Financial-aid professionals who supervise other employees can enhance staff productivity by including coaching as part of their management. USA Funds® University notes that combining coaching with training is more effective than training alone, because providing both practices is a long-term approach to improving staff performance.

In the workplace, coaching provides an employee with professional companionship, demonstration of new strategies, technical feedback and an analysis of the coaching process over time. In a summer webcast “Coaching Techniques for Leaders,” USA Funds University noted that the first step to effective coaching is setting time for coaching sessions with employees and then sticking to it.

The webcast offered the following 10 tips for how to coach employees:

1. Communicate regularly with employees about work progress.
2. Consider ways to make assignments and opportunities more challenging.
3. Build personal relationships with your staff; let them know that you value them and want them to succeed.
4. Know your individual employees’ strengths and weaknesses, understand their potential, and identify steps for growth and development.
5. Take time to develop a meaningful action plan with your team, inviting them to help flesh out the specifics of your department’s goals.
6. Develop an atmosphere in which people are recognized and valued.
7. Turn problems into conversations about identifying solutions.
8. Provide an avenue for project delays to be acknowledged early in the project, and be prepared to make reassignments when necessary.
9. Encourage your staff to recognize others’ accomplishments.
10. Have an open-door policy, encouraging employees who approach you with problems to also offer possible solutions.

The webcast also noted that supervisors who use coaching techniques with employees for the first time likely will be surprised at how positively their teams will respond. “Coaching Techniques for Leaders” is one of four customer-service webcasts offered by USA Funds University in summer 2006.

For more information about USA Funds University training opportunities, visit USA Funds’ Web site, www.usafunds.org, and select “Training” from the Express Links drop-down box.