#How to hold an employee’s development meeting?

Dear #CEO
How to hold a coaching development meeting with your employee?

1. Arrange to meet your team member no later than 2 weeks after they have attended the training.
2. An alternative is to inform each of your team members that it is their responsibility to seek you out and arrange a meeting with you.
3. Remind your team member to bring along with them their Individual Development Plan – IDP.
4. Just by looking at the IDP, you can immediately identify whether the employee thought about what they wrote and how thorough they were in their work.
5. Initially we recommend that you set aside 15 minutes for this first meeting. Subsequent meetings. 5 to 10 minutes.
6. Ensure that you are not disturbed during these meetings.
7. The meeting should be held in a relaxed and informal but structured way.
8. Start by making a short 30 second introduction by thanking them for coming to the meeting. Explain that this meeting is a two way process, both of you will learn and support each other.
9. Then start by asking them a series of open questions.

Here is a list of how such a meeting might go:
💎 What did you learn from the training?
💎 Could you go through your IDP ?
💎 What action items did you write down?
💎 What have you managed to implement or try out at work since you completed the training?.
💎 What have been the results of implementing your action points?
💎 What did you learn from this experience?
💎 Why do you think this is?
💎 What would you change next time?
💎 How can I support you?. This is a very important question and you must remind yourself not to omit this open question.
💎 What can we agree as the next steps? Use this opportunity to do a short feedback and summary of what was discussed and agreed. Don’t say or imply things which were not said. This will destroy the entire purpose of the meeting and its goals.
💎 Let us confirm another date in our diaries for a follow-up meeting.

10. Never criticise the person, do not interrupt them. Allow them to speak. Keep to the rule that you ask open questions and then simply listen. Set in your own mind that some 70 to 80% of the time they talk you listen. 
11. You can confirm you understood what is being said by paraphrasing what you just heard. If you do this correctly, you will be encouraging the person to be more open with what they are saying.
12. Always be sincere and show respect.
13. What ever you agree on, make sure you deliver on your promise and monitor them so they action their progress.
14. In the IDP get them to write down under “action” what you both agreed, and a date by which they will complete this task.
15. Thank them for the meeting.

Part of your role is to develop your team members. Golden rule, end of year appraisals are just a confirmation of what has already been discussed during the year.

This is a shortened version of a Genba Coaching Development meeting.