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High performing cultures are made up of high performing people, so enabling individuals to perform at their best is a priority. The key to this is performance enablement.
Performance enablement looks at the employee as a person – their goals, their motivations, their wellbeing, and their barriers – and identifies what support and resources they need to achieve their full potential.
Unlike annual performance reviews, performance enablement requires a people-centric approach. Managers need to have the right conversations, at the right time, with the right actions and accountability. In effect, every manager needs to become a coach.
Yet most managers are not coaches. They are, more often than not, employees who have risen through the ranks, or joined from a management position elsewhere. To be able to successfully coach their employees and unlock their full potential, they too need support, resources and training that’s consistent and practical.
Help managers to become coaches
With the right framework, managers can become performance enablers holistically.
So, for performance management platforms to have a tangible impact on performance, they need to provide a framework that makes this possible, giving managers the tools they need to enable their employees to use their talent and increase their productivity.
Unfortunately, most performance management tools don’t incorporate coaching methodology, focusing on employee performance metrics, as opposed to what’s driving them.
At OpenBlend, we put coaching at the heart of our platform. Our founder and CEO Anna Rasmussen was a coach before launching OpenBlend and wanted to create a framework that made people-centric performance enablement part of the fabric of an organisation’s management structure.
How to focus on performance coaching?
Have the right conversations, at the right time
Ensure one-to-ones allow employees to set the agenda, to discuss what they need to discuss, when they need to discuss it, and encourage open, honest and structured dialogue that proactively targets issues as they arise.
Identify individual drivers and motivators
To get results, performance enablement needs to reflect every employee’s unique motivations, challenges and circumstances. Yet employees are not always forthcoming with this information, and managers need to ask the right questions to get to the heart of what really enables each individual’s performance. Whether that be career progression and recognition or personal priorities like family life and fitness. It is a manager’s role to equip themselves with this insight as it provides valuable context for every management conversation and enables more informed goal setting.
Follow a coaching framework for more effective conversations
Keeping track of every employee’s personal drivers and circumstances and managing their disparate needs is no mean feat. Not every manager will be an expert on each employee’s situation, but what they can be is a facilitator, working through the employee’s agenda and helping them to select their best options, as opposed to setting the direction and dictating the conversation. The GROW framework (Goal, Reality, Options, Way Forward) is a great tool that can guide managers through a series of coaching conversations to create accountable, measurable steps with the employee. This simple framework is valued by leaders and coaches, whether for a quick check-in, a team meeting, a coaching or mentoring session or planning a long-term change initiative.
Assess progress on objectives and improve accountability
Once GROW objectives have been set, managers can use the capability/motivation matrix to assess their progress and bring to light any barriers that are preventing employees from achieving their objectives. It’s a framework that allows managers to tackle difficult conversations from a coaching perspective, creating a positive, constructive interaction for the employee that drives better performance and greater accountability.
Coaching is a true enabler in supporting every employee to achieve their full potential.
