Leadership Institute

Coaching for Improvement

Learning Formats: Classroom; Comparable Web-Based Course is Facilitating Improved Performance

Skill Practice Course

Order No. IMEX104

Individuals need to take responsibility for addressing unacceptable performance or work habits that impact others and the organization -- but leaders must know how to help them do it.

This course helps leaders conduct effective improvement discussions and provide the feedback and ongoing support people need to improve performance.

Do You Face Any of These Issues?

  • Do leaders avoid poor-performance and work-habit discussions because they are uncomfortable or incapable of conducting them?
  • Are unresolved performance and work-habit issues impacting others’ morale or productivity?

Performance Objectives

Helps leaders:

  • Encourage others to take charge of improving performance and altering work habits, develop an improvement plan, and measure their progress.
  • Prepare for and conduct successful improvement discussions.
  • Handle specific challenges that might occur during such discussions.
  • Foster morale and productivity by addressing performance and work-habit issues in a firm, fair, and consistent manner.

Primary Competency Developed

  • Coaching

Secondary Competencies Developed

  • Communication
  • Gaining Commitment

Course Overview

  • Identifying Improvement Opportunities: Learners explore the challenges of an improvement discussion from both the leader’s and employee’s perspectives. They identify a performance or work-habit problem they are facing and the importance of addressing it quickly and effectively. Learners review the coaching process relative to a performance improvement situation.
  • A Model of Improvement: Learners identify effective and ineffective approaches from both the leader’s and employee’s perspectives when coaching for improvement. They analyze a positive model of a performance improvement discussion and provide feedback on the leader’s skills.
  • Putting Skills into Practice: Learners prepare for and conduct an improvement discussion to address the performance issue they identified earlier. Three skill practice rounds with feedback follow. Learners discuss how they used the Interaction Process and how they encouraged the employee to take responsibility for improving.
  • Make It Ongoing: Learners discuss the importance of ongoing coaching -- observation, measurement, feedback, and support -- in an improvement situation. Using the STAR format, learners practice providing feedback with specific performance measures. Learners relate the new skills they have learned to the organization’s business objectives.

Video Segment Summaries

  • Improvement situations show the difficulties of an improvement discussion from the leader’s and employee’s perspectives.
  • A leader meets with a team member who isn’t providing technical support to the team to explore ways of overcoming this problem.
  • Scenarios illustrate specific challenges that a leader might face when discussing poor performance or work habits. (Optional)

Course Details

  • Target audience: Informal leaders and frontline leaders through mid-level managers.
  • Course length: 3 hours, 30 minutes. Course can be lengthened with optional activities.
  • Facilitator certification: DDI-certified facilitator required.
  • Prerequisites: Essentials of Leadership.
  • Series: Suitable for all environments. Manufacturing and health care positive models are also available. Alternative activities are available for leaders in health care environments.
  • Group size: 8 to 16 people.
  • Prework: Optional. 10 minutes.

Related Courses