If you are working or had worked with a group of people, most likely, you are familiar with performance appraisal period. This is the time when the employees are coached by the supervisor or the manager regarding his performance. If you are a supervisor handling several people, you might have noticed that after a coaching session, only few of your subordinates try to improve in their duties. Sometimes, after coaching, some employees just seemed to ignore your message.

When this happens, you might need to evaluate your coaching techniques. While a coaching session is intended to point out an employee’s areas for improvement, stressing too much on these areas could discourage your employee. On the other hand, if you discuss these areas of improvement lightly with your employee, he might not take this seriously. Thus, your coaching session will be wasted.

One of the best ways on coaching an employee is using the "sandwich approach". Starting with the positive qualities of the employee is the sandwich approach.

Take a look at this example. Let us say you would like to coach an employee on delayed report submissions. Don’t immediately start coaching on this negative behavior. Your first step is to point out the positive qualities of your employee.

In this case, you could tell your employee, "I appreciate it that you put so much detail on your report. I am impressed by the amount of research that you did to complete the report".

Such phrases will build up confidence in your employee. It will also build rapport between you and your employee. Remember that you have to say those positive phrases sincerely. Don’t say anything that isn’t true. People can easily sense if you are just trying to say something good.

After building confidence in your employee, continue with this, "However, a late report, no matter how good, can affect our companies performance. It could delay our transactions with our business partners".

Through this, you have coached the employee on his disagreeable attitude. During the coaching, you have also stressed the negative effect of his behavior by mentioning its effect on the company.

Last, reinforce the employee’s positive attitude and relate it with improving his negative behavior. You can say this, "If I had your report on time, I could have presented it and used it to impress our clients. I do hope that your next report will be ready by the deadline. I’m sure your report and its presentation will make a good impact on our next client".

Saying this statement during coaching will encourage the employee to do away with his negative behavior. It also emphasizes your confidence in his abilities and how you rely on his performance.

During coaching, you need to make you employee feel that his performance is important. Everyone wants to feel that they are valued. Don’t forget to say words that will make your employee feel that his improved performance will make a lot of difference.

Following the sandwich method when coaching will make your employee feel better after the coaching session even if you have told him things in which he needs to improve on.

Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Coaching http://coaching-guideto.com/.