Today’s great business leaders don’t try to force the old management rules onto today’s diverse workforce. They don’t try to fit square pegs into round holes. Instead, they actively seek out coaching and mentoring opportunities with employees to lead their teams to success. It’s through mentoring that your most valued employees can realize their full potential and achieve great things for your company.

Today’s younger generation of workers, the Millennials, tend to give their loyalty to people (i.e., the leaders) instead of corporations, so taking on a mentorship role helps bring in and retain the fastest growing group of talent. Coaching people to be their best also dramatically increases employee retention. If for nothing else than simply because employees of every generation want to feel appreciated by their employers and are less likely to leave than those who feel undervalued.

Coaching, in simple terms, means to train, tutor, or give instruction. It is an excellent skill that can be used to enhance growth and performance and promote individual responsibility and accountability. Performance coaching is an ongoing process that helps build and maintain effective employee-supervisor relationships.

Mentoring and coaching are critical leadership and management competencies for many organizations today. Also, employees are asking more and more for coaching. True coaching improves employee and organizational resiliency and effectiveness in change.

8 reasons why coaching and mentoring  is critical to your organization:

1. Communicates expectations and goals
2. Creates supportive relationships
3. Provides direction
4. Provides constant performance feedback
5. Identifies needed training
6. Empowers the employee
7. Improves the employee’s understanding, skills, and confidence
8. Offers praise and rewards

Behaviors that contribute to effective employee coaching

Effective coaches not only accurately identify performance problems; they are proficient at developing solutions. While different people may have different coaching styles, certain behaviors have proven more conducive to creating a coaching atmosphere that will make a positive difference.

Four sets of effective coaching and mentoring behaviors:

1. Positive attitude: By having a positive attitude and conveying it through your example and your feedback, you set an expectation of how employees should act
2. Being specific: By being specific with your expectations and your feedback, employees have a clearer understanding of what is expected and how they are performing
3. Appropriate modeling: By modeling appropriate behaviors and skills, you set a good example for your employees to follow
4. Being proactive: By providing expectations, training, and resources upfront, you give employees the tools they need to meet your expectations. This sets the stage for success.

Prepare for a coaching session 

Preparation is vital to success when coaching employees. One of the biggest mistakes a manager can make is “just winging it.”

To conduct a successful coaching session:

1. Have a clear and organized agenda—the direction you want to take the meeting
2. Gather facts
3. Have specific goals or objectives for the coaching session. Be able to define expectations and performance standards for the employee.
4. Prioritize goals if you have more than one
5. Prepare the employee—have them come prepared to tell you what they think they do well and where they can make improvements
6. Anticipate objections and how you will respond to them
7. Be prepared to give praise to the employee for what they are doing well

It’s a simple formula: A well-educated staff is a good staff. And the key to a well-educated staff is good training and coaching from management. Often, good supervisors overlook this vital part of their job and leave their staff to their own devices, struggling to learn through trial and error. Not only is this a huge time-waster, but it also doesn’t allow you to transfer the knowledge you’ve gained through experience.

Dan Rose is a content creator at SkillPath who uses his experience from a 30-year writing career to focus on timely events that impact today’s business world. Connect with Dan on LinkedIn.