lsilverman's picture Submitted by lsilverman on
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Management and Leadership

This question came from one of my directs regarding accomplishing quarterly goals. Where should the time come from to accomplish coaching goals? Personal time or business time? What if the employee is a consultant and has minimum utilization targets?

The coaching podcasts are clear that one of the main goals of coaching is to encourage improved effectiveness of the individual so that the company may improve. It's a business, after all.

So if the expectation is that ultimately, the effort to accomplish goals benefits the company, should the company or manager be explicit about reserving time during business hours to allow the employee to accomplish the agreed-upon goals? Or is there an unwritten or unspoken expectation that the employee should just "get it done" on top of the rest of their workload?

I'm interested to hear opinions from other forum members.

GlennR's picture
Submitted by GlennR on Friday August 23rd, 2013 3:15 pm

I don't work with consultants so I cannot address that part of your question.

Would you make an employee attend a training course designed to improve effectiveness on their own time?

How would requiring an employee to do this on his or her own time impact employee engagement?

My organization has a well-organized coaching program. Coaches go through a comprehensive selection and training process.They are then assigned a coachee who works in a different division (We're territorial based.)

Coaching is scheduled during company time at the convenience of the coachee and coach. This model has worked well for us and I believe is standard throughout the business and nonprofit sectors. (Most of our exempt staff work more than 40 hours a week. Asking them to do this on their own time would so negatively impact morale.)

I'm a former head of our division's learning and development department and consider myself a continuous learner. Our organization embraces innovation and learning. As long as someone is up to date or ahead, there is no problem reading a professional publication at work, including the Wall Street Journal. I have occasionally read books at work, adding "Read one chapter," to my next actions list when it was directly relevant to my role. (I'm aware many of you think that's too radical but I believe in results and in staying competitive.)

One of the first things I learned in my career decades ago was, "You pay for your training whether you do it or not."

To me, executive coaching would fall into the same category.

Glenn