Coaching a Team

Coaching isn’t the same as setting objectives or conducting a performance review. At its core, coaching is about helping a direct report—someone who reports directly to you—reach their full potential. It’s a fundamental part of effective leadership and should be tailored to match the individual’s current level of performance.

Coaching means actively supporting your team members to develop, adjust, or enhance their behaviour to improve outcomes. It’s an ongoing process that can focus on building specific skills or addressing other factors that may be impacting performance.

With regards to performance and how it meets expectations, people can generally be divided into three groups:

1. Performance Exceeders – People who have capabilities above the role that they are in
2. Performance Meeters – People whose current skills and motivation seem to be a good match for the role they are in
3. Performance Laggers – People whose current performance does not meet expectations.

People at different levels of performance need coaching in different ways – remembering that a coaching session is not a performance review!

Download the resource document attached to this page to learn more about three kinds of performers.

The following are three worksheets that will better prepare you for any upcoming coaching sessions and help you diagnose the performance of the individual. They are as follows:

1. Performance diagnosis worksheet
2. Coaching priorities and strategies worksheet
3. Coaching timetable worksheet

Before using these, it is important to have a clear understanding of how to coach others and how different levels of performance can influence the level of coaching you provide. 

In order to make the most out of your coaching session, proper preparation needs to be done. This will allow you to tailor your session to the employees performance, and provide examples to make the session run smoothly.

Prior to a coaching session, you should have done two things:

1. Observed the employees performance and collected examples
2. Completed a planning checklist, covering areas such as purpose, praise, and concerns – while providing specific examples for each.

Download the resource document attached to this page to gain a greater understanding of the process setting up a coaching session. When you are ready, use the ‘Coaching session templates’ in the related resource below to help you prepare for any upcoming sessions.

Once you have filled these out, you are ready to approach the individual and set up the coaching session. This is a particularly important step if you have never set up a coaching session with the individual before, and it is a good idea to follow the checklist in the resource document if the employee is unfamiliar with the idea. Following this checklist will put a positive light on the process, and making the staff member feel comfortable is critical to success.

Download the document to review the steps to running a coaching session.

An ‘expectation lagger’ is someone whose performance does not meet expectations. As a coach, you can help the individual identify the reason for this performance gap, and with effective coaching, you can close it.

When running a coaching session, there are 5 steps that you should follow:

1. Open the session
2. Praise select aspects of the individual’s work
3. Explain how you view their performance
4. Explore what their options are from here
5. Agree on what will occur before the next session.

The resource tool through these steps again, made specific for coaching expectation laggers. In this performance group, there is an extra step between ‘explain’ and ‘explore’ called ‘opening the gate’. This is because you cannot proceed with exploring options for improvement unless the individual agrees that there is a need for performance improvement. It is also important in this performance group to choose your language carefully, using words and phrases that focus on helping the individual rather than condemning their efforts.

When running a coaching session, there is an easy 5 step framework that can guide you.

Expectation ‘meeters’ and ‘exceeders’ are those who are either performing to expectations, or clearly surpassing them. Despite there being no issues with their performance, it is still important that these groups are given adequate coaching time to maximise their potential.

A coaching session for meeters and exceeders should still follow the same 5 stages as the session for laggers. Again, these steps are:

1. Open the session
2. Praise select aspects of the individual’s work
3. Explain how you view their performance
4. Explore what their options are from here
5. Agree on what will occur before the next session

The resource tool deals specifically with coaching expectation meeters and exceeders. As with expectation laggers, meeters and exceeders each have a unique take on these 5 steps. It is also possible that skill development is part of your coaching strategy here, to help your direct report to reach their full potential. The end of this document contains an outline of the skill development model for coaching sessions.

Use the following information sheet as a guide for coaching both meeters and exceeders in your team.