Promoting personal development in your staff requires a continuous dialogue and ongoing efforts between management and employees. This often necessitates much patience on the part of management and a desire to help each employee achieve his or her work-related goals. Although motivating each employee can take place through routine activities and skill-development exercises, detailed and continuous feedback makes all the difference when it comes to the effectiveness of coaching.
The goal of mentoring employees for personal growth is to aid in performance improvements and skill enhancements that not only benefit them but also benefit the team and ultimately, the overall business. Effective managers practice good mentoring by giving employees constructive, clear direction about their current performance and areas that they can focus on for improvement. When a manager plays the role of coach or mentor, however, it is also important to know where the balance should lie in terms of individual employee needs versus the needs of the department or the company.
Managers can improve their coaching ability by soliciting feedback, even if it is anonymous, on employee ideas, perspectives and desires for a better personal development program. One of the most important parts of helping employees achieve personal growth is keeping them informed about changes the organization is going through, so that each employee can tailor their work goals to head in the same direction as the company.
Various methods of coaching can help with employee personal development programs. You may choose to focus one program on high-performing employees, to keep them motivated and reaching for higher goals. Add new responsibilities at a higher level to challenge them, but be careful to relieve them of some of their old work duties. Work overload is a large cause of employee de-motivation.
Set up a personal development program for various employees during their annual review. Use this as a chance to choose a few new skills that each employee can develop or improve over the coming year, and offer your support to help them achieve this milestone before the next annual review. If you know that an employee has her eye on a new position within your department, you can make her personal development goals consist of specific assignments or projects that can prepare her to take on a promotion to a new position.
Whenever you institute employee development programs, you must keep expectations very clear on both your end and the employees' end. This means quantifying what "success" looks like in specific detail and helping each employee define specific steps to take them through the process of achieving their personal development goals. Instead of a manager bearing the total burden of designing personal development programs for each employee, ask them to outline skills they want to develop. This not only saves time, it allows each employee to focus on what motivates them the most, and it can also provide valuable insight into each employee.
Do not ignore employees that perform poorly. Rewarding positive behavior is the easiest part of the job. Understanding poor performance, getting to the root cause and helping employees find their way to better performance is the hardest, yet most rewarding part of mentoring. Providing an under-performing employee with feedback can give them the confidence to take more initiative in the future to improve their own performance. Unfortunately, some employees are just in the wrong job. It is the responsibility of their manager to help them understand that they would perform much better in a job that they truly enjoy.
With the right coaching and mentoring approaches, a manager can nudge each employee towards personal growth and success, not only while they work for the company, but as they grow in their careers. Whether they continue working in the same job, or move on to another adventure, a good coach and mentor always has the pride of knowing that they were able to make a positive contribution to someone else's career.
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