The Importance of Asking Questions to Coach Employees

August 17, 2014 Employee Performance and Coaching, Employee Relations, Performance Reviews, The Manager's Resource Handbook

How to Coach and Develop Your Employees

As managers, one of our primary responsibilities is to mentor and coach employees. Employee development is a big deal because after all, it contributes directly to organizational performance and can also influence employee retention. While mentoring and coaching can often take place in short spurts during informal meetings or in hallway encounters, there are times when a specific conversation with an employee is necessary. Examples include times when you are trying to get even more from a high performer. Deliberate coaching may also be needed when you observe a specific area of improvement for a given employee. Ultimately, there are many situations when coaching is necessary to enhance the employee’s skills, as well as to address or correct areas of concern. Let’s identify some of the most common scenarios when coaching is required and introduce the techniques you can use to provide the employee with feedback.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Be sure to down our FREE 8-page Coaching Through Questions Guideline and our Employee Coaching Worksheet template!

A Proven Employee Coaching Method

Unfortunately, many managers view coaching as offering quick solutions or immediate answers to an employee when he or she encounters difficulty. While there are certainly times when a simple point in the right direction is all that is needed, teaching an employee to be resourceful or helping him or her think through more complex challenges often requires you do more than just give an immediate answer.

While it is possible to save time for both you and your staffer by offering an immediate solution to their problem, here are some negative impacts of simply telling the employee what to do:

When given an answer, employees are not driven to think for themselves.
When offered a solution or direction, the employee is less accountable for his or her actions.
When handed a way forward, the employee is likely to run into the same problem again.
If told what to do, the employee is unlikely to learn from the situation.

Alternatively, instead of telling an employee what to do, asking probing questions helps the employee overcome barriers to their own thinking. When employees are tasked with developing their own solutions, they learn to overcome obstacle independently. Probing questions also encourage employees to take more ownership of their work.

Examples of Telling Employees What to Do Versus Using Probing Questions to Coach Them
Example # 1
Telling: “Go talk to Jane. She will be able to give you the answer you are looking for.”
Probing Question: “Who might be able to help assist you in getting that information?”

Example # 2
Telling: “Set up a meeting with Bob to share your data and get his opinion.”
Probing Question: “How might you be able to get an expert opinion on what the data is telling you?”

Example # 3
Telling: “There are three different ways you can do this, but the best approach would be to send the customer the report now, and revise it later with the updated test results.”
Probing Question: “What options do you foresee?”

Now that we’ve introduced the idea of using probing questions to coach employees, let’s explore some common coaching situations. Outside of day-to-day mentoring and teaching, there are three primary situations when deliberate coaching is needed: coaching for high performance; coaching for development, and coaching an employee whose performance needs to improve. We will take a closer look at coaching employees in all three situations.

Coaching for High Performers:

Coaching high performers can actually be challenging because they are already very effective, successful and capable. This is often the most difficult situation to coach because we are often left wondering “How do I provide feedback when they are already doing all the right things?” Take a moment to think about your best employee. What constructive feedback are you able to give him or her?

Coaching high performers should focus on:

Anticipating new challenges and providing guidance on new tasks or assignments
Providing alternative approaches that might improve outcomes, or help in more difficult situations in the future
Timely on-the-spot feedback as a response to your observations
Helping solve organizational or people conflicts beyond their role
Exposure to higher complexity problems or challenges
Leveraging the employee’s positive behaviors and characteristics to influencing others
Preparation for future roles and positioning the employee for his or her longer term objectives

When meeting with high performers, encourage them to evaluate their strengths and ask how those strengths could be put to even more use. You may also ask the employee to construct a mission statement for their careers that is absent of department, product, location or the immediate business model. When you push a high performing employee to think about what it is that he or she really wants to do, it often helps them identify new ways they can learn and increase their ability to better the organization.

Please Take A Moment to Answer This Question in Support of Our Management Research!

How often do you have One on One meetings with your employees?

Coaching for Development:

Coaching for development can be necessary for any employee – high performers, average performers, or low performers. Coaching for development often focuses on exposing the employee to new experiences or introducing him or her to underdeveloped skills. The goal of coaching for development is to help the employee reach higher levels of performance and responsibility.

Coaching for development should focus on:

Teaching new ideas or skills to expand their abilities
Exposure to new responsibilities or experiences that enhance his or her ability to perform current job activities
Gain a better understanding of “the big picture,” thereby enabling them to perform their job more effectively

One of the most important points in coaching for development is ensuring the employee can see the why behind a given task or assignment. Towards the end of a coaching session, reinforce to the employee that their career growth and opportunity is highly dependent on their willingness to try new things, to learn new skills their openness to being placed in a difficult situation with intent to learn. Explain how the options they have identified are great options to help them grow.

Coaching for Improvement or Concern

Coaching for improvement or concern is required to address specific or wide-spread gaps in performance. Coaching for improvement is necessary to help the employee overcome issues that are preventing him or her from meeting individual goals or job expectations. Coaching for concern is necessary when the situation becomes serious and has gone unchanged after several conversations with the employee. These types of issues should be addressed early to prevent them from becoming endemic or problematic.

Coaching for improvement or concern should focus on:

Delinquency in timing, attendance or meeting general performance expectations
Potential long-term impacts or consequences that are at stake
Behavioral or interpersonal issues that affect the employee or other workers
Behaviors that negatively impact interpersonal dynamics, team performance or its ability to function effectively
Documenting gaps and performance concerns to prepare for future discussions
Discussion on possible consequences of inaction, or insignificant change, such as termination

In particular, coaching when there is concern can be draining and emotional for both the manager and the employee. Remain objective and stick to the facts during these discussions to keep the conversation from getting personal. Further, questions relating to coaching for concern are typically going to be more direct and deliberate to ensure there is a clear conversation. Again, the use of specific facts and details will help keep the discussion clear and objective. As an example, rather than say “How does missing meetings this week hurt the team?” you might want to say something like “How does missing four out of the five meetings we had this week hurt our six-member team?”

The Employee Coaching Process:

Coaching is most effective when the employee is given the time and opportunity to recreate your assessment (as their manager) of their performance in their own minds. To do this, coaching is best done through a simple five-step process.

Define The Current State – Defining and outlining the current state with the employee establishes awareness of the present context of a given situation. The current state serves as a basis against which future results can be measured.
Highlight the Benefit of Change – By defining and establishing value in the benefit of change, it encourages buy-in on the part of the employee. Discussing the potential improvements that can be made helps identify what the future might hold.
Seek Employee Ownership for Change – Unless the employee realizes he or she must own and embody changes or improvements, efforts will be futile. The employee must come to the realization that he or she is the only one able to make the changes.
Create and Action Plan – Outlining a future state and mapping out actions to get there helps the employee identify milestones in make a change. Action plans are perhaps the most important part of coaching, because actions serve as the means through which the future state will be obtained.
Revisit and Reinforce – Following up with the employee and checking on progress will help you tweak expectations as well as make adjustments should barriers or issues emerge. Reinforcement will also establish accountability on the part of the employee. When the actions and objectives are met, this then becomes the new future state.

Final Tips on Coaching Employees

So, while a simple point in the right direction may help busy managers remain focused on our duties, as leaders of people we must also schedule time to sit down with employees to have specific coaching discussions. By using probing questions, managers can improve their ability to mentor and grow their employees since employees who arrive at their own conclusions and solutions to problems will be able to apply the experience to the future.

Good Luck!