During this time of year — the college basketball season — although much of the media attention is directed toward the players, the coaches get their share of coverage.  The other evening, Duke’s coach Mike Krzyzewski notched his 880th career victory, placing him second to Bob Knight, who mentored Krzyzewski and coached him at Army on the way to 902 wins.

One of Mike Krzyzewski’s quotes provides great insight into his coaching style, “A common mistake among those who work in sport is spending a disproportional amount of time on “x’s and o’s” as compared to time spent learning about people.”

How do you learn more about your people so you can coach them to greater things?

In order for a manager to help their people, they need to find the answer to two questions, “what” and “why”.  “What” are their people doing that is either making them successful, or keeping them from their success?  “Why” do they do the things that either make them successful or not?  Once they know the “what” and the “why”, coaching becomes a case of having their people keep doing the things that are making them successful, stop doing the things that keeping them from being successful, and start doing the things that can make them more successful.

The Checkpoint™ Management System tells you the “what” and allows you to assess yourself and each of your managers in less than 30 minutes so you can gain:

• COMPREHENSIVE insight into the strengths and weaknesses of you and your management team in areas of communication, adaptability, and leadership skills.
• ANONYMOUS insight from peers, direct reports, bosses and managers to help identify gaps in perceptions across various roles.
• AN ACTION PLAN AND ROADMAP to improve performance for you and every one of your managers.

The ProfileXT^® tells you the “why” and is the most technologically advanced, state-of-the-art system available today for measuring human potential and predicting job performance.  This 45-minute, online assessment reveals consistent, in-depth, and objective insight into an individual’s thinking and reasoning style, relevant behavioral traits, occupational interests, and match to specific jobs in your organization.  It helps your managers and you interview and select people who have the highest probability of being successful in a role, and provides practical recommendations for coaching them to maximum performance.  It also gives your organization consistent language and metrics to support strategic workforce and succession planning, talent management, and reorganization efforts.

Best of all, the CheckPoint Management System and the ProfileXT are extremely cost-effective, and the reports and improvement tools are written in plain language that do not require a specialist to interpret the results.

Once you know the “what” and the “why”, here is a helpful idea: Coach early and often. Early, to catch potential problems before they happen. Often, because continuous interest and feedback virtually guarantee better performance. Coaching employees provides counsel in real time and clearly identifies goals in the context of the employee’s job. Good coaches understand the current reality of the employee’s world, and are aware of issues that might prevent a worker from reaching his or her goals. Good coaching provides the development strategies that allow an employee to achieve his or her goals.

You may or may not become as successful as Mike Krzyzewski in college basketball, but you can become a great coach on your own “court” — with the CheckPoint and the ProfileXT.