No matter what career stage you’ve reached, there’s probably a professional skill you’d like to learn or improve.
And whether you’ve written your goals down in a detailed 10-year plan or they’re floating around in your mind, you might need structure and support to wholly realize them. Colleagues and mentors can motivate you along the way, but a life coach or performance coach brings you over the finish line with actionable guidance.
Performance coaching gives you the tools to map out your targets and build resilience to challenges. These professionals typically work with supervisors and managers to help their teams reach their full potential, evaluating skill sets and team dynamics to set realistic goals for stronger performance.
Whether you’re a team member or supervisor, the skills you learn during the coaching process will transform how you approach objectives and interact with your team down the line. Here’s a guide to understanding the value of a performance coach and finding the right one for you and your team.
What’s performance coaching, and how does it work?
Performance coaching is a type of coaching that centers on developing effective relationships between supervisors and team members. These coaches usually work directly with managers and leaders to give them the tools they need to support employees. The process involves building and maintaining new skills, fostering team collaboration, and developing healthy and productive dynamics.
Coaching for higher performance starts by identifying employees’ current skill levels and growth potential. After evaluating current skill sets and future goals, coaches help everyone involved build action plans to learn new skills and practice better teamwork. Although coaching is an individualized process, it contributes to the big picture of a healthy team.
How can coaches improve team performance?
A performance coach helps supervisors identify and address room for improvement within their teams — and the benefits spread to everyone. Here’s how coaching for high performance can benefit employees and managers alike.
Performance coaching for employees
For employees, a performance coaching program catalyzes personal development and improvement, both on an individual and team level. It helps develop better performance and job satisfaction in the following ways:
1. Skill development
Career coaching gives you the support you need when acquiring new skills and improving existing ones. You can develop a holistic understanding of where your skills fit into your team dynamic and how you can add value to your professional development. Developing a stronger skill set will help you excel in your current job role, take on new responsibilities, and be a more valuable team player.
2. Personalized support
Depending on the training program, you may work directly with a coach, your supervisor, or both. Regardless of the dynamic, the 1:1 guidance and personalized milestones will help you address specific challenges and build strategies that address your needs. And along with professional development, you’ll build stronger relationships with your supervisors and managers.
3. Confidence boost
Performance coaches commonly lean into experiential learning methodologies, like on-site training, self-study, or taking on new responsibilities. And according to one report, learning those new skills, especially in a collaborative environment, can have a positive impact on your self-confidence. Advancing along your learning pathway shows you and your team that can step out of your comfort zone and succeed.
4. Better habits
Everyone has habits to refine, whether it’s better time tracking or improving self-management. But sometimes they’re hard to see on your own. Like any type of counselor or mentor, a performance coach’s goal is to uncover the root problems that hinder you from progressing.
Once your coach helps you identify areas for improvement, they’ll help you create actionable plans to build better foundations for success. And the self-reflection might rub off onto other areas, encouraging you to embrace holistic improvements across your professional life.
Performance coaching for supervisors
Getting the best out of your team’s full potential is a process that requires patience, careful monitoring, and goal-setting. And the work never ends. Even senior leaders can continue to develop their leadership skills.
A performance coach helps you establish the interpersonal tools you need to identify your employees’ growth processes and motivate the team to hit high work performance metrics at every step. Here are a few ways a high-performance coach can help your team:
1. Personal growth
With so many team members to manage and deadlines to meet, it’s easy to fall into patterns that don’t empower individual productivity.
The coaching process helps you hit the reset button. An integral part of sessions is receiving constructive criticism from team members about how well you motivate or hinder individual employee performance. And with your coach, you’ll use that feedback to become a more effective leader.
2. Team upskilling and retention
According to one survey, 86% of workers want skills training from their employers, whether they’re new hires or not. Investing in reskilling and upskilling initiatives send a clear message to your team that the organization cares about its continued growth.
Helping push your team members to the next level increases engagement, improves productivity, and boosts satisfaction with their professional lives.
3. Improved communication
Emails, conference calls, and Slack chats are the new reality for many leaders. And in work-from-home environments, you may never have a single in-person meeting with your team members.
New styles of communication require new communication strategies. A coach can help foster clear and open communication between you and your team, like practicing Zoom etiquette, showing your team appreciation, or writing more effective emails. You’ll lead a more productive work environment, regardless of setup.
4. Career changes and promotions
Advancing from team member to supervisor or manager is a nuanced process that asks you to navigate many new responsibilities and relationships at once. While a mentor can give pointers and share experience, a performance coach can soften the transition by identifying your leadership skills and filling in the gaps.
What to expect in performance coaching
Whether you’re developing your skills or working 1:1 with team members, performance coaching requires trust-building and goal-setting. Although your experience will be unique to your individual needs, here are four ways performance coaching benefits your workplace:
1. Builds trust
When team members and managers trust one another, teams can move beyond conformity and toward innovation. Trust in the workplace improves communication, stimulates creativity, and encourages people to embrace change. And as bonds strengthen, everyone will commit to self-improvement.
2. Defines pain points
Team members and supervisors may participate in a skills gap analysis to identify everybody’s strengths and weaknesses. Coaches can help supervisors learn to conduct evaluations in safe, judgment-free atmospheres, keeping everyone focused on one positive goal: improvement.
3. Fosters constructive criticism
Constructive feedback is the strongest medicine to combat a fixed mindset in leadership and employees alike. It’s not always easy to deliver or receive criticism, but a performance coach can help set the tone, keep communication clear, and focus on finding solutions.
Both team members and supervisors can develop a safe space in which to give feedback to one another, stimulating collaboration around everyone’s progress.
4. Builds an action plan
A coach's goal is to get you from Point A to Point B, whatever those points look like to you. One of the most valuable benefits of working with a performance coach is building a clear, realistic step-by-step process to bring up everybody’s skill levels. They’ll evaluate progress and adapt the plan when necessary throughout the process.
5. Encourages self-discovery
With active listening and open-ended questions, coaches encourage everyone to engage in self-discovery. The power of self-reflection uncovers your motivations, sense of purpose, and aspirations — and coaches match that deep thinking with goal-setting. The process doesn’t just enhance your skill set: it helps you step into your whole self.
How to find a performance coach
At BetterUp, we understand that finding the right coach goes beyond checking coaching certifications and credentials.
It’s about finding compatibility and relevant experiences — and there’s a coach for everyone on the BetterUp platform. Here are three things to look out for:
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Experience: Although performance coaches are trained to help improve your work performance, each one brings unique know-how and experience to their coaching sessions.
Ask about their background and how comfortable they are addressing your specific needs. Experience working with diverse teams or a specific industry may be an important factor in achieving your objective, so find a coach familiar with those items.
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Compatibility: For a performance coach to bring out the best in you and your team, they need to maintain trust. But personality also plays a big role in creating the right rapport and ambiance.
Pay attention to whether the conversation flows or putters along during your initial conversation. Feeling like you or your team are safe is key to keeping everyone on board.
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Approach: During your introductory session, a coach should walk you through their process. Beforehand, it’s a good idea to note your learning needs, like whether you prefer in-person or virtual coaching or excel from hands-on learning.
Their coaching style needs to match your constraints. Otherwise, even great feedback and tools will fall flat.
Level up your performance
It’s never a bad time to level up your skill set. Whether you’re trying to gain a competitive edge in your career, develop leadership skills, or unify your team, a performance coach will provide you with the support to turn goals into results.
The effort won’t only strengthen individual team members. It’ll create a stronger, more cohesive workplace — and better performances all around.
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