Published by McGraw-Hill as part of its Business Skills Express Series, this 1994 book by Robert W. Lucas focuses on improving management performance and maximizing employee performance.

Lucas categorizes any activity in which the supervisor and employee work toward employee performance improvement as coaching. Some of the skills he sees being used in coaching include:

• Instructing
• Communicating
• Analyzing
• Training
• Facilitating
• Directing
• Delegating
• Assisting
• Collaborating
• Guiding
• Motivating
• Nurturing
• Supporting

While these skills are quite broad, the qualities he sees in an effective coach ring more true for me. They include:

• Excellent communication skills (written and verbal)
• Excellent listening skills
• Compassion
• Technical proficiency
• Enthusiasm
• Ability to organize
• Flexibility
• Receptivity to feedback
• Nurturing disposition
• Goal orientation
• People orientation
• Creativity
• Team-player mentality

With the key focus of this type of coaching being to improve employee performance, it is no surprise that the eight step coaching model is what we now call a performance improvement model. Lucas’s eight steps include:

• Establish goals
• Collect performance data
• Analyze performance
• Review and modify performance goals as needed
• Identify developmental resources
• Devellp an action plan
• Implement strategies
• Evaluate performance.

Feedback and documentation are required at every step. I know that as I read this book I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up – it reminded me of the performance review systems from the 1970s-1980s – the difference being that the supervisor had the qualities of an effective coach.

What response do you have to this approach?

Vikki Brock, Ph.D., MCC
Director, History and Archive Division
The Coaching Commons