Customer Reviews

Catalytic Coaching: The End of the Performance Review

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For years, many have wrestled with the incongruence between the theoretical benefits of performance evaluations and their real-world application. Finally, someone has been able to take this issue to a higher level.

Markle does a skillful job in first outlining the problems with the traditional performance evaluation process and its various appendanges, such as pay for performance. Then, through his "Catalytic Coaching process", he places the focus where it should be, on coaching.

The effects are subtle but profound. His process dissolves the adversarial environment that typically accompanies the evaluation process. It also recognizes inputs from various external perspectives (i.e., 360 degree feedback) as well as personal goals. And it focuses on business results as well as behavioral changes.

Overall, we are able to discard the baggage which so heavily weighed down the concept of performance evaluations and replace it with a process that is positive, productive, and even liberating.

As managing partner for a large, downtown Houston law firm, I was searching for a new method of working with young lawyers and support staff and helping them grow. I found what I was searching for in Catalytic Coaching! After taking on the role of "coach", I have seen several personnel problems simply disappear and morale in our multi-floor office has skyrocketed. While I was not able to directly utilize the worksheets and action plans set forth in the appendix, the balance of the book was miraculously relevant to and instrumental in getting control of our personnel difficulties. This process is NOT liberal "raise the employee's self-esteem banter"...it IS an effective process and a valuable resource for any business, large or small. Both our organization and our employees have benefitted tremendously from it.

Recently I had the pleasure of enjoying Mr. Markle's company at a preofessional convention we attended in San Diego. I was delighted to hear that Gary's new book, "Catalytic Coaching" was now available through Amazon.com.

As an executive coach to CEO's and their senior management teams with Client's throughout north America, I found Gary's work to provide an exceptional piece to today's management puzzle. By joining Dr. Deming in challenging the value of the annual performance review system, Gary has redefined management's role into that of an internal coach to the employee.

Quite simply, "Catalytic Coaching" is focused on future employee performance. Instead of rehashing past issues, Gary's practical process proactively addresses the employee's workplace behaviors, and how they impact the organization's bottom line.

His process is clear, practical and highly attractive as an alternative to present-day evaluation systems which, I have personally observed in organizations throughout the world, simply do not work.

Reading the book, you can hear Gary's conversational style and strength as a speaker. The content is readable and concise, so much so that you will want to invite Gary as a speaker to your organziation.

To date, two of my Clients are exploring the process, and are planning on implementing "Catalytic Coaching" as their standard for improving employee performance. I look forward to being an integral part of this transformation.

Having twice read the book from cover-to-cover, I felt compelled to submit these comments on Gary's work. Please feel free to contact me should you desire further information or clarification.

Submitted,

Michael R. Hagy TEC Chair - Philadelphia

Coaching is the skill of the 21st century, and Markle does a powerful job in sharing with us best practices on how to approach the process. More importantly, Markle deals with the infrastructure of setting up a future oriented coaching mechanism, ensuring that your vision for coaching has the capacity to succeed. Clearly written, filled with anecdotes and tools, this book is a must read for executives who want to tap the potential of their people by replacing an ineffective mechanism with a process that has power and proven results.

In my role as an advisor to CEO's, Presidents, and owners of midsize to large corporations,Gary's book has been very helpful and enlightening. After reading Gary's book, I highlighted several parts of it to share with those final decision makers. The response has been overwhelmingly positive. Most have purchased the book and shared it with their top staff for implimentation. Gary's approach of Catalytic Coaching integrates, in a clear way, the elements of caring, coaching, and compassion, with accountability, that so many business are searching for these days. I would recommend buying the book first and then contacting Gary Markle.

If performance reviews worked, managers would look forward to giving them and subordinates would prize their value. But they don't. Why? Because, as Garold Markle points out, they are pretentious in concept and seldom, if ever, are performed in a way that accomplishes anything a rational person would consider worth the effort expended in giving them. This book explains what's wrong with performance reviews and how they are typically conducted and, if you feel compelled to give them, prescribes how they might be best conducted to help employees move ahead in their development.

Catalytic Coaching diligently lays out the problems and hazards that need negotiating when giving a performance review. It explains the importance of a manager working within the employee's mind-set and how to intelligently get the employee to take the lead in evolving a personal development agenda that the employee finds personally valid. I found this book a very intelligent read. What's more, I found it clearly written with in-depth examples that vividly illustrate the step-by-step method Markle advocates for making performance reviews the developmental experience everybody would like to see.

Anyone who has been through a performance review or had to deliver one knows they are not providing the performance benefit they were designed to provide. In fact, they are usually demotivating and have a negative impact on performance. As a consultant to management and coach to CEOs, my experience has been that everyone hates the process, it doesn't deliver and it's painful. Garold Markle has an alternative which is working, is constructive, and leads to a feedback-rich culture of performance. Contrast this to the blame-oriented approach that we inherited. This is an important work. I recommend it highly. His approiach is clear and the tools supportive.

The author spends nearly half the book with criticsm of performance measurement, a technique currently practiced by the vast majority of fortune 500 companies. He then sets up a "model" for assessing performance measurement techniques and uses this to "prove" that such techniques must fail, are totally useless and have adverse impacts on any organization deploying them. He then indicates that he alone knows what's best (apparently the rest of us are fools). Having poured scorn on his competition, he then puts forward the technique of Catalytic Coaching but of course fails to subject it to the same model that he used in his diatribe against performance measurement. The truth, as any management professional well knows, is that if you don't measure it, you can't manage it! Avoiding the issue does not resolve it. This book is unscientific nonsense dressed up in the language of science in order to deceive the reader.