Who doesn't want to be a better manager? With all the demands upon you, do you have time to develop, mentor, and coach your employees? Or do you just have time to get the necessities done, such as checking on performance? I was reminded of some of the more effective things I have found from working with thousands of individuals in corporate, military, and healthcare settings while reading a Harvard Business Review article by Keith Ferrazzi on how to turn managers into coaches again.

We know that formerly managers took on the roles of coach and mentor. Much information and discussion leading to growth and development occurred both informally and formally. We knew our employees better and could work with them around helping them develop and contribute to the team. Why doesn't this mentoring happen now? Do you recognize any of these in your company?:

Tighter budgets
Flatter organizations
Heavy workloads

If your answer is yes, you are not alone. And yet, developing your team remains critical to the productivity and success of your organization. These six practical tips help you move into a coaching/mentoring role more easily and efficiently:

1. Use regular one-on-one check-ins. Have regular contacts. These allow you to work directly with your employees to offer insight, knowledge, guidance, and suggestions. I used to meet weekly on a face-to-face basis. When was the last time you did that? If not, consider it.

2. Encourage more peer-to-peer coaching. Do you use your regular staff meeting as a collaborative problem solving session? What, you say you don't have a regular meeting. Well, consider that this builds cohesion among your team, and inspires them to think creatively about how to solve pressing organizational challenges. You can also coach or mentor multiple people in one setting at one time, thus maximizing your time and efficiency.

3. Create mentoring partnerships. This is where ‘reverse mentoring’ comes into play when a younger generation employee partners with a more senior person and they agree to share lessons learned with one another. I have used this many times to share voluminous life experience and knowledge beneficial to the younger employee, while the younger employee knew about the latest technology and other bits of information, which they passed on to me.

4. Tap into the potential coach within everyone. Do you encourage your own team members to become coaches and trainers by allowing them to share their own specific knowledge on relevant topics or skills? The sharing of such knowledge helps energize, engage, and encourage learning. When one of my team went to a training or seminar, I encouraged them to share pertinent content with our team.

5. Support daily learning and development activities. Do you create an environment where it’s not only acceptable but encouraged to use office time to engage in learning activities? Perhaps you can look for ways to bring learning and development into daily activities for your people.

6. Seek formal training. Do you model seeking out training for yourself? Do you encourage it for your employees? Have you seen how energized and motivated they are when they return from a training? There is considerable research around the monetary return from training to your organization's productivity, usually an increase of at least $3 for every $1 spent.

I have found that these six tips have increased productivity and team cohesion as well as reduced turnover and stress for both the teams I've lead as well as the many with whom I've consulted in the business world, military, and healthcare. These all are learnable skills. Here is my secret that I find makes these tips work even faster and better and produce more predictable results. It is to individuate your relationships with the people you supervise rather than use the same style with all. Matching your style to theirs separates the really good managers from the lousy ones.

Would you like to elevate not only your own performance, but that of your organization? When the above tips are combined with clearing out your mental clutter (limiting beliefs and mindset), you will be an unstoppable force.

Dr. Paul Longobardi

For more valuable information on team and leadership development: