Coaching is a Management Obligation

Managers have an obligation to coach employees to help employees obtain better performance. However, managers choose when and whom to coach. Managers also have an obligation to provide feedback -- which is not a choice. Every employee deserves feedback about his/her work on a frequent (weekly) basis. I've never met a manager who didn't have some employee who needed coaching about something. Coaching is a "management" skill you can learn. (I believe that on Agile teams, everyone needs to learn to coach.) In fact, I'll be talking about how to coach at the NZ/Aus Software Development conference. (Esther and I show how to do it in the management book.) Here's the essence of coaching: Verify the other person wants help. Generate options with the other person. Walk through consequences of those options. Wait for the coachee to choose an option (unless other people's safety is at stake). Create an action plan to implement those chosen options. In the previous blog entry, I suggested that ...

10:56:00 February 28, 2005, Monday (PST) Source: Managing Product Development

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