The purpose of evaluative coaching is to provide underperforming employees with an understanding of what they are doing right, an awareness of the mistakes they are making and a perspective on what they need to do differently.

Unlike a scheduled performance review , evaluative coaching is a preemptive activity that takes place whenever and wherever the supervisor recognizes a need for clarification, correction or confirmation. Receiving timely feedback is especially important and valuable to an employee whose job duties have changed as the result of a transfer or recent promotion.

Managers should start by making a list of low performers, writing down each person’s strengths and weaknesses. Next, they should show the employees what they wrote about them, in private and one at a time. Before saying anything, managers should give the employee time to react and explain while they listen without comment. Focusing on their perspective may help to pinpoint the source of the manager’s unmet expectations. And, with some gentle urging, the manager may help the employee raise his or her sights a little higher.

A good way for managers to open the discussion and focus on performance is to ask the person to explain the purpose of the job as he or she see it and then follow these steps:

1. Emphasize that they value what the employee does when he or she performs the job correctly.
2. Go over those situations where their expectations were not met.
3. Try to determine what happened from the employee’s point of view.
4. Make the employee aware of what he or she needs to do differently.
5. Provide a summary of the manager’s expectations for future performance.

Evaluative coaching is based on a blend of mutual expectations. The challenge is to raise the expectations of substandard performers to higher levels without being critical or judgmental.

Supervisors who practice evaluative coaching find it to be a nonthreatening way to upgrade the performance of underachievers by letting them know that the expectation is for them to reach higher, because what they do is important to their career and to the organization’s future.