How to Coach an Employee By Asking These 3 Kinds of Questions

If you manage a company, you know that employee performance is important. However, having coaching conversations may seem daunting. A lot of managers shy away from giving advice. This might be because the manager is afraid of giving poor advice or because the manager simply doesn’t know what to say. In these situations, you may need to think about the questions you ask. With these three questions, employee coaching is easy.

Probing Questions

If there are employee issues, a probing question may be able to get to the cause of these issues. Probing questions make an employer dig deeper. He or she will be able to uncover the cause of his or her stress or poor performance. You don’t want to take your employee’s answer at face value. Make sure that you don’t move on to a different conversation too quickly. Probing questions may help you to give the employee better advice. After all, you will understand his or her situation more.

Open-Ended Questions

Do not settle for close-ended questions when you’re focused on employee coaching. You can answer close-ended questions with yes or no. You need something that elicits a longer response. You need your employee to think about his or her answer. If there is a longer answer, you can look for a theme or understand the employee’s viewpoint. In this situation, you want to be able to put the employee into a position where he or she is driving the conversation. You especially want to do this in performance-based meetings. It’s crucial that an employee voices his or her own thoughts and feelings. They should come up with their own conclusions.

Hypothetical Questions

If you’re trying to coach your employee, you do not want to throw out answers based on your experiences. Even if they are valuable answers, they are not always relevant. Instead, you can use a hypothetical question. Hypothetical questions allow you to test your employee’s knowledge and understanding. These questions can help you to learn the limits of your employee’s capabilities.

You shouldn’t have to fear an employee coaching conversation. In fact, with the right questions, these conversations can go smoothly. It’s important that you find ways to get to the bottom of employee issues. If someone needs advice, you are in a good position to give it. You simply have to know how to ask the right questions to get more of an idea on any problem.

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