In Your Corner Coaching & Consulting Services

As the end of the year approaches, managers and employees approach the season (no, not that season) with dread. It’s performance review time.

At worst, performance reviews can be an exercise in frustration, tension, fruitless efforts to retrieve memories of untracked goals, and sometimes evasion and whitewashing. But at its best, the performance review can be an opportunity for reward, development and retargeting for the coming year.

Mark Goulston of Fast Company magazine offers some wise words.

It’s important for the manager to keep in mind the purpose of performance reviews in the first place. If you’re not careful, performance reviews can be taken as a look at past performance for which the employee expects to be either castigated for doing poorly or rewarded with a raise. But looking back is not what a performance review should be about. Instead, the right perspective would be to ask “what information can I provide this employee that will help him or her reach a higher level of performance in the future?”

Read the whole article here.

You may want to look at the “What is Coaching?” page for an overview of what coaching is and when it can be beneficial. Here, we’ll be talking about what it’s like to be in a coaching relationship.

• It is a relationship. Fit between the two of you is important. Have an exploratory conversation with the coach. Ask about their approach to coaching. Get a feel for him or her - are you comfortable with his communication style? Is he relatively free of assumptions about clients and workable solutions? Is his value set congruent with yours? Is he someone you’d look forward to talking to?
• Be clear about what you are sure you want, but be open to looking at your assumptions in a new way. Let your coach know about the important issues that bring you to coaching. Is it a one-time situation, such as a career transition, an unexpectedly poor performance review, or a new challenge for which you feel ill-equipped? Or is it an ongoing problem: procrastination, impatience with subordinates, needing to improve relationships with people in your managerial chain?
• Be ready to describe what you know about yourself It’s helpful to tell your coach what you’re aware of about your interpersonal style, the areas where you are strong and those that regularly trip you up, how you work best, the kind of people who drive you over the rails, the things that powerfully motivate you . . . whatever you’re aware of that will help your coach’s input approach the target.
• Expect a clear plan for some combination of meetings, telephone conferences, assessments or inventories (if called for), and checkpoints. defined outcomes and expected timing. Rates and payment schedule should be part of this agreement. I recommend working on a month-by-month basis (for ongoing work) or a per-project contract (for well-defined initiatives like “develop an improved performance feedback system for me to use with my team”.
• Come prepared. When you’re working with me, this is unlikely to mean “come with your homework done.” I avoid tactics that make the client dependent on the coach. But it does mean coming prepared to engage in the reflection and consideration that will make a coaching session valuable to you.

  So set aside this time. Mute your other phone. Switch off your computer monitor. If there’s a huge project hanging over your head, jot down the items you’re afraid you might forget and take a minute to quiet your mind and remind yourself that a short investment in increasing your capacity for effectiveness will pay off in the successful completion of the project.