Catalytic coaching: A healther way to approach performance reviews

An effective goal oriented system for performance reviews

How does this work, beginning to end, and let’s define some terms. Catalytic means speeding the pace of significant change. In other words, if you deliver performance reviews, wouldn’t it be nice if you got results right away instead of taking a long time? Things that take a long time aren’t nearly as valuable to you as things that happen right away.

The faster you get a significant change to occur and the more significant the change it is you can get to occur, the more valuable it is.

Catalytic coaching is coaching that happens quickly. Coaching is really a power relationship. The performance reviews process is conducted between two people that are not in an equal relationship. It is a power-based relationship. The coach can fire the employee, okay, in the same way that a coach of a sports team may be your biggest fan, may think you’re a wonderful individual, but they may put you off the team at the same time, because they’re accountable for making their team successful.

The control span in performance reviews
There needs to be a reasonable span of control with performance reviews and if you’ve got the complicated relationship structure and chain of command with many employees then I would say, “Good. Pick a homeroom teacher. Pick somebody to be the primary spokesperson for that individual.”

Oddly enough, people actually like the idea that they have a boss. That’s comforting okay, to have somebody to go to who can be a tie-breaker for you when you’re given conflicting instructions. From a career standpoint, we want one person talking to one person about their career and this goes up and down the organization, one person to one person in a reporting style relationship.

Edited remarks from the Rapid Learning Institute webinar “No More Performance Reviews! – A Revolutionary Approach to Performance Feedback” by Gary Markle