What is Catalytic Coaching?

People hate performance reviews.

This would appear to be an almost universal law of modern business. Whether you call them evaluations, appraisals, or counseling sessions, employees seem to have developed a great distaste for the ritual of having their yearly contribution summarized and categorized in one ninety-minute meeting. Most managers dread giving this annual dose of medicine almost as much as employees dislike receiving it.

WHAT MAKES THIS APPROACH DIFFERENT?

Catalytic Coaching can be distinguished from traditional performance management systems in three fundamental ways. It changes what is done, how it is done and the roles of those who do it.

CATALYTIC COACHING DELIVERS

Catalytic Coaching is presented as a replacement for, not an addition to, traditional performance evaluations. It will be argued that performance management systems built around the principles of Catalytic Coaching are superior to traditional (evaluation-based) systems in producing five
key deliverables:

 • positive behavioral change
 • motivation to work hard
 • retention of key contributors
 • internal promotions and succession
 • prevention of and protection against lawsuits

Organizations that have tried this new system claim it reduces both time and cost required by the annual review process at the same time that it greatly increases the outcomes listed above. Implemented correctly, it can help transform both individuals and their corporations.

ATTITUDE TOWARD PEOPLE

Catalytic Coaching is about helping people grow. It's about bringing out the best in people at work. It sets forth a specific methodology for creating and managing a comprehensive and strategic people-development system to help drive a business toward prosperity.

 

How Is Catalytic Coaching Different?

It is important to recognize both the joy and complexity of work done by people. Too often we lose sight of the human face of our workforce by using fancy terminology that reminds us of their financial value. It is possible to create development systems at work that both recognize and profit from the humanity that the term “people” implies.

CONTENT CHANGES

Catalytic coaching involves no competitive rating or ranking of employees. They are assigned no aggregate labels or grades at the end of the process. Instead, mangers, functioning as coaches, provide employees feedback on perceived strengths and areas for improvement in light of stated career aspirations. The coach helps each employee construct a development plan aimed at improving contribution in the current job and increasing potential for other opportunities when those are desired.

Catalytic Coaching breaks the direct connection between salary treatment and an assessment of annual performance. "Pay for performance" practices are explained as having an indirect impact on base pay. Catalytic Coaching sessions focus on performance improvement without trying to justify salary treatment. Financial recognition of superior contributors is dealt with in other ways.

PROCESS CHANGES

A review, by its very nature, is focused on the past. Catalytic Coaching is focused on the future. No attempt is made in coaching sessions to account for all activities that have taken place in a calendar year. Instead, emphasis is placed only on past issues and behaviors that have likelihood of impacting future performance.
Administrative burden is dramatically reduced for most companies converting to the Catalytic Coaching method. In traditional systems, the number of pages a manager must complete on an employee varies widely. Many require the supervisor to provide up to ten or twelve pages of input, with the majority somewhere between four and seven. Catalytic Coaching requires one page to be completed by the supervisor on each employee.

Ownership of the traditional review process is with senior management and the Human Resource department in most companies. In contrast, the employee is defined as the owner of the Catalytic Coaching process. Each employee has ultimate responsibility to prepare and implement her own development plan. The manager serves as a resource and facilitator.

ROLE CHANGES

Catalytic Coaching differs markedly from conventional performance management systems in the way it assigns responsibility for behavioral change and career development. Too often in classic systems employees become passive participants in a process designed primarily to rate or rank them in order to try to justify a salary increase.

The approach in Catalytic Coaching changes responsibilities for almost everyone involved in the performance management process. A boss abandons the futile role of critic/judge and becomes a facilitator in the employee development process, functioning like a coach. Employees who take the quest for achieving high performance seriously and invest in the process both emotionally and intellectually, are converted from evaluation subjects to empowered craftsmen of their own careers. The burden of responsibility for career management falls on the shoulders of those with the greatest vested interest. Other aspects of the system are converted to support them.

Human Resource professionals become coaching consultants instead of process policemen. No longer must they hound managers to make them fill out and submit their forms. By dramatically reducing the burden (to one page) and making the experience both positive and productive, most of the longstanding challenges associated with having to force compliance go away.

Labor attorneys get a reduction in workload once a Catalytic Coaching system has been set into place. They also get involved much more in problem prevention as sensitive issues surface sooner and the number of discrimination and wrongful discharge suits subside.

 

Learn More

 

Catalytic Coaching Employee Orientation and Form Completion is Now Online!

We can now offer online form completion, stewardship, storage, retrieval and management of the Catalytic Coaching process. With the help of an experienced software partner, we’ve automated what has always been a manual process and taken Catalytic Coaching “to the cloud.”  Read More

Any Questions?

If you have any questions, please contact us.

E-mail: patti@energage.com