CTL Coaching & Employee Development 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: An Individual Development Plan (IDP) should primarily be driven by:
- The organization's immediate staffing needs
- The employee's own career goals aligned with organizational objectives (Correct answer)
- The team leader's assessment of the employee's weaknesses
- HR department benchmarks for the role
Correct answer: The employee's own career goals aligned with organizational objectives
Effective IDPs balance the employee's aspirations with organizational needs, ensuring buy-in and relevance.
Question 2: Which feedback technique involves describing behavior, its impact, and asking the employee for their perspective?
- The sandwich method
- Behavior-Impact-Intent (BII) model
- 360-degree feedback
- The BID (Behavior-Impact-Discussion) approach (Correct answer)
Correct answer: The BID (Behavior-Impact-Discussion) approach
The BID approach structures feedback by naming the behavior, describing its impact, and opening a dialogue with the employee.
Question 3: When setting development goals with employees, the MOST important factor is:
- Ensuring goals are challenging enough to require overtime
- Gaining genuine employee commitment to the goals (Correct answer)
- Aligning every goal with a formal training course
- Setting identical goals for all team members in the same role
Correct answer: Gaining genuine employee commitment to the goals
Without genuine commitment, development goals become compliance exercises rather than drivers of real growth.
Question 4: A team leader observes an employee performing a task incorrectly in real-time. The BEST immediate action is to:
- Wait until the next scheduled review to address it
- Intervene immediately to prevent errors, then coach afterward (Correct answer)
- Report the error to upper management first
- Reassign the task to a more experienced team member
Correct answer: Intervene immediately to prevent errors, then coach afterward
Immediate intervention prevents downstream errors, and a follow-up coaching conversation builds the employee's capability for the future.
Question 5: The 70-20-10 learning model suggests that most professional development occurs through:
- Formal classroom training
- On-the-job experience and challenging assignments (Correct answer)
- Mentoring and coaching relationships
- Self-directed online learning
Correct answer: On-the-job experience and challenging assignments
The 70-20-10 model holds that 70% of learning comes from on-the-job experiences, 20% from others, and 10% from formal training.
Question 6: Which behavior by a team leader MOST undermines a coaching relationship?
- Asking open-ended questions
- Providing solutions before the employee has a chance to think through options (Correct answer)
- Scheduling regular one-on-one meetings
- Celebrating small wins with the employee
Correct answer: Providing solutions before the employee has a chance to think through options
Jumping to solutions removes the employee's opportunity for self-discovery, which is the core mechanism of effective coaching.
Question 7: When an employee achieves a development milestone, a team leader should FIRST:
- Immediately assign a more difficult challenge
- Acknowledge the achievement specifically and discuss what made it successful (Correct answer)
- Update the performance file and move on
- Notify HR so the record can be updated
Correct answer: Acknowledge the achievement specifically and discuss what made it successful
Specific acknowledgment reinforces learning and motivates continued development by linking effort to outcome.
CTL Coaching & Employee Development 3
An Individual Development Plan (IDP) should primarily be driven by: