Huddle Up!

Most managers just don't know how to coach. They don't even see development of their people as their responsibility. But when you do develop your employees, they'll be willing to walk through brick walls for you. That's how powerful a motivator coaching is." So says Jeff Lugerner, a vice president at the Growth and Leadership Center, an executive development firm in Mountain View, California.

How will employees get to their next level of performance? Proactive owners and managers know the only reliable way is to provide individual employees with a boost by offering the coaching--disciplined, one-on-one counseling--they need to learn the path to take and the how-to of overcoming the obstacles they'll find along the way.

What's more, today's low unemployment rate means you have to do something to help your employees because you probably can't hire new ones--"at least, you can't do it easily," says Janelle Brittain, executive director of Dynamic Performance Institute, a consulting firm in Chicago that specializes in coaching and team-building. So if you want better workers, nowadays you've got to help make them yourself.

Robert McGarvey writes on business, psychology and management topics for several national publications. To reach him online with your questions or comments, e-mail rjmcgarvey@aol.com.

This article was originally published in the December 1999 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Huddle Up!.