Performance Coaching Skills for Social Work

Jane Holroyd, Richard Field, SAGE Publications Ltd

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780857259912, 9781446256732
• eBook ISBN: 9780857259929
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Within health and social care settings, high levels of sustained performance from individuals, teams, organisations and multi-agency collaborations are required. In order to achieve this, both management and leadership have to take a clear and defined role. This book looks at the ?how to? of performance coaching - from establishing objectives, determining frameworks, processes and systems, to monitoring and taking corrective action as necessary. Coaching in its various forms offers a means by which those involved in public service can be supported and challenged to perform.

Section 1

Introduction

Welcome to Performance Coaching Skills for Social Work, a book primarily for professionals and managers involved in, or responsible for, performance within health and social care settings. The content will also be of potential value to managers operating elsewhere in organisations engaged in public service commissioning or provision.

The current environment calls for the pursuit and maintenance of high levels of sustained performance from individuals, teams, organisations and multi-agency collaborations. High levels of performance require both management and leadership. Management concerns the ‘what’ of performing - establishing objectives, determining frameworks, processes and systems, monitoring and taking corrective action as necessary. High levels of performance require more than managerial activity, particularly in the service sector where human endeavour and ‘how’ staff are led is crucial. Coaching, in its various forms, offers a means by which those involved in public service can be supported and challenged to perform.

While this book addresses the management of performance, the primary focus is leadership and the contribution coaching can make to achieving high individual and collective performance.

The content of this book draws on three overlapping domains:

• leadership;
• performance; and
• coaching.

Coaching is seen in many aspects of organisational life, for example, in our spontaneous conversations when a person strives to help another tackle a challenge, discover a way forward or develop a particular skill. It is present as a natural or learned style of leadership and in more formal relationships involving internal or external qualified coaches. In some organisations, coaching is so widespread and embedded that a ‘coaching culture’ exists.

This book looks at performance through five filters:

• service user;
• self;
• team;
• organisation; and
• community.

The content is intended to be of practical use and includes different ways of looking at performance and coaching, useful processes, techniques and tips. While essentially practical, the content is informed by theory and includes references to other writers in this field.

This book includes material intended to develop a basic understanding of leadership, performance and coaching. In addition, it features:

• activities designed to help you develop skills related to performance coaching and which will cause you to engage with the approach to performance management and coaching within your organisation;
• tips for success, which will help you to get the most out of performance management and coaching in your workplace.

This book will help you to develop competence and confidence in coaching yourself, and others, to achieve and sustain high levels of performance. This will not make you into a coach but it will enable you to have productive coaching conversations and develop a coaching style of leadership.

A coaching conversation is a focused discussion whereby one individual assists another to achieve their desired outcomes. Coaching conversations can occur between any two people and are not restricted to situations where a more senior person talks to someone who is more junior. Coaching conversations can occur between peers, can involve a relatively junior person coaching someone who is more senior and can even extend outside of an organisation to include suppliers, clients or other parties.

A coaching style exists where a leader habitually engages in coaching conversations with those they lead and work.

This book is informed by the authors’ beliefs that:

• achieving and sustaining high performance is the individual and collective responsibility of everyone involved in public service;
• responsibility and capacity for leading performance should be widely held within organisations and the communities they serve;
• high levels of performance require both managerial and leadership competence;
• leaders have a responsibility to make sense of the environment they operate within, to share this with those around them, create a sense of direction and stimulate performance;
• an awareness of self and self-leadership is vital for improving personal and organisational performance;
• the capacity to create resonance in others is vital to leading a high performing service or organisation;
• resonance comes from a capacity to tailor the way we relate to a diverse range of people which, in turn, requires emotional intelligence;
• being able to support and challenge others through coaching conversations is key to high levels of performance;
• coaching others and being open to coaching from those we encounter is a rich source of personal development;
• for coaching conversations and coaching styles of leadership to thrive organisations need a coaching-friendly culture.

Performance coaching through conversation is a relatively new area of leadership, understanding of which is still developing. Reading this text will help shape your thinking, inform your leadership practice and further improve individual and collective performance.

Section 2

Context

This section explores the context within which leaders are required to lead and perform, makes the case for performance leadership and starts to explore the potential contribution coaching can make to achieving and sustaining high performance.

Shifting landscape

The worst recession for decades, rising unemployment and inflation, a new political coalition and significant shifts in public policy after thirteen years of Labour rule create a fascinating context for public service leadership. At a national level, we appear to be witnessing a shift from a top down, centralist approach to public service and performance management towards one that is more locally driven. However, the picture is far from clear and the extent of real shift will take time to emerge.

The coalition has set about reform at a fast pace, sweeping away institutions, publishing bills and taking action that directly or indirectly impacts on performance and performance management. Actions to date include abolishing the Comprehensive Area Assessment process, disbanding the Audit Commission and scrapping a large number of centrally determined targets.

In October 2010, community budgeting pilots were announced with the intention that local councils should find local solutions to local problems by pooling budgets. A number of centrally imposed rules and regulations will be scrapped for these pilot authorities.

The Localism Bill, published in January 2011, introduces new freedoms and flexibilities for local government and new rights and powers, including the community right to challenge local authorities to take on running a service. Also included are plans to make the planning system more democratic and ensure that decisions about housing are taken locally. ‘Big society’, a significant policy strand of the coalition, is promoted as the means by which local decisions will be made by local people and the state shrunk. Self-help, co-production and volunteering will fill the gap.

In health, there are plans to abolish primary care trusts and make GPs responsible for buying inpatient care from 2013. The Government is introducing the ‘right to provide’ and public service employers will be expected to accept suitable proposals from front line staff who want to take over and run their services as mutual organisations. These and other changes form the future context within which public services will be expected to perform. The future appears to be one where:

• public services available within localities will increasingly differ to reflect prioritised need and the expressed preferences of the community;
• state-funded provision will be increasingly undertaken by private and third sector organisations;
• provision of services, particularly adult social care, will increasingly be undertaken by family, friends and micro providers;
• interest in comparing outcomes with the initial and ongoing cost of public service provision will grow;
• interest in measuring performance related to commissioning will increase;
• performance measurement will be determined locally rather than imposed centrally;
• performance reward or punishment will be locally determined and administered;
• performance frameworks and processes will be tailored to local contexts.

Performance and the case for performance leadership

Performance is defined in the Collins Concise Dictionary as being the ‘manner or quality of functioning’ or ‘the act of performing’, which in turn is defined as being to ‘carry out an action’.

There are different views as to the purpose of public services and how performance should be measured. Moore (1995: 28), a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, considers that the:

aim of managerial work in the public sector is to create public value, just as the aim of managerial work in the private sector is to create private value.

Cole and Parston (2006: 63) are of the view that:

public service value is about more than simply attaining outcomes and it is about more than just reducing cost; it is about doing both in a balanced fashion and understanding the strategic trade-offs along the way.

A characteristic of public service organisations is the number and range of stakeholders involved, each viewing performance in a particular way. Traditionally, these organisations prepare and publish plans that report historic and current performance and set targets for the future. Typically, reported performance focuses on objectives set by the team or organisation which may or may not resonate with services users or the wider community. Where the practice of performance management is effective, individuals can see how their personal performance contributes to organisational targets.

The new emphasis on localities, place-based commissioning and collaborating to meet prioritised community need will impact on how performance is stated and measured in future. This will need to be looked at from the perspectives of service users, communities and organisations.

ACTIVITY 2.1

Understanding performance in your organisation

Find the most recent plan that relates to your service area and skim read the content. What does this tell you about the following:

• Key future performance areas?
• How current performance compares to what was planned and to that achieved by other similar organisations?
• How performance has changed over time?

To what extent do you think a service user or member of the community will relate to the performance aim and measurement?

The Manager’s Guide to Performance Management (2006: 8), published by the I&D^eA (now Local Government Improvement and Development), states that:

effective performance management relies on systems and people working together to make sure the right things happen. The hard systems, processes and data are inseparable from the soft aspects such as culture, leadership and learning. One simply does not work without the other.

Addressing only the so-called ‘hard’ aspects of performance is a mistake, particularly where the context and challenges faced are novel, complex, contradictory and uncertain. Performance frameworks, systems and managerial competences such as planning, monitoring, controlling and problem solving will not, on their own, guarantee high performance. Performance will have to be led as well as managed; leadership is key to providing the challenge and nurture needed for improvement and sustained high performance.

Situations that are novel and complex often require action that is not knowable in advance. It is unrealistic and unreasonable to expect senior managers to generate every solution to every problem faced by an organisation; it is also disempowering for the staff they lead, cumbersome and short sighted. Throughout organisations, people need to anticipate and respond to the challenges they face; they need competence, confidence and to be motivated to act. Th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figure
• List of Table
• List of Activities
• Foreword
• About the Authors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Context
• 3 Leadership and performance coaching
• 4 Introduction to performance
• 5 Introduction to performance coaching
• 6 The coaching process
• 7 Communication and coaching skills
• 8 Performing organisations
• 9 Team coaching
• 10 Coaching and change
• 11 Motivation and coaching
• 12 Feedback
• 13 Difficult conversations
• 14 Remaining resourceful and developing practice
• Appendices
• References
• Index