The Find: Even the busiest manager can find the time to mentor employees with this executive coach’s simple system.
- The Source: Executive coach and author Daisy Wademan Dowling writing on the Harvard Business Review Conversation Starter blog.
The Takeaway: In a tough economy if managers are forced to choose between the bottom line and mentoring and developing more junior employees, most are likely to choose the former, but Wademan Dowling argues on the HBR Conversation Starter that this isn’t a choice managers need to make. Her contention: you can accomplish all the employee development that’s needed in just 15 fifteen minutes a day, and that absolutely everyone, even the busiest boss, can squeeze a quarter of an hour out of their day for mentoring. She calls her recommended method the “3.1% Coach” method because you can accomplish it in just that tiny percentage of your standard 40-hour workweek. Here’s how it works:
- Turn dead time into development time. Walking back to your office after a meeting? Use those two minutes to give your direct report feedback on the presentation, and on how he could do better next time…. Direct, in-the-moment feedback is your single best tool for developing people.
- Constantly spot dead time. Look for every two-minute stretch in your day during which you could be talking to someone else — most often, that’s travel time — and convert each into a coaching opportunity. Walking down to Starbucks to get a coffee? Ask one of your people to come along — and talk to them about their goals and priorities.
- Show up in their workspace. Employees expect you to stay in your seat. Don’t. Once per day, get up and walk over to the desk of someone you haven’t spoken to recently. Take two minutes to ask her what she’s working on. Once she’s done answering, respond “What do you need from me to make that project/transaction successful?”
- Make two calls per day. On your way home from work, call (or email) two people you met with that day, and offer “feedforward.” “I like what you’ve done with the Smithers account. Next time, let’s try to keep marketing costs down. Thanks for your hard work.”
The Question: How else can you fit more mentoring into your jam-packed days?
