Coaching Resources Consolidated

 

You cannot repair every worker performance problem in your project. But all is not lost, you can assist the team leads or managers who are responsible to fix the performance problems.

We have discussed previously in the Eye that people are promoted for doing well in skills that are used less than their new position. (You may recall me describing a study showed that better results are achieved by promoting people at random as opposed to promoting based on how well they did in the previous job.) This just adds to the need for coaching.

Read more about how important coaching is now for your career improvement here (registration needed). And see how ADM implemented a huge coaching effort  ("Coaching to Win") to improve annual performance management here (registration).

So add coaching practice for project team leads to your training plan. Recognize that this may be a stretch for managers or team leads.  A long, long stretch. They will need customized preparation and real practice to get it right.

And consider these ideas:

• Coach those whose teams or team members are causing problems in your project.
• Look for those who are not good coaches. Manage these ask risk areas.
• Remember that workers in Gen Y have a problem with hierarchies and do better with coaching. Coach them rather than control them to get the results you want.
• Understand that annual performance evaluation is a waste of time without continuous coaching throughout the year.

Your Big Move:  Improve your career by becoming  an excellent coach yourself. This is  a critical skill and growing more so as organizations mature away from command and control and into a collaborative culture.

Need more help? Here are many additional resources just from gantthead. This should keep you busy for hours. Don't forget to keep track of your project.

More about coaching on my Eye on the Workforce  blog

Taking Advantage of Coachable Moments

You may not know this, but you miss out on coaching moments every day. These moments together are way more powerful than your formal annual or semi-annual performance reviews. Way more. Pricewaterhouse ...

Better Skill Development: It Plays in Peoria     

The winner of the 2011 Optimus Award for Managing Change goes to the city of Peoria. The one in Arizona. Why? They created a registered apprenticeship program to develop in-house talent. ...

Blowing the Coaching Moment

I was recently reminded how coaching is the universal immediate performance-improving technique. It is so good that it does not have to be executed perfectly to be effective. Yet there is one way you ...

An Experience You Don't Want to Duplicate

Jim Clemmer, training consultant, recently wrote about how he didn't like experiential learning like wilderness experiences. While there are many workers that project managers would like to abandon in ...

Get Ready to Run

OK, check your judgment with this question: Which of these four performance management strategies was found to drive far more “business impact” than the others?   (1)  Cascading Goals: aligning goa ...

Elsewhere on gantthead...

Step Up and Coach Your Teams for Success!   from   Extraordinary Leader

Coaching and mentoring is one the many aspects of a project/program managers responsibility. Great project /program managers will use various tools and techniques on their projects to acquire swift ...

Project HEADWAY: The Project Manager as Coach - What's the Game Plan?

Six Coaching Strategies that Facilitate Leadership Success   from   Strategic Project Management

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been thinking a lot about the traits that successful coaches have in common. Its probably because college football season started a couple of weeks ago, but as ...

Individual Performance Intervention Planner ( Specifications/Procedures - Template )

Before you go into a coaching meeting with a worker, make sure you are prepared for an uneventful discussion--or a lively one.

Time Out!

To be effective, coaching must blend a working knowledge of the mechanics of a skill set with experience of exercising that skill set in real-life situations. And sometimes, the better coach will always know when it is time to take out a player

Project Manager's Coaching Process Start-Up Guide ( Template )

This template has been designed to assist the project manager to prepare for the coaching process of one or more individuals.