Coaching and developing employees is always important. The first step in order to improve their performance, in any case, is counseling or coaching. When an employee reports to a supervisor, counseling or coaching is an essential part of their interaction. This is important even if the employee reports to other than the supervisor be it HR professional or line manager.

Moreover, coaching also provides positive feedback regarding the contribution of those who work under you. This way they will get to know when they are effective contributors. You can easily motivate as well as inspire your people when they do mess up. You can actually do that without killing their confidence or affecting motivation in anyways. It is important as to how you mentor your employees and turn their failure into success.

All managers should develop this skill of coaching employees and developing them through failures. Some tips for coaching and developing are as below:

1. Learn why they fail

The first step to coach your employees comes to first understanding why your employees fail. Once you know why they are failing, you can determine the best approach to coach them. Employees also need to understand what you expect out of them. You can pair newbies along with peer mentors thus making them comfortable with their job and your company. If you think they do not possess the right skills to do the job effectively, you can offer them to attend a training to become more successful in what they do. So, it is up to you to do things to make them successful. You can also take feedback from your employees if they are happy or not.

2. Give some room

Another tip to coach your employees through failure is giving them space. Every employee needs some space to adjust. If you do not give them that space, they might dislike you. Also, when they make a mistake give them a chance instead of blaming. They all deserve some room. They might not like you showing them the way they need to work. This will make them resent you even more. This thing often results in employee dissatisfaction.

3. Show them what was wrong

If you want your employees to recover from failure help them see what was wrong. It is going to help them in the long run. This is the easiest way to help them recover from failure. In order to motivate employees you as a manager can incorporate this tip. You can actually hold a frank and honest discussion about all this. Just make sure not to sugar coat their mistake and instead show them the truth. As a manager, it might be uncomfortable for you to give negative feedback. However, employees appreciate the truth. Also, for effective coaching, an employee must know the exact reason.

Also read: Create Superhero Employees with Leadership Coaching

4. Examine your expectations and adjust any need for perfection

You might have the pressure to push for 100% of your team. You might also consider it as a failure if things go less than perfectly. If you are into perfection, you need to understand that most people learn by experience. No amount of coaching can result in complete perfection. You need to adjust to the minor mistakes of learners. There are some cases where nothing less than perfection is acceptable. You need to examine your expectations and adjust yourself in those times. The World will obviously not stop spinning if an email doesn’t go out or is not given the answer by the end of the day.

5. Focus on Solutions

Every problem might have a solution. So, in order to develop the skill of coaching employees in the workplace, you need to find out the potential solutions to the problems. You can discuss some improvement actions in order to coach employees to deal with failures. If there is a high performing employee, you can discuss continuous improvement. For example, if someone is weak in drafting the letters or essays, etc. you can find affordable essay writing services and help them out. There is no reason to crib on what happened in the past. Instead, ask the employees to work on ideas to correct the problem as well as prevent it in the future.

Also read: Succession Management, Leadership and Mentoring

End by looking ahead

All this is important, but more important is to show the employees the road ahead. All you can do is close the coaching program by easily diverting employee focus from failure to success. Also, review on mistakes and make sure to leave everything on a positive note.

You can help your employees improve their performance by following the above tips. These will also make an already effective employee more effective. You can use performance coaching as a powerful tool. As a manager, you can take advantage of its effectiveness. So, it also depends on good managers. They will always approach the problem from a positive perspective. So, as a good manager, it becomes important that you work through the mistake along with your employee. You need to work on to see why things become wrong and how to avoid mistakes in the future. Accountability is always ahead and never takes a back seat. But you need to work on learning from the mistake to focus on the development of employees.

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