Could Your Employee Be Uncoachable?

Executive coaching is professional intervention with a focus on developing the skills needed to drive change, manage complexity, build top performing teams, and maintain a strong personal foundation to thrive under challenging conditions. It can be worthwhile, but also very expensive and time-consuming.

The hard truth is, there are times when you should make the investment in an employee, and times when you should save your money. My friend Marshall Goldsmith wrote an article detailing some of these circumstances, and I’ve added a few of my own.

She doesn’t think she has a problem

Some successful adults, said Marshall, have no interest in changing because their behavior is working just fine. You could employ the best coach in the whole world, but if your employee doesn’t care to change, you’re wasting your time, the employee’s, and the coach’s.

He is pursuing the wrong strategy for the organization

Some employees have strong beliefs about the way the organization should operate, and those beliefs may be at odds with yours. If this guy is already going in the wrong direction, said Marshall, all your coaching will do is help him get there faster.

She’s in the wrong job

An employee might feel that she’s in the wrong job with the wrong company, that she’s supposed to be doing something else or that her skills aren’t being taken advantage of properly. To tell if you’re dealing with one of these people, Marshall recommended asking her: “If we shut down the company today, would you be relieved, surprised, or sad?” If you hear “relieved,” send her packing. Coaching will not make an unhappy person happy.

For more signs, see the full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Comments

[Annabel]

Its a big problem when someone that has a problem doesn’t think she has a problem, because the first stage of solving any problem is first accepting the fact that you have a problem. An employee in the wrong job will only cause more harm than good.