The Association for Talent Development (ATD) and SalesFuel, a consulting firm, recently conducted a survey, Managers as Coaches: Boosting Employee and Organizational Performance. According to the results, 90 percent of the organizations participating in the survey said they expect at least some of their managers to coach their direct reports. In comparison, 75 percent expect all of their management teams to do so.
HR Dive reports, however, that 60% of the participants felt that the biggest hurdle to overcome was holding managers accountable for coaching or lack of coaching, and 59% said that they evaluate manager performance on their effectiveness of coaching. The ATD and SalesFuel study found that the more successful and high performing an organization was in the marketplace, the more likely it was to perform managerial effectiveness evaluations.
As with almost everything else within the world of work, COVID-19 has increased the focus within organizations on coaching and managers’ overall effectiveness. In November of 2019, the Human Capital Institute and International Coach Foundation conducted a business leaders survey. Some 80% of those participating in the survey said they planned to increase workers’ coaching through their managers and direct reports.
A few months later, the performance management firm, Reflektive, says that since 2018, there has been an 89% increase in the percentage of workers who want to have formal performance conversations at last once per month, if not more frequently. Reflektive also found that an estimated 25% of workers didn’t know how to request such feedback. Just 19% of workers participating in the survey said that their organization was transparent about opportunities for upward mobility.
Since the pandemic, both managers and employees have had to adapt and handle such conversations remotely rather than in person. Making it happen, however, can often mean adjusting hours to accommodate such discussions. Much of making coaching and feedback happening will require managers to be held accountable.