The best coaches motivate their staff so the staff hold themselves accountable. While that’s ideal, not everyone can achieve that. Even highly motivated staff can get overwhelmed and fail to meet targets. Supervisors working from the coaching framework need to address both strategies: motivation and accountability. We discussed motivation in a previous post and we’ll focus on accountability here.
Being accountable, means meeting goals and expectations. Therefore, the foundation of accountability and coaching is setting clear and measurable performance expectations and goals. The next part of accountability is assessing employee performance against these standards and giving feedback to let them know where they stand. And finally, where they miss the target, accountability means coming up with strategies and plans for better performance.
While it’s a fairly simple package, the part about giving feedback and problem solving can be difficult for many supervisors. The key to making feedback easy, is clear and measurable performance expectations, so we’re going to start there. There’s a lot to this, so this post is a little longer than most.
A performance expectation is a clear, direct statement of what the employee is expected to do (the task) and how well they are expected to do it (the standard). The task part is easy: complete the report, produce a product, serve a customer. The standard part is more challenging. The secret to an effective standard is to focus on behavior and/or its impact. Telling someone to be a better “team player” doesn’t tell them anything. Telling them any of the following, gives them a clear sense of what is expected:
- assist other employees when needed
- speak so that others feel respected and appreciated
- ask for assistance when they are overwhelmed
These are some of the elements of good team work. When you highlight the ones the employee is failing in, that will help them understand what you are looking for from them. (But highlight their successes as well! That’s the positive feedback/motivational piece! Just don’t put them all in one sentence – the praise sandwich doesn’t work. Comment below if you have questions about this.)
Feedback is simply a statement of the employee’s actual behavior and the impact it had. When connected to the expectation it becomes a statement of accountability.
e.g.: “When others on the team ask you for assistance, you frequently turn away, mumble something they can’t hear, and return to your work. Our expectation is that if you can’t assist them at that time you explain what your current priorities are and let them know when you will be able to help them. We also expect that you will find time in your schedule within the same work day or next day (if late in the day), to work with others on the team as requested.”