Coaching time - could your returns be better?

I've never had more ‘convenience’ and I’ve never lad less time for coaching my team. For every time-saving invention I use it seems my coaching debt actually gets greater. Email – wow what a time saver that is! I can now avoid a 2 minute phone call and instead enjoy the multiple distractions of an exchange of short (in my dreams) written communications. I don't remember having the pre-email experience of receiving 250 calls a day, but that’s the norm with this great time-saving device… oh and then there are the texts, twitter, Facebook messages…

Anyhow, this epistle is less about my inability to control my inbox and more about where we as leaders spend our time. I recently asked a smart group of cross functional managers on which of their people they spent the most coaching time and focus. Sadly, the consistent theme from their answers is that they spent most of their time on their weakest performers – because they need to. The best performing team members, or those with the most potential, were generally given ‘space’ and ‘autonomy’ (this sounded remarkably like self-convincing speak for ‘received little attention’). If they’re already the best then let them get on with being the best. One manager mentioned that he didn't want to ‘get in the way of their good performance’. (The bigger question perhaps being what value he saw himself providing to the business if he was in fact a potential hindrance to his stronger team members!).

Coaching was largely reserved, in any degree of regularity, (I exclude the obligatory semi-annual performance appraisal) to the weakest members of the team. Taking a very laudable approach of ‘up or out’ with their weakest team members lead managers to invest their time heavily in the relatively poor returns of focusing on achieving the ‘up’. I’ve been lucky enough in my career to see some amazing examples of team members who have turned around their performance from weak to strong in a sustained manner – those these examples are rare and consistently had potential that wasn't seemingly matched by their performance.

In the wacky world of US TV's 'The Amazing Race' contestants are only as fast as the slowest member of the team, but unless your business involves running around foreign lands with a camera crew and some ‘crazy’ tasks (I’m sure that rules out 95% of us – though some MNC CEOs might see this as a pretty accurate job description) then ensuring your highest performers thrive will deliver more success for the team than trying to equalize the quality across the team.

If, for instance, you are crafting the video game of 'The Amazing Race' then research from that management bible ‘McKinsey’s War for Talent’ would suggest your best video game designer would be three times as productive as their average team-mate. Surely these are the folks in whom you want to invest your time, energy and coaching?

Improving your strongest performers and highest potential employees will deliver returns significantly greater than dragging your weakest teammate to a slightly higher level of distinctly average.

With all this tough talk about focusing coaching time on the best, I am referring to both the highest performers and those with potential. I’m sure we’ve all experienced those stretch roles where our performance suddenly takes a dive (often as our learning and personal growth takes a huge leap). This is when potential needs to be remembered - and with coaching time, realized!

If we follow these principles then perhaps we can thoughtfully structure where we spend coaching time – inverting the use of that time. I propose the above model. Why can’t we spend 60% of our coaching time on the highest performer/potentials, 30% on the solid performer/potentials and 10% on our weakest performer/potentials? We can then make extra time for the very best by giving the weaker team members coaching only as necessary and fair without offering more.

Time is an investment – make good choices with your coaching time and reap the rewards.