Business Coaching & Career Conversations

Hi, I’m Alana from Employment Innovations and I’m here to give you an introduction to Principle 4 of our 8 Lean HR Principles.

Principle 4 is around having genuine coaching and career conversations between managers and employees.

As we discussed in Principle 3, having your managers absorb people management responsibilities within their team is a key lean HR Principle. The best way to do this is to transition out of the role of a manager into the role of a coach.  

The key differential here is taking a people focussed approach to achieving success rather than a task approach. Rather than dictating and organising work and tasks, you’re focussing on supporting the team to determine their own success and are actively encouraging them to problem solve. This doesn’t change overnight, but there are steps that can be taken to move towards that coaching role.

A really important part of this as a starting point is the ability to have effective and genuine conversations. This can be in the simplest form of a 1:1, and, when executed well, can be instrumental in an individual achieving their goals, which, in turn, helps the organisation achieve their goals. These conversations can also open up the avenue for personal development conversations.

Coaching skills don’t always come naturally to managers and people often find themselves naturally progressing into managerial positions without any experience. This isn’t to say that they aren’t going to be successful, but with some soft skills training, managers can develop tools and techniques to more effectively manage their team and have genuine 1:1 conversations.

If you’d like to know more about Employment Innovations and how we can help you improve your current HR process, please get in touch and we’ll be happy to help.