Being a good manager means you must be a good coach. The first step in good coaching is identifying performance areas on which you need to work. Essentially, it's determining the areas of accountability.

Identifying the area you need to work on doesn't guarantee that it will be improved, because you also need to determine the current performance level. There are four ways to measure performance; quantity, quality, cost, and timeliness. Once an area is identified, it can be observed, measured and improved.

The important thing here is that you have to be able to identify in observable and measurable terms what people have identified. You can do this with almost anything, but you've got to be able to measure it.

Once you have graphed present performance and know there is a need for improvement, you need to share that information with whoever is responsible or accountable for that area and can influence performance in it. In sharing feedback with your people, you are involving them in the coaching process and making them responsible.

Good managerial coaching is divided into three parts; the first part is performance planning, where you set goals; second is day-to-day coaching, where you work with them toward goal accomplishment; and third is the performance evaluation.

Most organizations make the mistake of starting their performance review with the evaluation, writing the goals for their employees and then they write the job descriptions. They leave out the most important part which is day-to-day coaching, which means there is no one working with their employees to help them accomplish their goals.

One of the most important things you can do to become a good manager is to share your performance improvement strategies with your employees, take time to agree on goals, set a schedule for feedback and coaching, and let your employees know how their performance will be evaluated. There should be no surprises. Your employees need to know what to expect from you in terms of help and support. Most important, they need to know what's in it for them if they improve.

The bad news about motivation is that you can't motivate people. The good news is that if you can figure out what motivates them and create an opportunity in the environment for them to satisfy those needs, people will do all kinds of things for you in the process.

Once you've gotten your employees involved in the process, then you need to delegate responsibility to them for beginning to improve their performance. In other words, behavior begins. This is not the time for you to disappear, but rather to observe performance so coaching can take place. This is what coaching is all about. It's about managing consequences and keeping the coaching agreements you've made.

It's important that your presence is a welcome sight for your employees. They need to expect your monitoring of their progress and how they are performing in their jobs with anticipation. They need to know more often than not, you are there to catch them doing something right rather than doing something wrong. You must always remember that you are there to coach your employees as they strive for better performance.

The relationship between a player and coach is very personal. They're bound by mutual needs, a shared interest, and team success. There's no reason why the same thing can't happen between a manager and an employee. A good coach is always guiding his or her protégé towards independent self-evaluation.

If you've done your job well you'll eventually find you're second in line to praise a sterling performance or reprimand a poor one. The player has done the job him- or herself. With good management your star pupil becomes your colleague.

Copyright©2008 by Joe Love and JLM & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.