Continuous Professional Development Meetings: Coaching Windows of Opportunity
- Paul Falcone
- Mar 17
- 11 min read
Performance management is a “big word” and means so many things to so many different people and organizations. The first thing that comes to mind is the annual performance appraisal, which would make sense since it often drives merit increases and bonus award payouts. But there’s a whole lot more to performance management that likewise includes goal setting, real-time feedback, succession planning, performance metrics and analytics, progressive discipline, training, recognition and rewards, and professional development.
Let’s start with this last item first: “Career and professional development” surfaces in survey after survey of priorities for Gen Y Millennials (29 to 44-year-olds) and Gen Z Zoomers (28 years old and younger). With both those generational cohorts now making up over half of the American workforce and with their numbers gaining exponentially as the Baby Boom moves closer to full retirement around 2030, their priorities should become your priorities as a business owner, senior executive, or frontline operational manager.
But what should “career and professional development” look like on a practical basis? First, it should focus on real-time feedback so that these younger generations can master their craft and learn their trade. Second, it should thrive on public recognition for a job well done or for extraordinary effort. Third, it should find a foundation in formal, incremental, preset meetings where employees set time on their managers’ calendars and prepare the agendas for those meetings. The manager’s job in such situations is simply to (1) listen and (2) coach.
How often should such formal meetings take place? Hint: The answer is not “once per year during the annual performance review.” The business landscape and people’s priorities change too quickly to simply rely on once-a-year sit-down meetings. Instead, think of a natural rhythm and cadence for touch-base meetings that go beyond operational day-to-day issues and that dive more deeply into an employee’s professional needs surrounding goal attainment, performance delivery, skill acquisition, current challenges, longer-term career aspirations, and the like.
For example, Wall Street’s cadence of quarterly (10Q) reporting leading up to the annual (10K) report may make most sense on a practical basis. This way, there are no surprises, everyone feels more aligned, minor problems can be addressed before they become major impediments, and employees will sense a genuine interest on their manager’s part for their career and professional development. A key benefit of such predictable, quarterly touch-base meetings is that you, the immediate manager or department head, can learn about real-time problems within the unit and potentially head off anyone preparing to leave your organization without giving you a fighting chance to retain them.
Employing the Coaching Feedback Model in Continuous Professional Development
Coaches—internal or external—focus on building self-awareness and self-confidence in those they mentor. The leader-as-coach model rests on the premise that providing rolling, real-time feedback on the various dimensions of performance—including conduct, accountability, collaboration, agility, and innovation—creates opportunities to focus on current strengths and future goals, not just historical job performance.
Likewise, coaches “tease” answers out of those they coach: they don’t simply give answers. In other words, coaches don’t just give people fish: they teach them how to fish, making them successful on their own by asking appropriate questions and sharing insights that stem from experience and wisdom. If organizations can simply find a formula and rhythm to help leaders coach and mentor rather than “tell” their employees what to do, then a healthier sense of career and professional development, goal achievement, and agility can set in to meet today’s challenging times.
Typical questions that a “manager coach” might ask a direct report who also supervises people is, “Would you want to work for you?” and “If the whole company followed your lead (in terms of your role-model conduct and behavior), would you be happy with where you took it?’ Such continuous professional development questions drive deeper career introspection and help senior and emerging leaders raise their level of self-awareness about their communication style and teambuilding abilities. In short, it’s where all leadership roads coalesce, driving a greater sense of achievement and accountability.
Abolishing Annual Performance Appraisals: Possible but Not Probable for Most Organizations
In 2011, Adobe Systems in Silicon Valley made its famous departure from traditional annual performance reviews and declared them dead. Their logic: annual reviews were little more than a paper chase replete with outdated and sometimes unjustified information that left managers and employees lacking and oftentimes feeling demotivated and resentful. Adobe’s alternative: constant assessment and real-time feedback. Such frequent check-ins obviated the need for annual performance reviews in Adobe’s opinion and made career and professional development a living, breathing element of organizational culture. From that point forward, other hi tech and professional consulting firms adapted the moniker of abolishing performance appraisals, to the point that by 2014, 12% of U.S. companies had eliminated annual performance appraisals altogether, according to the former Corporate Executive Board (CEB), now part of Gartner.
Still, certain organizations could take advantage of this type of feedback mechanism better than others. For example, companies that worked on project-based assignments like Big 4 accounting firms, management consultants, and professional service firms could reasonably provide real-time individual and team feedback at the conclusion of large-scale projects. Intermittent reviews from senior team leaders could focus on collaboration, agility, self-direction, and results orientation. That makes perfect sense when large-scale projects unwind and can be assessed for individual and team contributions, accomplishments, or shortfalls.
Yet, most organizations aren’t designed around large-scale, time-bound projects or client engagements, making such intermittent feedback difficult to carry out. In fact, in a number of cases where performance reviews were abolished, employees returned to HR a few years later asking to have them reinstated so the employees would at least have some feedback about how they were doing and what management thought about them.
Does making the abolition of annual performance reviews at your company make sense? Depending on the type of work you do and the natural feedback windows that exist, it certainly could. In most organizations, however, it’s more of a both-and rather than an either-or proposition. Everyone wants current feedback (ourselves included). But formalizing the process by putting the employee in charge of scheduling the meeting and preparing its agenda gives the company the greatest bang for the buck. Why? Because you’ll be treating adults like adults. People tend to automatically focus on garnering accomplishments in the interim periods that lead up to those quarterly meetings. And it’s just this “achievement mindset” that you’re looking to develop and encourage as a manager, executive, or business owner.
What to Discuss in Quarterly Professional Development Meetings
First, you don’t have to require that employees fill out forms or prepare anything in writing for a quarterly professional development meeting. This is their meeting: your job is simply to listen and coach. To be sure, some will walk through the door with spreadsheets, Gantt charts, recent letters of recommendation, and other materials that demonstrate their achievements over the prior three-month period. In those cases, congratulations—you just found a key way for high achievers to motivate themselves to even higher levels of success. For others who want to keep the meeting simple and “undocumented,” that’s fine as well. As long as you’re talking about them in relationship to their work and the organization, a verbal meeting will work just fine.
But what if things get awkward? What if silence pervades the room and you’re not sure how to break it or what to say? That’s where the following list comes in handy. It provides you with talking points to keep the meeting moving at a natural pace. Try these on for size, and think about how you’d respond if your boss asked you some or all of the following questions:
1. What would you like to discuss today? Have you prepared anything that you’d like me to review first (your bio, productivity spreadsheets, graphs, charts, tables, dashboards, letters of recommendation, or anything else)?
How do you feel you’re doing performance-wise? Do you feel you’re able to do your best work every day with peace of mind? What could we do differently to support you more?
Have you faced any unforeseen roadblocks? Do you see a pivot coming either in terms of your goals, priorities, or what you’re focusing on right now?
4. Is there any technical, communication, or leadership training that you’re interested in pursuing? Are there any certifications or licensures that you’re considering?
5. How are you measuring and capturing your achievements and accomplishments and turning them into bullets for your quarterly professional development meetings and annual review?
6. From a coaching and mentoring standpoint, what can I do to support you further in terms of your career and professional development?
7. How can I help you expand your professional network, build stronger technical muscle, or help you gain greater organizational exposure?
8. What do you feel is our team’s highest priority?
9. If you could change one thing about what we’re doing as a team and how we’re doing it, what would it be?
10. What professional or career-related opportunities are you most excited about pursuing? How can we create one of your annual goals around what's most significant to you at this point in your career?
11. Do your goals have a valid, reliable measure that will demonstrate success (e.g., Scorecard, KPI, C-SAT, and other lead vs. lag measures)?
12. In reviewing your goals, where do we need to pivot or change direction? Should we push back any go-live dates, assign additional resources, or reorder any of our priorities?
NOTE: Be sure to add your own questions to augment this list.
Likewise, if you’re feeling bold and confident about this rollout, simply share this list with your employees when you announce the introduction of these quarterly professional development meetings. This way, everyone will know what’s expected of them in a spirit of full transparency. After all, there’s nothing secretive about these questions, and certain employees may enjoy giving thought to their careers, achievements, goals, and longer-term plans.
Logistics and Meeting Duration
You may be wondering how long the meeting should last. There’s no preset answer to that: it depends on your relationship with each of your direct reports. Generally speaking, though, I’ve always invited my staff members to book 30-minute or 60-minute timeslots on my calendar. In some cases, the meetings only lasted fifteen or twenty minutes. Again, there’s no right or wrong answer here. It’s their meeting that they’re in charge of, and different approaches and time windows will work for different people.
Ah, but what if an employee refuses to participate? Is it a disciplinary or even terminable offense? No. This is all about opportunity, not obligation. But in a spirit of fairness and transparency, I let my staff know that if anyone refuses to participate, I’ll be okay with it but will likewise make note on their annual performance review that “Jack was invited to meet with me quarterly to discuss his career and professional development, achievements, goals, training needs, and other matters but refused to do so.” That caveat, in and of itself, is typically enough of a “motivator” to make people want to join me for their professional development and career growth meetings.
You may be wondering if some kind of “form” or “template” might help spur employees’ imaginations to provide timely and meaningful feedback in situations like these. The short answer is yes. You can share the questioning template above or simply write the following on one sheet of paper:
I. Address your overall performance track record for this review period. Specifically address your achievements that have resulted in increased revenue, reduced expenses, saved time, or increased customer satisfaction. Why is our organization a better place for your having worked here? How have you had to reinvent your job in light of our department’s changing needs? How would you grade yourself in terms of quality, reliability, interpersonal communication, technical skills, and other factors that are critical to our department’s and company’s success?
II. In what area(s) do you feel you need additional support, structure, or direction? Specifically, what can I do as your manager to support you more in terms of my communication style, having your back, building your job expertise and self-confidence, and supporting your overall career and professional development?
III. What are your performance goals for the following quarter and for next year? What are the measurable outcomes to ensure that you’ll have reached those goals? What additional resources or training will you need to meet your goal targets, and how can I support your future success?
Such simple questions should be all your employees need to prepare for a meeting like this. And they can use that same template in upcoming meetings to report on their progression towards achievements, roadblocks they’ve faced, or anything else that came their way throughout the period of implementation.
Reinventing Performance Management: A New Way Forward
The key to success lies in how employers implement such programs, however.
The goal isn’t to put more work on leaders’ plates. It’s to create the right and certain circumstances for employees to motivate themselves, focus on their achievements, and employ quarterly goals and measurable outcomes to ensure their success. Employers likewise create and sustain expectations surrounding performance, achievement, and career and professional development, which are often the glue that binds staff members to their companies over the longer term.
Personally, I never wanted anyone to leave my shop thinking that I didn’t care about and honor their career and professional development needs. By simply making space for this and shifting responsibility for career development back to the employees themselves, I was placed in the natural role of mentor and coach, which built strong bonds with my direct reports, spiked discretionary effort, and minimized turnover.
Further, results and highlights from these formal quarterly feedback meetings can then inform the individual’s annual report, scorecard, or performance appraisal, making the annual review more of an aggregate lookback on performance and achievement rather than raising vague perceptions of those same elements. Further, by discussing performance and achievements throughout the year at specific intervals, the formal “annual” review naturally changes as well. In many instances, performance reviews today discuss past performance for 80 percent of the meeting time, leaving just 20 percent to focus on future goals and professional development. Instead, by discussing performance throughout the year in formal sit-down settings, the annual review can recap what’s been discussed over the prior three quarters so that portion of the meeting takes up just 20 percent of the time.
The rest of the meeting—a full 80 percent—can be spent discussing the employee’s future, performance goals, achievements milestones, training needs, recommendations for innovative practices, suggestions for improving team performance, and so much more. That’s how to get your performance management program “unstuck” from weaker past practices or assumptions about what annual reviews are supposed to look and feel like as well as accomplish.
If quarterly reviews can indeed provide windows of opportunity for timely performance feedback and goal review in addition to real time feedback, then a much more fluid dynamic can take hold where communication thrives and employees receive the recognition and course-corrective feedback that they need to excel in their careers. If you’re not quite ready to transition to quarterly professional development meetings right off the bat, you have every right to move to a six-month feedback model. Start there if you feel more comfortable. Hopefully, you’ll be able to transition to a quarterly model once you see how well this works. But don’t wait for “annual” reviews in their historical sense: they may be an efficient way to dole out merit increases and bonuses, but they can actually be a net negative when it comes to professional development and key employee retention.
It’s time to end the perceived “paper chase” cycle where managers “have to” give feedback in order for their employees to receive merit increases. Likewise, employees will lose the feeling of being “judged” by their bosses without evidence to justify their claims once those very same employees are put in charge of managing their careers internally, demonstrating their achievements and accomplishments, and identifying opportunities for broader training and new ways of adding value to the organization. What an exciting initiative that’s highly likely to garner kudos from management and employees alike.
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