Performance Coaching and
Discipline Without Punishment
Performance Coaching
• Athletic coaches must coach constantly
• Performance coaching focuses on effective job
behaviors and activities
• Performance coaching is positive and
emphasizes what people are doing right
Performance Coaching
• The goals of performance coaching:
– To encourage people and teams
– To show people and teams how to build on their
strengths
– To heighten people’s and teams’ self-esteem and
self-confidence
– To enhance cooperation and participation within
and among departments
– To stop and correct inappropriate behavior
– To build trust between management and team
members
– To reduce fear and increase risk taking and
innovation (security nurtures creativity)
– To align individual and team goals to
organizational goals
– To get people to realize that their self interests
and the organization’s interests are inextricably
bound together
– To establish consequences for continued
inappropriate behavior
Performance Coaching
• All units in an organization should conduct
performance coaching
– Department managers for their departments
(several managers if the department is large)
– Higher management for department managers
The Multiple Roles Of Performance
Coaching
•
•
•
•
Developmental
Evaluative
Defensive
Indoctrinational
Coaching Avoidance
• Most managers would rather avoid the anger,
anxiety, and discomfort involved
• Timing of performance coaching sessions
should be based on associate’s, not manager’s,
needs and timing
Coaching Meetings
• Quarterly departmental goal-setting and
strategy sessions
– If not more often in a highy competitive business
• Quarterly individual performance coaching
and performance agreement sessions
– Frequent, daily if possible, feedback
Conducting Performance Coaching
Sessions
• Managers must know enough about a job to
understand how it should be done
• Managers must observe on-the-job behavior
(it’s like watching game tapes)
Reactions To Coaching Sessions
• People often react defensively to what are
perceived to be negative comments
• Don’t use the sandwich approach
– Criticism-praise-criticism
• Criticism causes people to become defensive:
– Transfer blame to others (“not my fault”)
Many People Are Defensive
– Ambivalent about improvement needs
– See coaching as a threat to self-esteem (especially
highly ego-centered talent or creative people)
• Often people see it as a threat to independence
• Often people are in outright denial
Games People Play
– Most common rationalization games:
• “Yeah, but”
• “I’ll try”
– Trying doesn’t cut it, doing what you’re supposed
to cuts it
• “It’s good that you’re trying hard, but what exactly are
going to do to solve the problem. Tell me in steps 1, 2
and 3.”
Improvement Memos
– If an associate exceeds expectations, write a
memo to upper management
– If an associate is not meeting standards, have him
or her write an improvement or performance
agreement outline
• Keep management informed
Performance Coaching
• Yearly performance evaluation or review
sessions:
– Once-a-year reviews at salary review times are
worthless and counterproductive
– Coaches who reviewed players once a year would
be lose all their games and their jobs
• Quarterly departmental goal-setting sessions:
– Department’s mission, objectives, and strategies
are narrowed down to key activities
– Department discusses and jointly agrees on
objectives, strategies, and activities
– Participation in setting objectives leads to a
department’s commitment
• Brief, frequent (daily if possible) feedback
sessions:
– People need continual encouragement and
reinforcement of the good things they do
• Need “atta boys”
– Must be open and honest
– “What can I do to help?”
Feedback
• Phrases to use:
– “I know you want to improve, and if it’s OK with
you, I have a few suggestions.”
– I know you like to do a good job. Here are some
things for you to think about that might help you
do it a little better.”
• “Be tough on standards, not on people” - tom
peters
• When giving feedback, give positive feedback
first, then discuss opportunities for
improvement
Who Conducts Performance Coaching
Sessions:
• All managers, all team members
• Associates need feedback more than contact
with top managers
• They need it weekly
Unleash Associates’ Motivation To
Improve:
• Management hires, coaches, and
communicates values and objectives
• If there is a problems, it is usually
management’s
– “There are no bad soldiers, only bad generals” Napoleon
Establishing Consequences
• Consequences laid out in advance. If people
do A, B will happen. It’s their choice.
• Coaching is encouragement, support – yes;
but it doesn’t work unless there are
meaningful, understood consequences
– If you hold on to ineffective people too long,
you’re being unfair to your organization and,
more importantly, to effective performers
Discipline Without Punishment
• Performance problems can usually be divided
into three categories:
– Attendance
– Performance
– Conduct
• Traditional discipline systems:
– Step 1 - Verbal reprimand
– Step 2 - Written warning
– Step 3 - Suspension without pay/ probation/final
warning
– Step 4 -Termination
• Discipline Without Punishment
– Level 1 - Oral reminder
– Level 2 - Written reminder
– Level 3 - Decision-making leave (paid)
– Level 4 - Termination
• In Discipline Without Punishment, it’s up to
associates to change on their own
– There has been enough discussion, they know the
consequences
– Paid leave puts the onus on them
– Managers should view DWP as a technique for
saving people. Each step is an opportunity to
correct a problem.
– Termination is a failure
Be a Coach
• Who watches game films every day and gives
feedback one-on-one every day
– Not once a year
• Who’s motivation is to teach the team how to
win
– Teach to win, not to avoid a loss
– Without playing himself/herself