A Coach for Every Manager

Every. Single. Manager.

We were in the middle of a major organizational transformation. Our business model needed to change, the type of skill sets and talent needed to be different and the culture needed to shift. To support these changes, managers – who in most cases were long-tenured, highly knowledgeable subject matter experts we wanted to retain – were going to need to use vastly different metrics to hire, develop, coach, manage and exit employees than they had in the past.

Support for Managers

To support the managers, we changed the performance management system (made it more brief, less arduous, more casual), we provided training and job aids and we assigned every single manager a coach to guide them through the development of their expectations for employees, the summarizing of their observations of employee work and the preparation of their conversations with employees about which things were going well and which things not so much.

Benefit to Managers

Some managers got great benefit from this coaching support, were super-appreciative and took the opportunity to hone their people leadership craft. Others, not so much. Some of the others didn’t make the time, wouldn’t follow up, didn’t call back, missed their appointments, didn’t apply the learnings or felt it was a waste of time and money.

If It’s a Choice, Don’t Do It

I’ve written before about how management needs to be an expectation with clear success metrics and consequences. And before any HR initiative is rolled out we must ask the question: Are we doing this as a nice to have or is it a must do. In other words – Are we training people so they can choose whether to apply the learnings or are we training people because there will be consequences if they don’t apply the learnings; like safety protocol or GAAP accounting practices. If we’re spending money in HR it ought to be because it matters. Otherwise – spend your time on something else.