Week 2: How To Develop Coaching Model To Drive Employee Behavior
Week 3: How To Hold Millennia’s accountable and not be the bad guy
CREATING THE CULTURE FOR COACHING
Millennials are stigmatized to be the narcissist of the new workforce. The behaviors and characteristics of this new generation are creating a lot of change in the workforce which executives do not know how to handle. Unlike the old workforce that you just had to give orders to, Millennials are the complete opposite. It is difficult for executives and leadership in organizations to manage this new generation because they don’t like being told what to do and feel no obligation to remain in a company unless they share their ideas and creativity at work.
The problem is most companies have not provided ongoing opportunities to share and express ideas openly and collaborative with Millennials. This problem remains because managers are not receiving proper training to coach this new workforce. The best place to start creating a culture of success is in the beginning; for this reason I propose a new line of coaching material directed to Millennial workforce that should be implemented in the corporate and startup world. By 2020 Millennials, will make up 50% of the workforce therefore it is crucial for management to learn and explore new ways of developing employees.
WHY SHOULD A COACHING CULTURE BE IMPLEMENTED?
By implementing a coaching model in your organization you will come to see the substantial role in understanding how the brain works and the relationship we build with people; and why now, more than any other time in the history of building leaders, knowing how to apply a knowledge of the brain in the corporate/private environment is an important and fundamental part of creating a context for change.
In fact, the role of a “coach” is intrinsically built into the role of managers and leaders. When we use brain science as the basis of a coaching methodology or communication, our goal is to make this as practical as possible. This article is about how to use this knowledge of the brain to communicate in the business environment and start creating a culture of transparency and expectations that employees set for themselves.
Neuroscience in coaching is in its infancy, and the learning involved in coaching is a staged approach that is gradual, but incremental. The ability to create a context for change is what coaching, management, and leadership are all about, and neuroscience is playing a critical part of this context development.
According to Pillay M.D in The Neuroscience of Great Leaders, telling employees what needs to be done is ineffective. By telling an employee what to do and setting expectations, anxiety is created, deactivating the amygdala. The amygdala is the fear and anxiety center of the brain and it’s connected to the thinking parts of the brain, in particular, the prefrontal cortex. What is interesting about this is that the prefrontal cortex gives human beings much of their intelligence and problem-solving ability. The prefrontal cortex has the ability to process both the current environment and memories. This is a region in the brain you want to keep open and active so new ideas and solutions can be implemented. Therefore as leaders, demanding and threatening employees creates stress on the amygdala and decreases performance.
CREATING A COACHING CULTURE
When a new manager or leader steps into the organization, or when change needs to be implemented people are discovering what is acceptable in the group and what is not. This transition from working individually to member status will cause some adjustments with some employees. In order for employees to buy into any change, they need to feel like they’re a part of its design and more importantly to see how they can benefit from it. The only way management can achieve this is by discovering each person’s internal drive. The best way in doing this is by one of the most valuable coaching tools – to ask better questions.
When starting to create a culture, make it your mission to get to know your employees and their behaviors.
These are some questions that can be of assistance to uncover employee behavior and ways they like to be coached.
- What areas do you want strength, improvement, or developed?
- What are the three most important things you would like to accomplish right now that would provide you with a deep sense of fulfillment and satisfaction?
- What is your action plan to achieve this goal?
- How can I best support you to achieve those goals?
- How can I hold you accountable in a way that will sound supportive and won’t come across as negative or micromanagement?
- How do you like to be managed?
Questions will assist employees in uncovering what internally motivates them based on their beliefs and values, so they can use their own energy to achieve it. It’s also uncovering a style of management they respond to best. In other words, leaders are setting the expectations on both sides by not only asking more questions – but asking BETTER questions to ease the transitional period. By doing this, as a leader you become an accountability partner with your employee as oppose to just holding employees accountable.
CREATING THE BLUEPRINT AND WHAT TO EXPECT FROM MANAGEMENT
In the building process, by getting to know the employees and creating transparency, management starts creating an action plan to help foster an environment of excellence.
Employees should understand what management is capable of and what they are not. Managers don’t always have the answers. Management cannot coach an employee around the “what-ifs”
What-ifs are points of time in the future, which haven’t happened yet, and evidently we can’t coach employees based on an unforeseen event. Coach, an employee, based on their behaviors, not their results.
By coaching an employee, it allows employees to analysis their own strength and draw their own conclusion in recognizing opportunity needed to succeed.
By effectively building bridges of communication with employees, management can focus on the emotion that is preventing the employee from taking action allowing management and the employee to work toward a solution for the future. Once management can identify why employees are afraid or why they don’t have enough conviction to execute their responsibilities, the management team can start to work forward by making decisions and aligning employees goal regarding what to do with their behaviors patterns.
If the goal is to successfully arrive at the ultimate resolution, the perceptive employee will have an understanding that the means to that is a step-by-step process.
Every interaction with a client is an investment of time and energy on the part of the customer, and every investment of time and energy should result in some kind of an action step to measure employee performance.
There are several reasons why Employee performance needs to be monitored:
1) To ensure work is being done, and targets met.
2) To provide data for any incentives/bonus that the employee may be eligible for.
3) To help in the growth and development of the employee.
4) To identify areas of discontent and solve for them to retain employees and reduce attrition.
5) To encourage employees to share their concerns with the right people at the right time thus creating an environment of well-being and high morale.
In conclusion, leaders need to let go of the illusion of control; millennials do not work in that way. By changing the delivery of training and development, leaders will work effectively with Millennials. Leaders should stop trying to manage and motivate employees because employees are already motivated hence they woke up and showed up to work! Instead of motivating them, uncover their talents and allow Millennials to come up with their own conclusions. Instead of telling them what to do, guide them through the process. Creating the culture for coaching is the beginning and once that’s established employee behavior needs to be coached as well because if employees deviate from the coaching model, as leaders we need to effectively hold them accountable for their behaviors in a way where they will not feel discouraged. Employee behavior is as equally important as is building the foundation. If you coach the behaviors, the results will show up.
As a Millennial or as a leader do you feel your culture creates opportunities and collaboration to share ideas and best practices with each other? If so how?
