How “over-coaching” your employees hurts potential

Back in my corporate banking days, one of my early roles was to create employee development programs for the payment processing division of the bank. One of our C-Level executives was a raving fan of employee development and widely known as one of the most empathetic leaders on the team. He was visibly engaged in developing and coaching his team members up. In fact, he was so supportive that many times he would hang on to an underperforming employee with the hopes that if he just provided them enough training or coaching or job support, then they would magically turn things around.

In our check-ins, along with my human resources business partner, he was brainstorming ideas with us on what else we could do to “save” a struggling yet highly knowledgable employee he had. We came up with a plan, a great plan so I thought! We took this plan to our HR leader, the SVP of HR, full of excitement on how we were going to (try yet once again) to coach this person up. Point blank she asked us, “Is this person even willing? You have to stop working harder than they are.”

This mantra became a saying that echoed in my brain from my remaining time in HR, to my days leading corporate teams and even now as a coach.

“You can’t work harder on someone else’s development than they will.”

It helps me pause and allow people to take rightful ownership of their careers. Or their lives. 

As a parent, I’d like you to know that I am still barely getting a C grade in this effort with my almost-20-year-old daughter. It’s still just so tempting to jump in and work harder at giving advice for their career path and their development than they are at that age. I’m still trying to learn and recognize that when she decides to take ownership of a career goal, it just manifests so much quicker and easier than all my ideas. 

🔥 Empathy and support a valuable assets as a leader. However, we have to manage the fine line of overfunctioning as their leader, which allows them to underfunction.

PUT THIS IDEA INTO ACTION

Just like the executive leader I worked with, this leads leaders into overfunctioning for an underperforming employee. Driven by the intentions to be protective and supportive, they write their development plans, sign them up for endless training or coaching, make adjustments to their work expectations. 

The leader is working so hard at the employee’s career that they don’t have to! Then, the leader feels frustrated when the employee’s performance doesn’t improve or they show up unmotivated.

It’s time to put career ownership back in the hands of its rightful owner. The employee. As a leader, you have your own career to worry about and it’s hard to do that if you are working on everyone else’s career (this doesn’t mean you don’t support others, you right size the support.)

Here are three ways to put career ownership back in the right hands:

1. Have your employee craft their own development plan based on their goals. Have them include their actions steps and timelines by which they plan to accomplish these goals.

2. Encourage the employee to source their own learning, mentoring and development. Let them do the research and legwork. In their development plans, have them list the resources they found and how they plan to use those resources and share lessons learned.

3. When things get off track, instead of proactively making adjustments, ask them what they are taking action on to improve their performance or implement performance feedback. People tend to take accountability and action when they’ve come up with the plan and the solution.

How have you seen good leaders offer support without taking over mental ownership of their employees’ careers and performance? 

Try this next: If you don't already, have your team members plan their next 1-1 agenda with you and send that agenda in advance of your next meeting. This is a great step to help all your team members take ownership of their career conversations and learn to manage up.