I have earlier written about the benefits of coaching and how it can boost your talent development. See the previous articles on https://aimsinternational.se/coaching-development-boost-for-talents/ and https://aimsinternational.se/coaching-for-performance/.
Most of the organizations conduct regular performance or developmental discussions based on historical performance. Whether this happens as an annual discussion, on a continuous process or based on project deliveries there are some trends 2022 which have become more and more important to be aware of. I have made following observations when discussing with managers and HR directors in various companies.
Leadership in a remote work environment
Working remotely is not a new thing. However, most of the managers used to meet their employees regularly or at least few times per year. The new issue arising out of increase of off-site working is that you may have more employees you have never met physically, and your only contacts are through digital channels.
This leads to some questions
- How to evaluate the overall performance (what to deliver and how to deliver) when you have mostly met your employees only digitally?
- How to give feedback on desired leadership, or employee, behaviors which are often designed to ordinary office and physical day-to-day interactions between the people?
- How to give fair and solid feedback for the new employees if your company is lacking good on-boarding processes?
I have earlier proposed coaching and mentoring as tools to ensure the expected performance – discussing the targets, creating transparency and engagement, and ensuring employee motivation. It also helps in performance related discussions since it will be a natural continuation of earlier discussions. Ultimately the successful and ongoing dialogue between employee and manager will make annual performance dialogues obsolete since everything has been already handled.
Improving how to give immediate feedback
What other actions should companies take? I believe that a successful company train the managers and employees to engage themselves into continuous discussions on performance related challenges. This means that we need to learn how to share immediate feedback, be transparent and create an environment and culture where the employees are not left alone.
I also believe a successful company needs to revisit the evaluation criteria of the competency framework. This could mean considering the impacts of distance working and the expectations related to digital way-of-working. For example, distance working might set new requirements to be proactive and do more ad-hoc calls to sort out possible misunderstandings.
Coaching and mentoring programs
The solution what many clients are using is to provide coaching and mentoring programs to their employees to support and ensure individual performance. Most of the time coaching is provided by a direct manager, but more and more often external performance coaches are relied on to deliver these services.
We at AIMS International Sweden are specialized in supporting companies broadly when working with Talent Management issues including building new way-of-working and providing Coaching, Leadership Assessments and Executive Search. Please contact us in AIMS International Sweden in case you want to hear more about the solutions we can provide.
Mikko Taipale works as Executive Search and Talent Management Consultant in AIMS International Sweden. He is also a Certified Coach by International Coaching Federation (ACC). Before starting in AIMS International Sweden he worked close to 20 years in large corporations as a HR leader with a focus on Talent Management practices.