As a career coach, the Performance Coach regularly helps Axelerant’s team members understand and achieve their expectations through honest conversations and feedback outside of their key stakeholder relationships. They also help team members reach their career potential by coaching and introducing other educational opportunities through an Individual Development Plan and Your Career - Performance & Promotion program.
Additionally, Performance Coaches support Axelerant’s team members to better fit by helping them empower themselves, facilitate personal and professional development, remove behavioral barriers, and bridge leadership and team members’ career and concern aspects through Performance Coaching.
Further, Axelerant’s coaches aid safe space creation for every team member. Enabling them to ask about any Axelerant situation freely, remove communication barriers, and make departments and service areas better by suggesting ethical challenges for people.
What to expect from Performance Coaches?
To uphold and maintain the ethics of the coaching practice
To create and maintain a safe space for the coachees to freely share their thoughts, ideas, frustrations, feedback, successes, failures, action plans, etc.
To provide an empowering context for the coachee and build confidence in the coachee to handle challenging situations.
To ask specific questions which can help the coachee with introspection and retrospection.
To lead the coachee outside of their comfort zone to have a different perspective.
To listen actively without judgment and bias. Being neutral.
Empathize (not sympathize) with the coachee
To support coachees in gaining self-awareness
To help track progress toward set goals
Coach coachees to be accountable and function with a high level of integrity.
Onboard people with Axelerant culture and bring alignment with Being Axelerant
To have conversations about Individual Development Plan, around fulfillment of Key Performance Indicators, Feedback, Asking for, Feedback, Giving & Receiving, recognitions, and aiding service area initiatives.
To conduct workshops and webinars on personal and professional development subjects, including leadership, ownership, mental wellness, and need-based topics.
To provide individual mentorship on topics mentioned by coaches in the peer mentorship cockpit.
To recommend specific books, podcasts, blogs, or other sources of learning for a deeper understanding of the topic at hand.
To coach on behavioral aspects that detract from https://axelerant.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/OA/pages/1447493744/Being+Axelerant#Our-Values-and-Principles.
To share insights with key stakeholders when explicitly asked for observations of a person’s salary, promotion, performance concerns, exit, etc., only with permission from the concerned person.
Axelerant’s Coaching Conversations
Pull-based coaching: Where people reach out to their assigned Performance Coach with their plan or topic.
Monthly coaching 1-1s: Mandatory meeting of people with their assigned Performance Coach.
People have space here to bring their topics of discussion. Approximately one-third of the meeting time will be dedicated to people’s performance within Axelerant. Such as discussions around Individual Development Plan, objectives, and alignment with Being Axelerant.
Push-based coaching: A situation where Person A (e.g., project manager, director) works closely with another Person B (e.g., delivery team member) deals with behavioral/performance-related concerns.
For example, person A has conversational and written shared feedback with person B, but they do not improve. Therefore, Person A can ask Person B to reach out to their assigned Performance Coach for coaching in this matter. Person A informs Person B’s Performance Coach about the situation, linking shared feedback.
For above, here is the expectation of a Performance Coach
Ask further questions from Person A to have better clarity of the situation.
Wait for Person B to bring up the topic.
If not till the next 1-1, bring up the topic in 1-1 concerning the feedback shared on 7Geese.
When the monthly 1-1 is more than a week away, do not wait for it. Reach out sooner with shared feedback details and prompt a conversation around the concern. Do ask the urgency of the matter from the person who has raised the concern.
Make coaching conversation around helping Person B see the situation/block/behavior from a different perspective.
Make suggestions only when the other person is stuck into moving ahead.
The performance coach will update Person A on agreed-upon action items/steps to be taken by Person B (the coachee). Person B can be observed by Person A to know the progress. This way, they can let the Performance coach know if they see a lapse or progress on agreed-upon action items. This update will happen at the placeholder where the concern has been raised (PM to PC sheet, Jira ticket, or a channel)
Urgent cases: We understand there could be cases where there is an urgent need for a coaching conversation. In such cases, please share the feedback with the person. Let them know that you let their Performance Coach understand the scenario and expect a meeting to help prepare a person to brace what’s coming up.
Operational aspects:
The Performance Coach will hear the concern and politely direct people to the right person. Performance Coach will not intervene nor carry the conversation between the people closest to the situation.
What not to expect from a Performance Coach?
The Performance Coach will not carry the feedback to the coachee. The performance coach will ask, “what constructive feedback have you received since we last met?” and work around it with the coachee.
Performance Coach is not a yes-coach. The Performance Coach will challenge conventional wisdom and ask tough questions for the coachee’s benefit, which is critical to help them reach/achieve/learn what they want and their goals.
Performance Coach will not have a conversation with coachees on general themes.
The coaching framework works on specific issues. General themes can be covered by key stakeholders as and when they see the need.
For example, team engagement is led by the project manager or team lead, not the performance coach. However, the leader can seek coaching/ training from the Performance Coach to become more capable or aware of specific topics.
Performance Coach will not collect feedback on anyone’s behalf.
Performance Coach will not decide people’s salary, promotion, performance improvement plan, letting go, etc.
Performance Coach will not share confidential information with any team member unless explicitly permitted by the coachee.
Performance Coach will not give a solution to problems faced by the coachee. Instead, they will coach the coachee to come up with their answers. This will happen through tailored support and the needed frameworks, which will help and guide the coachee.
Please Speak Up
You may feel lost when working remotely sometimes. We understand.
When so, schedule a call with any of the coaches of our Learning and Development team or your manager so we can help you find your way around.
Please leave us a note.
We would like to know how you are feeling here.
Are you confused about anything?
Are you happy?
Do you need more help anywhere?
You can give your feedback via 7Geese as well.
Please provide one like and one dislike regarding our processes, policies, and other documents or materials so far to people@axelerant.com or share what is on your mind via OfficeVibe.