Incorporate Coaching Into Management to Leverage Employee Intelligence

In the last decade, human resource management has recognized employee engagement strategies which have made significant strides in understanding the employee psyche. From work-life balance to educational opportunities and mentoring to teamwork, new approaches to improving employee performance have had a direct impact on employee satisfaction and helped companies set and achieve smart goals and objectives.

Nurture Intelligence in Context of Human Resource Management

Today’s managers need to understand not only the strengths and weaknesses of their direct reports, but also how to develop them on an individual level. People might come into a firm with an identified skill set, but they also arrive with their own preconceived shortcomings. Managers that view themselves as coaches can inspire staff to improve beyond their own imagined limitations.

Years of schooling have made people feel like their intelligence level doesn’t change. They take exams that use the same benchmarks to measure the intelligence of a multitude of different people. College entrance exams like the SATs pigeon-hole students into thinking they are exclusively good or bad at a certain subject. Even the classic IQ tests send the message that intelligence is an unchanging value.

New studies, however, are challenging this view. Intelligence is not static, but can be improved with proper tools and training. The focus of these studies revolves around the field of neuroplasticity, which examines the way the brain can, in fact, grow and develop when given new opportunities to learn.

The industry journal Neural Plasticity provides an excellent overview of the changing understanding of learning and intelligence. Over 40 years of studies and research have moved our views of intelligence from a fixed idea to a flexible one, capable of growth.

Leveraging Employee Intelligence

With this new understanding of neuroplasticity, human resource management should look at staff abilities not as unchanging, but as opportunities for growth. When given the right tools, challenges, and attention, employees will respond with increased engagement and higher success.

In order to achieve the best results, managers must become coaches. To become coaches, they must first take steps to understand their staff.

Explore Areas for Growth

The Harvard Business Review has done significant work in the field of human resource management. A recent publication, Guide to Coaching Employees by Ed Batista, examines the practice of coaching.

One of the core concepts – as with much employee engagement – is talking to staff about their abilities. Having honest conversations about where employees feel themselves struggling can expose opportunities for change.

Allow Room for Error

One of the biggest fears in the workplace is failure on a project or the job. Allowing employees some room to make mistakes can be an effective tool for challenging them to do better. Knowing they will be supported, even if they make errors, changes the stress dynamic from negative to positive. Getting employees out of their comfort zones also sends the message that leaders value employees’ improving skills and want to see them grow.

Guide Through Experience

Supporting employees through a challenge turns a manager into a coach. Do not expect everyone to react the same way to a single approach. Once a manager has a sense of what individual staff members can do, they should use different strategies appropriate to each individual.

For example, some people like to work out problems on their own, knowing they have a back-up safety net if they need to ask for help. Others prefer more one-on-one contact through a process as they learn.

As businesses have grown into more interactive work environments, employees expect more attention to be paid to their lives and their skills in exchange for their continued engagement and loyalty.

By incorporating coaching into human resource management strategies, business can motivate employees and managers alike to improve business outcomes by deepening loyalty. Coaching reminds everyone that they are part of a team, and not simply workers under the direction of a boss.