What business leaders can learn from athletic coaches about giving feedback
Continual, real-time, on-the-job feedback combined with clarity of aim results in predictable improvement.
Few words strike more fear than the phrase "annual performance review." In fact, in a survey taken at the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) Annual Conference & Expo 2021, 34% of millennials indicated that an annual performance review had led them to tears. Obviously, workers need to know how they can improve in order to learn from mistakes, make progress, and move forward—but is an annual review the best way to deliver that guidance? Perhaps not.
The aim of this article is to compare traditional annual performance reviews with the style of feedback used by athletic coaches at the highest levels of sport. Is there anything business leaders can learn from this alternative approach?
Ten ways athletic-style coaching is better
Feedback happens in real-time. Traditional workplace feedback occurs once a year or as part of a “performance improvement plan” just before an employee is terminated. This infrequency makes feedback feel awkward and strange, resulting in fear and demotivation. Athletic coaching, on the other hand, usually happens in real time. If an athlete makes a mistake, or something just isn’t working, they can receive immediate suggestions for improvement from an outside observer.
Scoring systems are well defined. Performance reviews frequently lack a clear rubric, and there may not even be a clear aim for the work itself. When employees are held accountable to a poorly defined standard, the result is fear.
In the athletic world, on the other hand, the aim of the contest and its scoring system is clearly documented from the beginning and available to all.
The approach is collaborative. In the business world, feedback can feel like an adversarial “manager vs. worker” battle. Workers struggle to do their best, then management tries motivating them to do even more. In athletics, coaching is a collaborative process used to work toward a common goal, improving results by observing, making suggestions, and reacting to changes in the system.
Improvement takes priority over evaluation. A simple collection of scores received during an annual review doesn't provide a roadmap toward improving future performance. Workers may wonder, "What does this even mean? How am I supposed to use this?" Athletic coaches, on the other hand, emphasize improvement over evaluation — what can we try that might improve the desired outcome?
Feedback considers the entire system. Business managers assume a strong correlation between employees and results: If results were good, the employees worked hard; if results were bad, the employees were lazy. In athletics, however, coaches consider the entire system: What is the other team doing? Should we try some new plays? How does the weather influence our approach? Is there a new piece of equipment that might give us an advantage?
The fact is that the system that people work in and the interaction with people may account for 90 or 95 percent of performance.
— W. Edwards Deming
Athletes offer their own suggestions. Given the fear-inducing, adversarial nature of annual performance reviews as discussed above, it’s difficult to imagine employees feeling comfortable enough to offer honest feedback to their supervisors. In athletics, however, due to the collaborative drive to succeed within the system, players and coaches can have frank discussions (out of the public eye) about what is working and what isn’t. They may not always agree, of course, but there is rarely fear of retribution as long as the conversation remains respectful.
The aim is to improve. While some may claim that annual performance reviews are intended to help employees improve, the reality is that the aim is usually to motivate workers, to document their failures, or even “just to get it over with.” Athletic coaches understand that players come to work intrinsically motivated, and that coaching must channel that motivation toward continual improvement.
A leader, instead of being a judge, should be a colleague, counseling and leading his people on a day-to-day basis, learning from them and with them. Everybody must be on a team to work for improvement of quality.
— W. Edwards Deming
Personal relationships are secondary. Workers are well aware that their annual review scores are highly dependent on their relationships with their supervisors. A supervisor who is a friend is much more likely to record a favorable score, and perhaps award a promotion, than a supervisor with whom there is a personality conflict. In sport, by comparison, personal relationships must take a back seat to achieving the desired outcome for the team.
Coaches observe athletes in action. Business managers rarely observe workers on the job, so they have little visibility into what is actually happening day-to-day. Furthermore, if they did suggest observing an employee, that person might feel they were being “micro-managed” due to the traditionally punitive nature of business feedback. By comparison, athletic coaching requires the coach to observe athletes at work, and that observation is both welcomed and valued by the players because they understand that the aim is to help them improve.
Athletic coaching is integral to the system. Annual performance reviews often occur only because it has been that way for as long as anybody can remember, and other businesses do it, so it must be something important. Performance reviews may even be an afterthought, dismissed by employees and managers alike as a necessary evil standing in the way of more important things. Compare that to athletics, where coaching feedback is highly valued, and highly compensated, in every sport, from hockey to Formula 1 to poker to chess. Owners, athletes, and fans can all agree that high-quality feedback from coaches, and often several coaches simultaneously, is critical to the success of the team.
Moving athletic-style coaching into the business world
Athletic coaching offers constructive feedback that athletes need to focus their efforts, make improvements, and work as valued team players. It is appreciated and sought after by top players, not dreaded. How can the benefits of coaching be brought into the business world?
Most importantly, feedback must be offered freely and as close to real-time as possible. At first employees may say, "Nobody wants to be critiqued constantly. Continuous feedback feels like too much." However, those employees are likely preconditioned to feel that way because they’ve come to expect only bureaucracy and negativity from traditional reviews. When workers are coached regularly, with a shared aim to improve within the context of the system, feedback is more likely to be helpful and positive. By normalizing the idea of coaching employees in a constructive way, business leaders can reduce stress, prevent workers from feeling like they're in competition against one another, and increase employee retention rates. If feedback is truly constructive, employees will be more willing to embrace opportunities to learn and implement suggestions for improvement. Most importantly, workers will experience personal growth and joy in work due to genuine suggestions that come from a place of appreciation and respect.
Of course, this also means that business leaders must be willing to adopting new methodologies for providing feedback. The good news is that managers are generally more enthusiastic about helping employees succeed than they are about handing out arbitrarily determined evaluation metrics. The result is a win-win for both managers and workers, with additional wins for shareholders and customers as a result of improved outcomes.
The aim of leadership should be to improve the performance of man and machine, to improve quality, to increase output, and simultaneously to bring pride of workmanship to people. Put in a negative way, the aim of leadership is not merely to find and record failures of men, but to remove the causes of failure: to help people to do a better job with less effort.
— W. Edwards Deming
Final thoughts
By adopting an athletic coaching style, as opposed to traditional business approaches centered around annual performance reviews, business leaders can offer truly constructive feedback that helps employees improve systemic results without feeling unappreciated, disrespected, or demotivated. This strategy is one of the most effective ways to reduce the fear surrounding performance reviews, and helps employees feel supported by the organization to which they belong.