Being Open to Your Staff

At one point or rather in our lives, we may have engaged a personal coach to assist us. Executive coaching is still a big thing in corporations, although the practice of it varies widely, as it is practiced unofficially or informally.

Triathletes and endurance athletes may also engage coaches. We seek swim coaches to correct our techniques, and join master classes to bring our swim fitness up. We may attend running workshops to learn to run ‘freely’ while paying attention to our posture, physical imperfections, and how to race more effectively. We may seek a competent bike fitter to tailor our bike to our bodies (not the other way around), and then learn about specific drills and exercises we should do to correct some bad habits.

What coaches do is provide us with real-time information. If coaches kept quiet and mum when we make mistakes, our progress may be hindered. The best coaches are scientific and people-orientated in their process of raising human performance. Their report card is our individual progress. Coaches tweak the programs they carefully prescribe, and fit it to the athlete’s needs.

If you use an Open System of Appraisal, its benefits will include:

1)    When your team does well, you will do better. (Thus, our future as managers is in the hands of our staff)

2)    We promote productive conversations that focus on results, not merely efforts.

3)    Performance becomes our main goal, and we can design each staff goals to meet their competencies.

4)    We engage leadership and people skills.

5)    We engage values like honesty, integrity, recognition, reassurance, respect, consideration, care, performance, commitment, and many more.

6)    We reduce suspicion, doubt, anxiety, worry and inappropriate behaviors when we know where we stand.

A happy staff is a productive staff. An injury-free athlete is a happy athlete. When staff or athlete performs better, they become more clear, committed and confident. An aging worker can stay confident if he/she knows his/her competencies and strengths and work towards these.

Do consider shifting from the archaic, suspicious, and non-assuring Closed System to a more open, honest and relevant process. It can benefit you in more ways than you have thought. So, start having conversations about your staff. It is about them – first.


Afterthoughts: Never feel undermined or usurped when, and if, your staff become more skillful.  The reality is that we have our competencies, and being in a managerial position does not, necessarily, make us better than them. Perish the thought that a competent staff will manipulate you; be thankful when they do, because it suggests that they are influential. Diversity is about accommodating and appreciating differences as uniqueness.