific direction for each new task. A more experienced employee (Intermediate) should be able to define action plans and complete small projects with minimal supervision. A line manager should take responsibility for leading his or her team. An emerging executive can deal with tough issues at executive level, and take responsibility for risky independent decisions that he or she believes are in the best interest of the organization. See Table 11-1.

Table 11-1. Independence and Initiative

Efficiency and Effectiveness

Efficiency and effectiveness are both important, related skills. An efficient employee works quickly and uses fewer resources. An effective employee is highly productive. A company that combines effectiveness and efficiency achieves better results faster, using fewer resources. Table 11-2 shows the progression from an entry-level employee’s ability to follow efficient processes to a manager’s ability to manage the resources of a group or an entire organization.

Table 11-2. Efficiency and Effectiveness

Commitment

Commitment reflects someone’s loyalty to the organization and their willingness to devote time and energy to the cause. In an entry-level employee, commitment is demonstrated by personal work ethic and willingness to take on more work. As people move up the organization, they demonstrate commitment by taking ownership of bigger issues and focusing on driving the best outcome for the organization. See Table 11-3.

Table 11-3. Commitment

Professionalism

Professionalism is the extent to which someone demonstrates the attitudes, skills, and methods required to execute their professional role. For an entry-level employee, this includes adhering to established company policies. For senior managers, it involves demonstrating broader and deeper adoption of the company’s values and principles. See Table 11-4.

Table 11-4. Professionalism

Discipline

Discipline is the ability to remain focused and execute consistently despite the many distractions of everyday working life. As employees rise to higher-level positions, the distractions and demands increase, requiring greater focus and discipline. See Table 11-5.

Table 11-5. Discipline

Teamwork

Individuals must be able to recognize the need to work with others as a team, share expertise, and take on suitable team roles. Managers need to create, inspire, and lead teams, utilizing each member’s talents in the best way. See Table 11-6.

Table 11-6. Teamwork

Problem-Solving

Problem-solving is an important skill for any information risk management professional. Individual contributors need to be able to analyze and solve problems. Managers need to help their teams solve problems and focus on broader issues including those that involve other organizations. See Table 11-7.

Table 11-7. Problem-solving

Communication

Good communication helps organizations thrive. It is essential in almost any role, from entry-level team members who must communicate with their colleagues and managers to executives who must communicate messages to the entire organization. Because communications skills are so important, I’ve divided them into three areas, each with its own table: listening, style, and clarity.

Listening

Communication starts with listening. For junior employees, the ability to listen helps create a clear understanding of what’s required. More senior employees actively solicit multiple viewpoints, listen for the meaning behind the words, and intercept emotional outpourings that can overwhelm a situation. See Table 11-8.

Table 11-8. Communication Skills: Listening

Style

How you communicate can be as important as what you communicate. Each person’s communication style should develop to match their role as they progress through the organization. See Table 11-9.

Table 11-9. Communication Skills: Style

Clarity

Clear communication helps ensure that information and ideas are accurately shared throughout the organization. Experienced staff should be able to summarize data and create clarity from a confusing mass of information. Senior managers create consistent and clear messages for diverse audiences. See Table 11-10.

Table 11-10. Communication Skills: Clarity

Goal-Setting

All experienced staff should be able to identify and set goals, from line managers setting goals for their team to leaders defining the organization’s mission. See Table 11-11.

Table 11-11. Goal-Setting

Conclusion

I believe that performance coaching focused on soft skills can help everyone in the organization achieve their full potential, and thus contribute to the creation of a high-performance organization. I’d like to conclude by examining what makes a manager an effective performance coach. A good performance coach

• Develops and mentors managers and other employees, managing people to higher expectations and greater results.

• Stretches others and themselves to achieve beyond the norm, and rejects mediocrity.

• Creates more key players than he or she consumes, becoming a net developer of people for the organization.

• Holds people accountable for results and coaches them to achieve those results.

• Distinguishes motion from progress, and separates the means from the end.

• Responds positively to feedback about his or her own behavior as a manager or individual.

• Is sought out to provide performance coaching to senior players who report to other managers.

• Handles tough conversations with employees about their behavior or performance crisply, without creating a litigation risk.

• Saves senior players from self-destructing or falling short of their potential.

• Demonstrates empathy and can save employees who are struggling due to work-related or personal reasons and might otherwise leave the organization.