Coach or direct? Matching your approach to each person.
Rate the energy and capability each person brings to their current work. The tool suggests how much freedom to give and how much to coach. Nothing is stored or sent.
Rate each person's energy and capability for their current work, 0 to 2 each. The total suggests how much freedom to give and how much to coach, with separate advice where energy or capability is missing. Nothing is stored or sent.
How the check works
Not everyone in a team needs the same kind of management. This check, adapted from situational leadership principles, looks at two things for each person and adds them up. We use these definitions. Energy is the motivation, drive, commitment, effort and openness to learn they bring to this work at the moment. Capability is their current ability, skills and knowledge, experience, insight and confidence for it. Score each 0 (absent), 1 (what you would expect) or 2 (a real strength), for the work they are doing now: someone can be a 4 in one role and a 1 the week they take on something new.
The higher the total, the bigger the “box” of freedom you can give and the more you can coach rather than direct. The lower the total, the smaller the box: clearer direction, closer contact and coaching on one thing at a time. Where one of the two scores is 0, the tool looks at which one, because a missing skill and missing energy need different responses.
The six suggestions
A performance conversation first
Both energy and capability are absent for this work. Coaching will not fix that on its own. Check your own view first: is it fair, and is it about the work rather than the person? Then have a direct, honest conversation about performance and agree what happens next.
Find out what has changed
They can do the work but the energy has gone. More instruction is unlikely to help on its own. Ask what has changed, listen until you understand, and agree one thing that would make a difference. Keep the box small until the energy returns.
Show and teach, then ask
The energy is there; the capability is not yet. Give clear direction, examples and practice, check in often, and move to asking as soon as they have something to work with.
Guide: mix telling and asking
Steady on both. Agree goals together, tell where they lack the knowledge, ask where they can work it out, and check in regularly. Pick one area to coach on.
Mostly coach
A bigger box. Agree the outcome and let them choose how. Ask before you suggest, check in less often, and coach on whichever of energy or capability scored 1.
Coach and stretch
The biggest box: outcomes and boundaries only. The risk is comfort, so agree a stretch that keeps them learning, and consider asking them to coach someone else.
The scores are your view, not a fact about the person. Write down why you gave each one, and test it in your next conversation with them. If a score of 0 is about how someone is doing their job, the performance problem diagnostic helps you work out whether it is the person or the job, and four steps to an effective tough conversation helps you prepare. Repeat the check every month or so; it takes about as long as a cup of coffee.
For the coaching itself, see Coaching for performance: the manager as coach, and for stretching your strongest people, the development conversation planner.
Built from the “freedom in a box” exercise in great{with}talent’s Coaching for Performance workshops for managers, adapted from situational leadership principles (Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard, 1969). For development feedback that faces forward, see FeedForward.
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