Tips for performance coaching sessions
The university staff performance coaching timeframe is approaching. The performance cycle for university staff runs from July 1-June 30, and the performance coaching task will launch in Cornerstone in February. Get tips and resources to help you prepare for coaching sessions.
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Tips for supervisors
This is a great time to check in with your employee(s) and decide what is going well and where there might be areas of improvement. Providing feedback is important to reinforce great work. It helps build a culture where employees feel respected and appreciated, while also providing clear examples and feedback for growth and improvement opportunities.听
When providing feedback, it鈥檚 important to lay out the facts of what you have observed. Give a clear and simple overview and description with examples. Giving blanket statements without actual examples is not helpful. When talking about the example, identify the impact of the action. This is a great way to highlight both positive feedback and areas for improvement.听
Talk through your employee鈥檚 accomplishments from the first half of the performance cycle while setting goals and objectives for the second half. If there are behaviors or expectations that must be addressed, discuss those together and document in your coaching notes.听
As a supervisor, ensure that you are asking your employee(s) what they need. How can you support them effectively as they enter into the second half of the performance cycle?听
It is important to also review the performance ratings when you meet for the coaching session and be clear about your expectations to reach the different rating levels. You can use the rubric to help employees understand the difference between the rating levels.
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Tips for employees
As an employee preparing for a coaching session, this is a time to assess your own performance and be able to discuss that with your supervisor. Think through what you feel has been positive from the first half of the cycle and areas for improvement.听
This is also a time to clarify expectations and communicate your needs. If you feel you need more clarity around your role, priorities to focus on or support from your supervisor, now is the time to ask for it.听
The coaching session should be a time to have an open, honest conversation between the supervisor and the employee. Come prepared and ensure that you give enough time without distractions to have this important conversation.
Professional development resources
Between Coursera and LinkedIn Learning, Student Affairs staff have access to resources that can help prepare for coaching sessions.
听 For all employees:
LinkedIn Learning | 48 minutes to complete
All professionals are trying to get better at what they do. No matter where you work, or what your role, the only way to improve is with feedback. Giving鈥攁nd receiving鈥攆eedback is a skill that's relevant to every member of an organization.
Watch this course to learn how to听give and receive high-quality feedback. Whether it's with peers, managers, colleagues, team members, friends, or family, the same principles apply across the board. Instructor Gemma Leigh Roberts shows how to give effective feedback, ask for feedback, and use the responses you receive as a tool to improve personal performance. These tips will help lead you into a cycle of continuous development, and a growth mindset that can help propel your career and your relationships forward.
Learning objectives:
- Getting comfortable asking for feedback
- Overcoming blind spots
- Creating a growth mindset
- Giving effective and unbiased feedback
LinkedIn Learning | 21 minutes to complete
Asking for feedback is integral to cultivating a growth mindset and being self-reliant鈥攖raits that managers want in all their employees, regardless of role or level. Jodi Glickman, bestselling author of Great on the Job, teaches you how to take ownership of your career by asking for specific and actionable feedback. Jodi provides a step-by-step process for asking for and getting meaningful feedback鈥攆rom planting a seed in advance, to scheduling the conversation, to receiving and responding to feedback in a way that strengthens your relationship with your boss. Plus, learn how to avoid common pitfalls, such as asking the wrong people, asking the wrong questions, and asking at the wrong time.
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LinkedIn Learning | 27 minutes to complete
Plenty of people have had the experience of setting goals and then failing to achieve them鈥攖hink of all the New Year's resolutions that are never realized. But with the right strategies, even your loftiest professional goals are attainable. In this course, career and personal branding expert Dorie Clark helps you identify what's most important to you, and provides specific strategies for achieving your goals, such as getting an accountability partner, making your intentions public, and more. She also helps you maintain your goals by sharing tips and techniques for turning your goals into habits.
Learning objectives:
- Identify what elements are most important to your personal and professional life.
- Recognize the ideal number of goals you should have.
- Explore the differences between goals and a to-do list.
- Determine ways to reward yourself for successfully achieving milestones on the way to attaining personal or professional goals.
听 听For supervisors:
Coursera | 5 hours to complete
This course teaches you the simple principles expert managers use to improve and motivate employee performance. You鈥檒l never have to avoid telling an employee 鈥渢he truth鈥 again, because the seven techniques we teach will not make employees defensive or afraid. As a manager, or someone who would like to be a manager, you鈥檒l also learn specifically what feedback is, how negative feedback is weighed more heavily than positive and how positive feedback can super-charge behaviors such as creativity and teamwork.
Giving feedback is a skill which develops over time. We give you a process you can use to improve your feedback skills and deliver it with confidence. You will find that there is a scientific basis for many of your observations and intuitions about feedback鈥攕uch as, it is hard to give correctly, people don鈥檛 like it, and more. This will be reassuring as you learn how to overcome these difficulties. We hope you have a fantastic time becoming a better manager!
Coursera | 12 hours to complete
An engineering leader spends a majority of their day interacting with others. Indeed, studies repeatedly point to the impact communication skills have on the ability of managerial leaders to succeed or fail. Too often, individuals move into managerial leadership roles without an awareness of the need to improve in this area. This course focuses on interpersonal skills such as listening, counseling, non-verbals, mentoring, coaching, building trust, and providing feedback.
LinkedIn Learning | 53 minutes to complete
Harness the power of coaching in the workplace. Learn how to shift from a command-and-control style of management to a manager-as-coach style of leadership to transform employee engagement and bottom-line results. Join leadership and negotiation coach Lisa Gates, as she explains how to establish a coaching relationship with your reports. Lisa shows how skills like open-ended question asking, listening, challenging for growth, and accountability can increase your employees' autonomy and problem-solving capacities. The course includes assessments, exercises, and tools to help your team capture goals, map a career trajectory, and accelerate growth, along with sample coaching conversations help you see these tips in practice and understand their potential impact on your people, productivity, and results.
Learning objectives:
- Recall methods for probing deeper in conversations with employees.
- Determine which aspect of a challenge to avoid when determining the challenge an employee can undertake.
- Recognize questions that generate the greatest number of ideas during a brainstorming session.
- Explain the advantage of using focused feedback with an employee.
- Identify the potential benefits of listening and using open-ended questions with an employee who is unhappy with her or her job.