Employee Coaching

To run an efficient and productive business, managers today need to have coaching skills. Coaching, like mentoring, is an excellent way to engage with employees in order to emphasize strengths and improve upon weaknesses. Psychometric evaluations, which test employees’ personalities, skills, and values, help coaches tailor their practices to individuals. This creates a happier, more motivated workforce that feels recognized and empowered.

Psychometric tests are written by psychologists and other professionals who have studied this quantitative method of assessing individuals’ strengths, weaknesses, values, and emotional intelligence. Tests provide insight and direction on how to motivate and coach employees who require or are seeking improvement. Training programs, employee reviews, and team building can all benefit from these types of assessments, which provide managers with essential information about their teams.

Coaching can build upon psychometric tests by assessing the results and using them to help employees according to their values. Not all employees want the same thing, many have different motivations for doing their job, and each person will have a different combination of skills, personality, and values to bring to their team. A successful and effective coach provides direction to each individual in a way that motivates them. Motivated employees experience better job satisfaction and feel more valuable—they know they mean more to their companies than just a number on a payroll.

Employee Evaluation and Development

Today’s employees are well educated, tech-savvy, and aware of how businesses operate. Every person brings a unique set of values and skills to the job, which can be evaluated by job screening, employee reviews, and psychometric testing. Coaching according to these individual traits helps every employee succeed, and therefore helps the business to succeed.

It can be hard for some employees to talk with their managers about their strengths and weaknesses, especially if they do not feel like the manager understands them. Most employees already understand their weaknesses, but may not have the support from managers to improve. By having employees complete online tests managers can understand employees better, and will know how to go about coaching the employee in areas that require improvement.

Coaching teams works the same way. Every person’s unique skills and experience, combined with personality, will decide how teams are balanced within a workplace. Assessing strengths and weaknesses within a team is important in order to find this balance and help employees build on their strengths while improving on their weaknesses. This can be done through effective direction, coaching and training programs.

Coaching recognizes each employee on an individual level. Knowing individual and team skills and values helps managers to build effective training programs that can be tailored to different learning styles and personality types. Psychometric assessments provide coaches with the background on which to initiate these changes and improvements to training programs.  

Team Environments

Coaching should occur down through all levels of management and employment within a company. Strong team relationships, fortified by effective coaching, are important to have in all areas of an organization. Positive work environments retain loyal employees who feel they’re valued and understood on an individual level. Interpreting needs within a team is an essential part of coaching, and psychometric tests find these needs.  

As the Japanese proverb states:  three heads are better than one. Co-operative teams are an essential component to every business. Teams are able to problem solve by combining various skills and experience, and are often better at finding suitable creative solutions to problems than a single person would be. Team discussion can also fuel innovation and proactive measures within businesses.

Psychometric tests analyse individual strengths and weaknesses. Results are shown to managers, who are then able to understand their employees as individuals and how they fit within the team. Coaching builds on strengths within a team, and provides direction in areas that need improvement. This is much different from a manager who is in complete control of a group— a coach guides where a manager instructs. This interpretive style of managing succeeds in team building situations.  

Managers that inspire, motivate, and reward employees with an engaging approach to individual and team development are much more effective in building positive work environments and cohesive teams. Measuring employee skills and values through psychometric evaluations is the first step to starting this process to learn more about employees as individuals.