It is the college basketball season. Every year there are familiar colleges that dominate the rankings. I prefer to look past the college, because it’s not the college, it’s the coach. Great coaches stay at the same school and that program is a perennial powerhouse. But great coaches can go to new colleges and it isn’t long before that college has a great program. Great coaches can attract great talent, but they can also take average talent and transform them into greatness.

But where do great college basketball coaches come from? For many of them, there is almost a “family” tree. Almost all of the great coaches have been coached (and mentored) by a great coach for much of their career. In fact, when most of these “new” great coaches get their own program, they still maintain contact with their mentor(s).

Mentoring and coaching go hand-in-hand in college basketball, and it should be the norm in business. Great coaches and leaders attract great talent and can also take average talent and transform them into greatness.

Do you want to be a great coach and leader?

If you are lucky enough to be or have been coached and mentored by a great coach, you are probably already on your way to becoming a great coach yourself.  Coaching and mentoring is a mindset of looking forward, as opposed to looking back.  A great example of looking back is the performance appraisal.  Studies show that coaching delivers major results, offering 150 percent greater return on investment than performance appraisals.  You read that correctly — 150 percent! With that number in mind, coupled with the dread almost everyone feels regarding performance appraisals, why isn’t everyone coaching?  Perhaps because they are not clear about how or when to do it. Or more specifically, they have never been properly coached or mentored themselves.

In the performance appraisal process, the manager is trying to fix an issue after it has been identified in the appraisal. A great coach uses feedback and development as tools to drive success instead of fixing problems, so a great coach can have success from the start.  It’s an easier way to teach and a more positive way to learn.  And if such coaching takes place regularly, as it should, and is tailored to the employee and the specific job, it becomes part of the weave of a company’s culture.  And if it becomes the culture, then new great coaches can be developed through this mentoring.

It is important for coaches to remember that one size does not fit all.  Each employee is different, and employees work differently. The better the manager/coach understands the employee, the more effective the coaching and the results — more engaged and productive employees, and less turnover — will be.

What is the best way to understand your employee??  Assess them with the CheckPoint, the ProfileXT, or the PPI.  Better yet, use all three. 

Want to find out more?  Go to www.royalmountainresources.com/products-and-services.