Think performance management, but on a continuous cadence. Achieving outcomes is important, but directly connecting it to what matters most to employees is where continuous coaching makes a big difference. Because, when companies help employees to realize their full potential, it’s a great outcome for everyone.

In the best cultures, coaching happens often and everywhere. It’s up to an organization to equip managers with the skills to succeed first. Because when you create an environment where people feel truly supported, they can focus on delivering their best work. It’s really that simple.

In this guide, we walk you through how to build high-performance environments through continuous coaching. And, it all starts with three main concepts:

Invest the time to get to know your people. Discover what they value, what inspires them and what concerns them. Use the information to focus team engagement and communication on things that are important to them. When you do this, you’ll create personalization at scale and stave off unnecessary turnover.

This simple sharing exercise is a combination of science and magic. After someone presents something about who they are and what defines them, the process of colleagues connecting to things they value or asking questions to go deeper on certain topics allows them to say “I see you and I affirm you”. This is the circuitry of meaningful relationships.

Connecting people is not a one and-done exercise. Use uMap™ on a consistent basis asking your team members to update the information at least quarterly. Personal goals, concerns, recognition, even superpowers can and should evolve as a team member grows. Connecting takes practice. As the practice becomes second nature, trust will be woven into the fabric of your culture.

The more clarity within teams, the better. Role clarity is a friend of autonomy and trust. It takes work, and at times, conflict. Once you have established trust, the conflict becomes healthy, and even easy! The time saved in the future via alignment will be a multiple of the upfront time investment.

Begin by scheduling time with your team members to align around responsibilities and goals. In many organizations, responsibilities and goals are prescribed based on established role definitions. In these cases, there is still power in asking your people to interpret and “author” their responsibilities for alignment purposes. One of the many hidden secrets of having effective alignment conversations occurs when team members and managers share their unique interpretations of an individual role. Each role becomes personalized when individual skills are considered, and team dynamics come into play. Even well-defined roles shared by multiple team members can become unique to the person when you follow this approach. This uniqueness raises the status of the team member and aligns their purpose to your organization’s purpose.

Once you’ve connected and aligned, you are prepared to coach at a higher level. It’s time to bring continuous performance management, otherwise known as coaching, into the picture. Connection and alignment go a long way for an organization, but without a sustainable way to support people’s goals and initiatives, both personal and professional, the wheels of your delicately curated high-performance culture can fall off quickly.

If you’ve ever been on the giving or receiving end of an annual review process, you are probably relieved to realize we are departing from this practice. Coaching your people toward a path to success starts and ends with consistent and meaningful check-ins. As the word coaching implies, the focus isn’t to evaluate and score overall performance. The goal, as a leader, is to understand and support a team member’s role and vision for their development. The good news is, as your regular coaching becomes your norm, both recognition and accountability increase naturally.

Here are a few helpful tips to get you started. Access the full guide, here.

Creating space to have these types of conversations is what will solidify the culture you’re building. Not only are you making people feel heard and understood, but you’re establishing a trust base point that will make difficult discussions easier.