Reflection is powerful, if you use it wisely. Lets say you have an employee who has a negative attitude. What do most managers do? They ignore until it gets so bad they say "Bill, you have to improve your attitude or else"! Really? Wow, that works? Of course NOT!
Reflective Coaching takes on 3 steps:
- Identify a performance issue - that needs improvement such as being negative, poor attitude, etc. It does not have to be something like this but I am using these as examples to illustrate the coaching technique.
- Learning Activity - facilitate an activity that prompts the employee to learn like reading an article, watching an inspirational video, observing another employee who is really positive, etc.
- Reflective Activity - after the activity is over, ask the employee to state what they learned and what they learned about them self they feel they can improve.
This approach absolves the manager from being viewed as "picking" on the employee which only fuels the employee challenge!