Performance Coaching and Discipline Without Punishment

1. Performance Coaching and Discipline Without Punishment

2. Performance Coaching • Athletic coaches must coach constantly • Performance coaching focuses on effective job behaviors and activities • Performance coaching is positive and emphasizes what people are doing right

3. Performance Coaching • The goals of performance coaching: • To encourage people and teams • To show people and teams how to build on their strengths • To heighten people’s and teams’self-esteem and self-confidence • To enhance cooperation and participation within and among departments • To stop and correct inappropriate behavior

4. To build trust between management and team members • To reduce fear and increase risk taking and innovation (security nurtures creativity)

5. To align individual and team goals to organizational goals • To get people to realize that their self interests and the organization’s interests are inextricably bound together • To establish consequences for continued inappropriate behavior

6. Performance Coaching • All units in an organization should conduct performance coaching • Department managers for their departments (several managers if the department is large) • Higher management for department managers

7. The Multiple Roles Of Performance Coaching • Developmental • Evaluative • Defensive • Indoctrinational

8. Coaching Avoidance • Most managers would rather avoid the anger, anxiety, and discomfort involved • Timing of performance coaching sessions should be based on associate’s, not manager’s, needs and timing

9. Coaching Meetings • Quarterly departmental goal-setting and strategy sessions • If not more often in a highy competitive business • Quarterly individual performance coaching and performance agreement sessions • Frequent, daily if possible, feedback

10. Conducting Performance Coaching Sessions • Managers must know enough about a job to understand how it should be done • Managers must observe on-the-job behavior (it’s like watching game tapes)

11. Reactions To Coaching Sessions • People often react defensively to what are perceived to be negative comments • Don’t use the sandwich approach • Criticism-praise-criticism • Criticism causes people to become defensive: • Transfer blame to others (“not my fault”)

12. Many People Are Defensive • Ambivalent about improvement needs • See coaching as a threat to self-esteem (especially highly ego-centered talent or creative people) • Often people see it as a threat to independence • Often people are in outright denial

13. Games People Play • Most common rationalization games: • “Yeah, but” • “I’ll try” • Trying doesn’t cut it, doing what you’re supposed to cuts it • “It’s good that you’re trying hard, but what exactly are going to do to solve the problem. Tell me in steps 1, 2 and 3.”

14. Improvement Memos • If an associate exceeds expectations, write a memo to upper management • If an associate is not meeting standards, have him or her write an improvement or performance agreement outline • Keep management informed

15. Performance Coaching • Yearly performance evaluation or review sessions: • Once-a-year reviews at salary review times are worthless and counterproductive • Coaches who reviewed players once a year would be lose all their games and their jobs

16. Quarterly departmental goal-setting sessions: • Department’s mission, objectives, and strategies are narrowed down to key activities • Department discusses and jointly agrees on objectives, strategies, and activities • Participation in setting objectives leads to a department’s commitment

17. Brief, frequent (daily if possible) feedback sessions: • People need continual encouragement and reinforcement of the good things they do • Need “atta boys” • Must be open and honest • “What can I do to help?”

18. Feedback • Phrases to use: • “I know you want to improve, and if it’s OK with you, I have a few suggestions.” • I know you like to do a good job. Here are some things for you to think about that might help you do it a little better.”

19. “Be tough on standards, not on people” - tom peters • When giving feedback, give positive feedback first, then discuss opportunities for improvement

20. Who Conducts Performance Coaching Sessions: • All managers, all team members • Associates need feedback more than contact with top managers • They need it weekly

21. Unleash Associates’Motivation To Improve: • Management hires, coaches, and communicates values and objectives • If there is a problems, it is usually management’s • “There are no bad soldiers, only bad generals” - Napoleon

22. Establishing Consequences • Consequences laid out in advance. If people do A, B will happen. It’s their choice. • Coaching is encouragement, support – yes; but it doesn’t work unless there are meaningful, understood consequences • If you hold on to ineffective people too long, you’re being unfair to your organization and, more importantly, to effective performers

23. Discipline Without Punishment • Performance problems can usually be divided into three categories: • Attendance • Performance • Conduct

24. Traditional discipline systems: • Step 1 - Verbal reprimand • Step 2 - Written warning • Step 3 - Suspension without pay/ probation/final warning • Step 4 -Termination

25. Discipline Without Punishment • Level 1 - Oral reminder • Level 2 - Written reminder • Level 3 - Decision-making leave (paid) • Level 4 - Termination

26. In Discipline Without Punishment, it’s up to associates to change on their own • There has been enough discussion, they know the consequences • Paid leave puts the onus on them • Managers should view DWP as a technique for saving people. Each step is an opportunity to correct a problem. • Termination is a failure

27. Be a Coach • Who watches game films every day and gives feedback one-on-one every day • Not once a year • Who’s motivation is to teach the team how to win • Teach to win, not to avoid a loss • Without playing himself/herself