The Coaching Cafe Podcast

Getting a 36% uplift in performance from quality performance conversations

• Open Door Coaching

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Performance conversations aren’t just a HR requirement – they are an opportunity to drive real engagement. 

Research shows that when managers focus on strengths during performance conversations, it can lead to a 36.5% uplift in performance. That’s not all - engagement increases, productivity rises, and absenteeism drops. 

When we first came across this data years ago, we said, “Tell us more!” It was the beginning of our commitment to a strengths-based approach to coaching and one that has grown in relevance as we look at the low engagement scores across our workplaces. 

Today, workplaces are under pressure. People feel tired, under-valued, and stretched. But this is exactly where coaching makes the difference. Especially when it comes to the annual performance review. 

Therefore, join Natalie and Paula for our Coaching Café Podcast this week as we share: 

  • The power of strengths-based conversations 
  • How coaching shifts the tone of performance reviews 
  • Practical tools to help your team leave energised - not deflated 

And we turn performance reviews into a genuine engagement strategy. 

If you are a regular, you know the vibe and the great contribution that you make to our discussions; so we look forward to welcoming you back and offering you a value-packed 30 minutes each Tuesday.

If you’ve not joined us for a Coaching Café, now is your opportunity to schedule this time for your professional and personal development.  .  In no time at all, you’ll be looking forward to Tuesday lunchtimes, just like we all do! 

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed the podcast please leave us a 5 star review where ever you listened to us! It helps promote the podcast to streaming services and other listeners.

Watch the webinar of this episode or read the blog by visiting our website.

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[Music] Welcome to the Coaching Cafe podcast.[Music] This week join Natalie and Paula as we share the power of strength-based conversations, how coaching shifts the tone of performance reviews and practical tools to help your team leave energized, not deflated. We hope you enjoyed! If you want to support the podcast, leave a five-star review wherever you listen to us.[Music] We acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on the lands on which we meet today, and they continue to connect into the land, borders and communities of Australia. We pay our respects to them, their elders past, present and emerging. Well, it's a very good morning, good afternoon or good evening to you wherever you are listening to this Coaching Cafe, either live today with us or on your favourite streaming service. Welcome to our Coaching Cafe, my name is Natalie Ashtam. I'm joined by Paula. Jones, hello, Paula. Hi, how's everyone going today? Well, we've just found out the global weather report, so we're doing really well. And today we're thinking about performance conversation season and our topic is getting a 36% uplifted performance from quality performance conversation. So we're talking about big statistics today and what we can do about that, so I'm very much looking forward to our conversation. As we've been talking about over the last couple of weeks, we are in performance conversation season. They normally happen in Australia anyway around this time and then towards November, so not only twice per year, I was just talking to a client just yesterday who was literally booking those performance conversations in. And we really see this as an opportunity to build engagement in the workplace and use strengths to do that. We're all about creating a community, so welcome to our first time, Liz Mills, a long time followers. We are all about creating a community, sharing, learning experiences and having thought, provoking conversations. And welcome back to our regulars who give us the global weather report. It's always great to have you join us at this time. Of course, if you are here, your ICF-CPE's just hold on if you're listening live to the end of the session and we'll provide that to you. So we've been talking about the state of the Global Workforce report over the last couple of weeks and what we had to notice is this decrease in engagement. And the Global Workplace report which comes from Gallup says that the decrease engagement is mostly attributed to the decrease in engagement in our managers, in our middle managers. And it's a big concern and it's something that we've been on this at Global Crusade to turn around. And if you've picked up on our previous webinars, you'll know that you were very passionate about this. So we don't actually apologise without passion. We really want to engage ourselves as a community to help turn this engagement around. What we have found is that this concept of quite quitting is very strong and these statistics are quite alarming. It says that most employees in Australia, 67% of employees and if you're a New Zealand, 67% in New Zealand are quite quitting. Now for those friends of the community, you can go on to the Global Workplace report and find out the statistics for your region and your country. So Gallup have all of that information that they're able to do. What it means is that these employees are basically feeling asleep and watching the clock, they're potentially putting in the minimum effort required. And what the thing that concerns me is they're psychologically disconnected from their employer. They're minimally productive. So they're doing what they need to. We're not judging here by the way. I'm literally just stating the statistics. So we're not bringing in any judgement. Because these people are more likely to be stressed out, burned out and we know that if this engaged workers actually feel lost and they feel disconnected from their workplace. So that was the statistics for 2023 and globally the figure has actually gone up. So 70% of people are sitting in this disengaged bucket. Now we saw from our statistics in Australia we are doing a little bit better than the global numbers but not too much better, not enough to kind of crow about, I suppose. So I just want to give you this background so that we understand what we're actually talking about. Now, lastly, we introduce this concept of a perfect storm because if you've got 70% disengagement in the workplace and then you do performance conversations, a lot of managers we worry are actually going to be in trouble. Now we have talked to a number of organisations that we work with. They're engagement statistics are well, well above the global averages and that's what we're aiming for. But we're still talking about the global averages. What the issue is here is that only 14% of employees strongly agree that the reviews they received inspired them to perform better and only 20% of employees strongly agree that those performance conversations are accurate. And only a third strongly agree that they're fair. So we've got a very small percentage of employees who agree that they're a reviews inspired them to perform better and only a third of them actually think that they're accurate and fair. So there is some concern. Now I know many of you in the workplaces in the coaching that you're doing, we're hitting numbers that are well in excess of this and actually the Gallup research does say that those employees, those organisations that have got to focus on coaching, focus on strength based coaching are well in the upper percentiles and doing better. But it's worth showing you the statistics. So the good news is, and this is where we come into it as coaches. So this is probably the inspiration I'm trying to give you as coaches and as a coaching community. The good news is that 70% of team engagement is attributed to the manager. They say that the workers are winnable if they have a manager who knows how to motivate them. So we are coaching managers to coach their people and that actually is the solution or one of the anecdotes to what we've got going on. So 70% of team engagement is attributed to the manager and they're winnable and we focus on coaching to the strengths. Then we've got a really nice combination here that can make a difference. And so this is the reason why I'm sharing the information with you as a community so that you can encourage that coaching of managers in the work that you actually do. So as we said, the answer to one of the answers to the issues that we've got going on is actually coaching and strength. So that's what I want to talk to you about today and give you a couple of models that you can actually use. And so I've circled here, this is the statistics that we're using. 73% of when managers, people use strengths in their organisations, they say 73% of their team performance. And the other statistics we see are things like a 29% increase in profit, a 36% increase in productivity. And someone has asked, are the reviews started in the research that 14% are inspired by formal over six to 12 months or informal everyday conversations reviews? Yes, that's a very good point. Yes, they're the formal reviews. So their information might be a bit different for informal reviews. Thank you. And by the way, if you've got questions, please feel free to pop the message in the chat box for us as well. That's great. Yeah, so we're looking at some really great statistics here about using strengths in organisations, using strengths in coaching. Now, for the nerds on the line, you'll go, oh, Matt, that's the 2016 research. I'm giving you the link there. I'm like, okay, call your jets. Here's the latest research, which is the 2024 research. I've done the work for you. I've gone and found the meta-analysis that Gallop have just recently released, actually, May 2024. Look at these statistics. You can pick these up on our blog as well. Now, the reason why we like Gallop, as you know, is because of the statistical analysis, that this meta-analysis that they've done is from 736 research studies. There are 183,000 businesses were included in that meta-analysis, which represented 3.3 million employees in terms of the data points across 90 countries. We can reliably look at this information and use it as an opportunity for conversations. Look at some of these statistics. People that are using coaching and focusing on strengths see a 78% decrease in absenteeism 58% decrease in patient safety and incidences. 21% decrease in turnover for those high turnover organisations. 51% decrease in turnover for organisations that have a low turnover. So even if you have low turnover, you'll see a 51% decrease in lower turning organisations. There's so many great things to talk about here, including an 18% increase in productivity and a 23% increase in profitability. Of course, it also has an impact on custom mobility as well. So I've taken your 2016 statistics because I like that graphic, but I've given you the 2024 statistics as well. So you can see the trends across time. Paula, I've been doing all the talking. Let me get your response to these statistics and what we're talking about today. Well, if you are having to do any work with decision makers, CEOs, finance people, these statistics are quite excellent when you're looking at them. I mean, if you looked at your organisation and said if we introduced coaching and coaching to strengths, we could get a decrease in 78% in absenteeism, that is a lot of money saved in your organisation. So we can look at it from the, we know that the coaching and coaching to strengths increases engagement. It increases people's, how they feel about coming to work. But these steps are actually really useful if you're working with people who need to see what's the cost benefit to this. 21% reduction in turnover in larger organisations, that's a lot of money. And then if we think about it from our clients perspective, I mean, obviously there's patient safety incidences in there, so that would come from medical type facilities. But a 10% increase in customer loyalty is also gold. So it actually makes sense from a people perspective and from a financial perspective. Yeah, absolutely. I agree with you. And let's not forget when people are engaged in their work. They are feeling motivated, they are feeling happy, that has an impact also on their home life. So overall in terms of creating a psychologically safe workplace, in terms of creating environments where people want to come to work, and in terms of that impact on their broader self, there's a lot to actually, there's so many benefits, a lot to be gained. So let's talk about what we mean so that you have the language that you can use in your coaching. Just yesterday I was coaching an executive and I was listening for the strengths. So part of the work that we do is to listen for the strengths and to highlight those strengths back to the client. So part of your ISEA core competency, and when you're highlighting those strengths, you're asking the client to observe those strengths, but also to think about how they bring those strengths to their work, to inspire and bring out high performance in their work. And so that's part of what we're doing as coaches. Let's be clear though what we mean by strengths. We're talking about those characteristics or those attributes that energize us and enable us to achieve high performance. Now by the way, it is different from job competency. So job competency is the work that we have to do. Job competency is what we're going to be measured on. So interestingly when it comes to performance conversations, that's what people are going to be talking about. Have you done the job? Have you performed well and met all those KPIs and metrics in your job? You're going to be talking about job competency. The better conversation that brings more value is have you been energized in the work you do? Have you brought your strengths to your work to enable high performance? Because that's where we're actually going to get the uplifting performance. So strengths is not just about, "I'm good at it." So it is part of that. But it's not only am I good at it, I'm energized and it's enabling me. So there can be things that I'm very good at. In our certificate for in workplace and business coaching, we talk about how I, as the CEO and the director of the RTO, need to be good at compliance. And Paul, you are very good at compliance. So in our jobs, we're good at compliance. But it doesn't mean it energizes us. In fact, what energizes Paul or I to get on, it's not the threat of regulatory action or anything like that. What energizes us is that we work together to achieve our goals. When it comes to compliance, that's what's energizing us. That's what enables us to fight before in our area of compliance. So we always use the compliance because we think a lot of people were relate to that. And what you hear there is the strength that's been energized is collaboration and working together to achieve our goals. So goal driven and collaborative. As opposed to that's a positive and a positive mindset, a positive approach to take. As opposed to, oh, we have to do compliance otherwise, the regulators will come after us. So a completely different way of thinking about it. And I heard you chuckle Paul, are you just, are you twitching now? There's a compliance. You're listening to the Open Door Coaching Coaching Cafe podcast. And for more information on programs run by Open Door Coaching, head to our website at opendoorcouraging.com.au. Now back to the podcast. Now, I think there's lots of people in the world who are good at their job and they get more of that job and there's lots of that in their job, but it doesn't energize them. So what you've got is people who are doing a job that they're good at, but they don't love or it doesn't energize, it doesn't excite them to do it. And so that means that they are, it's just not interesting for them in actual fact. They're not thinking about how do I engage in this and what could I do with this? They're really just rocking out, clocking out, clocking out, because it was identified they were good at that job. Yeah, that's right. So what you're really talking about here is it's not energizing them to high performance and that's where strengths comes into it. And that's where the disengagement comes into it. And of course, that's why we're looking at performance conversations, because we have this wonderful opportunity to actually have that conversation, not just about are they doing the job, but what's energizing them about it. So we're thinking here about people playing to their strengths. And when people are disengaged, it is highly likely that they are underplaying their strengths. So I love this little graphic, the green in the middle means we're paying to the strengths. On one hand, you've got overplay, which is the red zone, and on the other hand, you've got underplay, which is the yellow or the orange zone. So if people are underplaying their strengths, they are literally warming the seat. They feel disengaged, then they're not bringing their best self to their work. They're more, they have a lot more to give in terms of what they can bring, but they think what's the point? Why should I? And so that feeling of real disengagement actually kicks in. So what we are looking out for in performance conversations, in our opinion, is their underplay is that people could have strengths that they could bring to the workplace, but because of the disengagement, they're not bringing it. And so as coaches and as leaders and managers, this is actually where the real gain is to be played. And that's what we're offering you. So okay, how do we identify the strengths? I'm glad you asked. For those that you that work with us, you will know that we have the strengths go profile, which we're accredited to deliver. And that comes out of the UK. And it shows this wonderful graphic that can actually show the 24 workplace strengths in the workplace, but not everybody has budget for that. So let's move on. Let's talk about coaching to strengths. The approach we take to coaching to strengths is quite straightforward. What we're highly recommending in performance conversations is yes, we're talking about what you actually did in the last six months, whatever it might be. But what about these beautiful questions that we can add to the performance conversations? Tell me what energises you most about your work? And how do you bring those strengths to your work? Now, of course, as soon as I wrote out this question, it's preparing for our congregation today. Or when I thought what energises you most about your work? I imagined a conversation that people could be having with their employees and they go nothing, nothing energises me about my work. And I thought, okay, how do you respond to that? But then I thought, hang on a second. That is exactly what we're talking about. So if nothing energises them about their work, of course, they're going to be disengaged. You have actually opened up the opportunity to have this new and different conversation. And that is actually the point. So if you get the negative response, nothing energises me about your work. That's actually okay. We can do something with them. We have identified, underplay, and that's actually what we're trying to do. If we think about what energises you most about your work and they say this, this, and this, then we can talk about how do you bring that to your work? Again, they could say, I don't, I can't. Great opportunity for a conversation. But I do like these other questions that extend the thinking and the feeling around this to say, well, what does it look like? Or what does it feel like to play to your strengths? Again, Paula, I know you've had conversations in your past life where they go, I don't know, I can't remember. But you've always pushed people back to think about a time actually. Well, think about a time when you actually have play to your strengths. And what was it about your job that you enjoyed so much that we could potentially bring to this role? Now, people say that we are skipping through the days is and strumming guitars when we talk about this, that we can't just change people's jobs. And but let's face it, if they're completely disengaged, we have to do something. Maybe we can't change the job they're doing. Think about our colleagues at Air Force that are posted into the roles two years. You can't change the job. The Australian government requires you to be in that role. But we can think about what energises you the most and how do you bring that to your role. Now, the wonderful thing with organisations like Air Force is that many, many, many of them love growing and developing people and are using their coaching skills as we found out last week in International Coach Week. They're using their coaching skills to develop and grow people. That's what energises them about their job. That's why they're like performing in their workplace. And that's why they can do the jobs that we need them to do to serve the country. Paula, I need to pause. I'm getting on the bandwagon here. So what are your thoughts? Well, the questions that you asked were exactly the questions that were running through my head that, you know, so when was the time that you were playing to your strengths? And how did that player and what did you learn from that and how can we bring that to this role? Everyone has jobs in their role that they don't love to do. I don't know anyone who doesn't, but there's always something that's not great. So like we look at compliance and say, well, we're good at compliance. I don't wake up every morning thinking I just want to do compliance. But when we need to do compliance, the way we forget about was to say let's work together on that compliance and then we feel better about it. We're energized about it. We tick things off. That's the exciting part for us. So in everyone's role, there are things that you have to do that don't energise you. That because it's a job function. It's not how are you going about that job function and that's where the strengths comes in. How do you play to the strengths that you've got that mean that you can do what you need to do? And when someone says, well, I nothing energises me about work. Then exactly what you said is you go back to, well, when was the time? What's something that you do like to do? Outside of work, what energises you? Because if they're burnt out at work, they are likely to have things outside that they can attribute to what energises. And you can help them understand how that is a strength and how you can utilise that strength at work and help shift that person. I agree with you and totally. And one of the questions that's coming from the chat, thank you is someone has asked if people can't identify their strengths, possibly because they are burnt out or they're lacking self awareness. What do we do there? And I think it's a really lovely question because as leaders and as coaches, you heard me say, as I was coaching yesterday and I was listening to the client and what they were talking about, I had that radar that was tracking for the person's strengths. And I said to the client, something along the lines of, it sounds like you're bringing a lot of empathy to this situation. You have gone out of your way to learn more information so that you can be more empathetic and you can show up with empathy in the work you're doing with the client. Would I be right in saying that? She said yes actually, that is probably a strength of mine to bring empathy to the role. And so what I was doing was tracking for the strength. I offered that back, would I be right in saying that you're thinking of that empathy and then she said yes actually, that's important to me. So if they're burnt out for the lack of self awareness, it might be up to us as leaders, managers, as coaches to track for those kind of things and then to offer or to sit down and do a conversation. You know, using your strengths cards or using the strengths code profiles, there are free reports online that people can do. It is true when people are burnt out and they're stressed and they can't see and have that growth mindset, they've got a fixed mindset or perhaps as you said, they're like yourself awareness. But there's lots of questions we can ask around that and I'd even recommend one of those free reports that you might find as well. Hopefully that's answered the question. We can think about questions like also in terms of is that underplay or overplay going on? The classic example I have a ground underplay is I was talking to a group and they were talking about, we're talking about strengths and what strengths you bring to the workplace and a lady that was in the workshop that I delivered, she had creativity as a strength and I said to her,"Oh, how do you bring creativity to your workplace?" And she says, "I don't actually." And a little part of me died, I was like, "Oh, I said to her, so you have ideas created by do how to make the workplace a better place and how to bring processing improvements to the work?" And she said, "Yes, that's what we've had been talking about." And I said, "What are the obstacles or barriers that are preventing you from bringing that creativity to the workplace?" And she says, "Nobody cares. I've tried. I've tried to come up with new ideas and implement new ideas, but nobody cares." Now, that is a classic example of the disengagement that we're talking about. There's massive underplay going on because this person could bring a strength to the workplace. She's tried to bring that strength to the workplace that someone has said,"We've got no time for that. We've got no budget for that. That's not your job." Whatever they've said is actually shut that down. So huge opportunity in our performance conversations. This is exactly what we're talking about to suss out where those strengths might be. I said, "We can bring them in a little bit more into the work into the next six months." Now, we're not, as we said, advocating that everybody completely changes their jobs. It could change as their roles. What we're advocating for is the next question, how can you leverage your strength? So, a lady who is in a disfunction, there's roles that we have where we can't so-called be creative. We can't all of a sudden, "Oh, I say, do creative accounting." But maybe there is way that creativity can be brought into the workplace in terms of, I don't know, how they trick up the workplace or put things around their workplace or creative ideas. They have for whatever it might be, morning teas, whatever. There's this creativity and there's all the other strengths that can be brought. Doesn't actually have to just be about the job function. And then, of course, as part of our performance conversations, we can then ask, "How can I support you?" So, what energises you most? How do you bring those strengths? What does it look like? Feel like? Where is it? Underplay if there is. How can you leverage those strengths over the next six months? And how can I support you? So, what would it mean? And we can guarantee that it's not just up to us to guarantee, is it we see the statistics, all the statistics are out there to say this actual approach is not just strumming guitars and skipping through the days, it's actually a solid way to turn engagement around. And so, that's what we'd like to offer you. So, the good news is, manages that receive training, they cut, they extreme disengagement in half. But half of the world's managers, half only half of the population of managers say that they've received adequate training. And then we know that teaching managers to have effective coaching techniques can boost performance from 20 to 28%. So, as Paula said, if you're building a business case for coaching in your workplace, then you can use these statistics straight out of Gallup. If you are a coach in your workplace, then know that the work you do here just look like yesterday with my client is actually where the main gain and the value is. So, it's affirming the work that you're doing as well. And finally, it's a call to action for all of us to make sure that we really are in our coaching tracking for those strengths, pushing them in front of the client, allowing them to reflect, allowing them to think about, what does it mean if I brought those strengths to my workplace? Performance conversations is the big opportunity to do something different, and that's what we're offering you today. So, there you go. A fast and furious overview of some of the really important statistics that we're seeing, a really important approach that you can take, hopefully, a practical approach with key questions you can ask. And hopefully, that's into the enthusiasm for motivation to do things differently. And of course, check in with us, tell us how you're going. And of course, a lot of you are coaching managers to coach their people. So, quite simply take your screenshot of those slides and handing those to your managers to get them to ask better questions. It's going to make a massive difference. So, we say, as always, go well with your coaching, enjoy your coaching. Check in with us if you want to talk more about our certificate for in workplace and business coaching, or our amazing, you updated, diploma of leadership coaching. We're getting quite a bit of interest in mediation at the moment. There's a bit of stuff going on out there in our workplaces that we can help you with as well. So, as always, everybody, enjoy your coaching. We look forward to catching up with you to discuss more about performance conversations at our next opportunity. Go well. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Coaching Cafe podcast. You can watch the full video of this podcast on our website. I'll put a link in the show next. We'll see you at the next Coaching Cafe.