How Successful Managers use Positive Coaching as a Competitive Advantage

How do you set your managers up for success? Most managers of customer-facing teams came up through the ranks. They were the “best of the best” in their frontline roles, but now they are tasked with the challenge of leading teams— and they need a whole new set of skills to be successful.

Managers need to shift the focus from their own outputs to tracking team performance and motivating employees to reach their highest potential. Add the complexity of remote and/or large teams and many managers struggle, especially those new to the role. On average, sales and customer service managers have 8 to 10 direct reports, and many organizations have even higher employee-to-manager ratios. Managers of these teams need realtime data insights to provide timely, targeted communications to encourage and acknowledge employees who are hitting their goals and provide direction to those who need a little help.

Study after study has shown that positive coaching from managers impacts the bottom line. According to a recent Gallup poll, 90% of teams where managers focus on employee strengths see an increase in sales ranging from 10% to 19% and increased profits and employee retention.  

Four Tips on Using Pathlight for Positive Coaching:

TIP 1: Use Health Scores to Quickly Analyze Performance

With Pathlight’s Health Scores, you immediately see how well your team, or an individual, is performing. The Health Score is based on the weighted value of each metric you define. Pathlight also intelligently highlights what someone is doing well and where they need to improve. Managers no longer need to spend hours wading through spreadsheets, charts, and graphs—Pathlight makes it easy to send a quick note of encouragement or recognition with specific metrics.

A recent business review with a Pathlight customer in the tech industry revealed that coaching messages tied to metrics increased sales performance by an average of 51% in six months.

TIP 2: Transparency Leads to Accountability

As a manager, it’s essential that you set clear, measurable goals for your employees and give them access to their data so they can track their performance at any time. After all, we can’t expect people to change their actions if they don’t even know there is a performance gap.

At Pathlight, we work with clients to identify the most important metrics for their team’s success and create dashboards that are as easy as checking the weather— for anyone on the team. Realtime metrics provide transparency for everyone— now employees can manage their own time and efforts to excel.

TIP3: Celebrate the Good!

It’s no surprise that positive feedback increases motivation, boosts confidence, and shows people you value them. It also helps employees identify and develop their strengths. And all of this has a positive impact on individual, team, and organizational performance.

Constructive feedback is essential, but successful managers need to keep an eye on the ratio of positive feedback to negative. According to the experts at HBR, a manager should give 5.6 positive comments for every negative one.  

With Pathlight, you can quickly see how managers have given feedback to their team members.

Giving managers the tools to quickly understand employee performance and provide positive coaching becomes a competitive advantage. McKinsey reports that when managers effectively coach and develop their employees, 62 percent of these organizations perform better than their competitors. And when people do not see managers as effective coaches, only 30 percent report outperformance relative to competitors.

TIP 4: Set Mini Goals

The best managers help their employees hit lofty monthly or quarterly goals by setting short term, more attainable mini goals. Making 500 calls in a month sounds daunting, but making 25 calls tomorrow sounds doable. Pathlight allows managers— or motivated employees— to set these goals in seconds and track their progress in real time.

One Pathlight customer started using mini goals with their sales team and saw a 21% performance increase in six months.

Talk to one of our sales specialists and learn more about these 4 tips and other ways to leverage Pathlight to turn your managers into a competitive advantage.