How to Coach Your Staff for Continuous Improvement

No doubt your staff is already efficient and customer-oriented. If they weren't, you would be losing business. Believe it or not, with a bit of encouragement and coaching from you, they can do even better. The entire team can enjoy the process as well as the results.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

1. Identify an area or process you want to improve.
2. Bring together a working team to generate a Plus/Delta list: Identify the aspects of the job your team is executing well (Plus). Identify areas where there is room for improvement (Delta).
3. Invite team members to observe and evaluate activities in the work area with a critical eye for improving processes. Ask them to record what they see.
4. Create case study scenarios drawn from team members' observations.
5. Bring the team together to act out the scenarios. Encourage them to critique what they see and consider how the scenario might be changed to improve efficiency, customer service and job quality.
6. Incorporate team members' recommendations into new, improved processes.

Tips & Warnings

• Ask team members to run this show. As supervisor, your role is to moderate meetings, keep the process rolling forward and clear away hurdles that threaten to stall it.
• Assure participants that they will not suffer negative consequences for taking part in the exercise and mean it!