Coaching for Emotional Intelligence: The Secret to Developing the Star Potential in Your Employees

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COACHING FUNDAMENTALS

clarify what is now expected of the group and each member of the

team.

GOOD COACHING MAKES

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL EASIER

I can’t recall ever meeting a manager who described doing perform-

ance appraisals as one of his favorite management responsibilities.

Most leaders do performance appraisals because the organization

requires them to and because Human Resources has systems in

place to make sure they get done.

Performance appraisals become particularly uncomfortable for

both people involved when there has been too little ongoing coach-

ing throughout the performance year. If you use the coaching tools

you’ll study in this text, you will be in a position to do appraisals

that contain absolutely no surprises for the employees involved. You

will know that you are doing a good job as a coach when perform-

ance appraisals summarize all the coaching conversations you’ve

had with the employee throughout the performance cycle. Then you

can complete the appraisal interview by setting goals and perform-

ance objectives for the next review period.

If possible, ask your employees to do a self-appraisal and bring

it to the meeting. This is one way to find out whether they have been

listening to your coaching and whether they have understood you. If

they end up with different interpretations of your coaching, you can

be sure of one thing: You haven’t done a good enough job of making

certain that they understand you. Either you have been unclear or

they are distorting what they think they’ve heard you say.

Now let’s move on to the heart of the coaching relationship:

all the conversations you have with people about their performance

between formal appraisals. Do this job well and performance ap-

praisals will be easy.