Coaching is one of the most powerful ways to improve employee performance that you can use as a team leader or manager. Once you know exactly how to coach someone effectively in the workplace you will discover that there are three distinct times that the power of coaching is most evident.

First: When you are faced with one – or more – new, inexperienced or poorly skilled team members. Coaching allows you to quickly and effectively enhance the skill-set of new, inexperienced or unskilled workers in a measured and focussed way.

You can focus on specific skills that are most critical to your day-to-day results in your own time frame, rather than having to wait weeks or months for an essential skill to be introduced in an external course or training program. And you can introduce your specific equipment, procedures or requirements at the same time as you are developing the skills, so no re-training is required.

Second: The special personal attention that coaching implies can be a powerful way to build employee motivation and develop a collaborative team culture. So when you are faced with an ‘attitude problem’ or a de-motivated employee try coaching to increase motivation. It can be far more effective than other ways of approaching this problem situation.

Finally: Use coaching to encourage your good employees or team members to become exceptional. This is one of the most beneficial uses of coaching yet it is often overlooked. Just because one of your people is doing well, don’t assume that they couldn’t do even better. With a little coaching they may become one of your most valued people, with just a little encouragement.

The secret to tapping the full power of coaching, and getting the best results from the coaching you do, lies in knowing how to coach quickly and effectively as well as being able to recognise when coaching will be worthwhile. But as a leader and manager when you know how to coach properly and use coaching in these types of situations you will be amazed at how team results and morale improves.

Leadership and management is already hard enough. You’d have to be crazy to miss using such a powerful, proven – and simple – tool as coaching when you face any of these three situations.

Learn how to easily and effectively coach employees in the workplace