Every company has them. They are the employees that literally carry your company. Many of them are simply born with traits that make them great employees: dedication, work ethic, drive, determination, and true grit as they used to say. But that alone doesn’t make them superstars. They’ve developed skills that make them efficient and effective. Unfortunately, not all employees have skill sets that are as mature. The rest have to develop them.

That is where the secret behind developing superstar employees comes in: good coaching. Unfortunately, all too often, managers sit down with their employees only once a year during the official annual review to discuss performance. These annual reviews are usually rushed, don’t provide good feedback or goals, and, most of the time, are based solely on the “recency effect” (i.e. only the recent performance of the employee is reviewed).

Coaching employees is much different than reviewing employees. Coaching allows you to actually interact with your team, giving them the opportunity to grow, develop, stretch, and achieve greater performance. It requires more work than reviewing; however, the results can pay for your additional efforts multiple times over. [Read more…]