I blinked and suddenly the calendar said June instead of January. It seems like yesterday that I was setting goals for 2014 and coaching my clients do the same. Alas, now its time for a mid-year review of said goals!
People managers should not underestimate the impact of coaching their people to success around individual and shared goals. Its one of the rare benefits that accrues to the organization as much as its employees, in that there are no hard costs associated with coaching conversations and there are often big returns on time and energy invested. As such, I implore all business leaders to do some version of a mid-year goal review via a coaching session with their team members.
Mid-year coaching sessions should feature lots of provocative, open-ended questions, typically looking something like this:
- What successes or accomplishments do you want to celebrate so far this year individually and as a team?
- What are the best practices present in those achievements that stand out and which do you want to replicate going forward?
- To the extent one of your/our 2014 projects hasnt gone as planned or has stalled:
- What were the key lessons learned?
- What are some creative ways you might surmount obstacles youre encountering?
- What might you do differently going forward?
- Of the goals that are still in progress:
- Which are top priority?
- What and when are your next tangible action steps to keep them moving forward?
- Is there a theme you notice and want to build upon for the rest of the year?
In the famous words of Ferris Bueller, Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. Wouldnt you agree that life moves exponentially more quickly for us now than it did for Ferris in 1986? This year will be a memory before we know it, and it will serve your business well to do mid-year check-ins to ensure greater focus and clarity on your teams goals for the balance of the year.
Shani Magosky is an executive coach and owner of Vitesse Consulting, a consulting firm.
