The Leader's Guide to Coaching & Mentoring

How to Use Soft Skills to Get Hard Results

Fiona Dent, Mike Brent

• Publisher: FT Publishing International
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781292074375
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Desarrollo personal
• Subtopic: Éxito personal

The Leader’s Guide to Coaching & Mentoring is a highly practical handbook that helps managers get the most out of their people. It includes grounded advice on the practicalities of both coaching and mentoring – such as how to structure a session – as well as core content on:

· The skills required for coaching and mentoring, including listening, questioning, observing body language, challenging and affirming

· The established processes for coaching and mentoring, such as GROW, relational coaching, reverse mentoring and solution-focused coaching

· The scenarios in which coaching and mentoring skills are particularly appropriate, for example, coaching under-performers, coaching star performers and coaching for career development

There is also a handy section on the 10 pitfalls to avoid when coaching or mentoring.

Written in the no-nonsense and engaging style of the other Leader’s Guide books, this is the best tool on the market for managers wanting to coach their people to optimum performance.

'In this hands-on book, Mike and Fiona highlight the real difference between conventional management and effective leadership: management is a profession, while coaching is much wider; it encourages social interaction and a focus on human relationships at work. That’s what new generations expect and respect.'

Laurent Choain, Chief People & Communication Officer, Mazars Group

'It’s not always easy for managers to recognise what real coaching is, let alone its value. This book makes a compelling case for the Manager as Coach and contains real, usable examples of how to go about it.'

Ian Johnston, Chief Executive, Dubai Financial Services Authority

Part 1

Coaching and mentoring fundamentals

In this opening part we introduce coaching and mentoring and explain what we mean by both concepts. We will also help you to think about your personal style and suggest ideas for how you can get the best out of your coaching and mentoring relationships and discussions.

1

Coaching in context

The essence of coaching is to use the wisdom of the coach to bring to consciousness the wisdom that those being coached hold within themselves.

David Clutterbuck (2007)

In this chapter we will explore what coaching is, why coaching is important, and look at how effective coaching is in practice. We will give a number of reasons why we think coaching is an important and essential part of the manager’s toolkit, discuss the context of coaching and the barriers to implementing coaching in organisations.

What is coaching for managers?

Coaching for managers is different to the type of coaching practised by executive coaches. For example, their role in the organisation is to coach and nothing more. Typically an executive coach would not offer any advice, but the manager has to do many things, of which coaching is only one. They also have to instruct and teach and inform and offer guidance as well as coach. So the question becomes: ‘When should I coach and when should I instruct?’

So, what do we mean by coaching? Coaching is largely about listening to the other person and helping them to improve their effectiveness. There are a number of definitions of coaching. Eric Parsloe, Director of the Oxford School of Coaching and Mentoring, says that coaching is ‘a process that enables learning and development to occur and thus performance to improve. To be a successful coach requires a knowledge and understanding of process as well as the variety of styles, skills and techniques that are appropriate to the context in which the coaching takes place.’ Coaching expert Sir John Whitmore suggests that coaching is ‘unblocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.’ We would wholeheartedly agree with both these definitions and add that it is about enabling people to think for themselves and come up with their own options and possibilities, rather than telling people what to do or just giving advice. When done well, coaching involves allowing your colleagues to develop their skills and knowledge to their full potential.

There are, however, many definitions of what coaching is. The UK’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) acknowledges that there is a lack of clarity about exactly what coaching is and what it isn’t – and how it differs, for example, from counselling and mentoring. We hope in this book to provide you with some clarity about the role of leaders and managers as coaches in today’s business environment.

Why coach?

The art of coaching by line managers is becoming an essential part of the effective people leader’s toolkit. There are a number of reasons for this:

• Because we live in an increasingly complex world. In the so-called VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) there are fewer clear-cut solutions, so the need is for managers to use their people to develop more options and possibilities, rather than trying to give their own answer which may well be wrong and outdated. We will say more about this later in the book.
  
  US President Barack Obama refers to the complexity of the world he is dealing with when he says in Mark Bowden’s book The Finish: ‘You’re always dealing with probabilities. No issue comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable, because if people were absolutely certain, then it would have been decided by somebody else.’
  
• To gain competitive advantage. When products and services are similar, competitive advantage comes from having people with ideas, skills, responsibility and initiative. The core idea of coaching is to develop others, to help them learn and to instil confidence. Without coaching this cannot be achieved. Ultimately, as the environment grows more and more complex, performance will be as a result of learning. Writer and futurologist Alvin Toffler predicts the successful future organisation will be a learning organisation.
  
  Reg Revans, the founder of Action Learning, used to say that if the environment changes faster than your organisation learns, you’re out of business! Jack Welch, ex-CEO of General Electric, has also made this phrase his own. This means that we cannot wait for the rest of the organisation to change before we change. We have to take individual responsibility for learning, and as a people manager encourage others to do the same. Practising the art of coaching will help you to become an effective leader. In a conversation with Kevin Bowring, Head of Elite Coaching for the England Rugby Football Union, he told us that his colleague, Head Coach Stuart Lancaster, says that ‘Coaches need to be open to learning and constantly learn themselves.’
  
• Because expectations of Gen Y and Millennials have changed. They expect managers to be coaches rather than directors who tell them what to do. In recent research undertaken at Ashridge Business School, 56 per cent of the Gen Y’rs surveyed identified that their ideal manager is someone who fulfils the role of coach or mentor. The disconnect is that 75 per cent of the managers who took part in the survey believe that they are fulfilling the role of coach/mentor while only 26 per cent of the Gen Y respondents think they actually do. Interestingly, more women (61 per cent) than men (48 per cent) want a coach/mentor relationship. Could this be a reflection of the preference among women for the more collaborative and cooperative approach to work and a willingness to embrace the emotional and self-awareness aspects of coaching? If this is the case it may mean that women are more accepting of the coaching approach and will more readily take on coaching roles.
  
• To help people achieve. Effective coaching is about helping people to achieve something they want to achieve, whether it be promotion, skills, improved performance, self-understanding or better balance. Coaching has to primarily focus on the individual being coached, in conjunction with the needs of the organisation.
  
• To give others responsibility and ownership. The aim of coaching is to produce better performance, whatever the field of coaching: sport, the arts or business. People perform better and are more committed when they take responsibility and ownership for their actions. They can’t do that if you are micromanaging them.
  
• To develop your own skills as a leader. Leadership entails taking a step back from the operational details of the job and looking more at the strategic and human elements. You won’t be able to accomplish this if you are busy doing everything. Practising the art of coaching will help you to become an effective leader and will contribute to your organisational credibility and reputation.
  
• To get people to think for themselves and develop initiative. If you are the person who ends up having all the ideas then you are not encouraging your people to use their skills to the full. Your job is to develop your people, and that means getting them used to coming up with both new ideas and ways of implementing them. One of the most effective ways of doing this is to coach. As the saying goes: ‘If we do what we always did, we will get what we always got.’ So in the ever-changing and complex world in which we live, innovation and creativity are at a premium – your job is to encourage it in others, not just come up with all the ideas yourself.
  
• Ownership. The process of coaching people hands ownership of the issue back to the person being coached, who then is able to take responsibility for their actions and behaviours. You are more motivated if you have ownership. Solutions discovered by the coachee are more likely to be implemented on a sustainable basis than solutions imposed from above.
  
• Autonomy. If you coach someone rather than give him or her advice then you are effectively increasing their autonomy and showing you trust them, without abandoning them. According to Daniel Pink, in his book Drive, autonomy is one of the key engagers and motivators for individuals in organisations.
  
• To support an organisation’s mission, culture and values. Many organisations talk about the value of their people and that they are their greatest asset. Coaching can contribute to building on this part of any organisation’s mission or value statement by investing in the growth and development of the staff. In a conversation with Steve Ridgley, Coaching Manager at the John Lewis Partnership, he talked about internal coaching as part of the process of bringing about change in the culture of the Partnership. In particular, he mentioned that the skills and capabilities of an effective coach will help to model the important need for open and honest conversation as a way towards organisational excellence and good interpersonal practice. At the John Lewis Partnership coaching is linked to the organisation’s constitution, which is a written framework that defines the Partnership’s principles and the way it should operate. In particular, Steve highlighted Principle 1 as underpinning the Partnership’s approach to coaching – supporting Partners to find a satisfying and worthwhile place in the organisation or broader happiness in their lives. Principle 1 states: ‘The Partnership’s ultimate purpose is the happiness of all its members, through their worthwhile and satisfying employment in a successful business. Because the Partnership is owned in trust for its members, they share the responsibilities of ownership as well as its rewards – profit, knowledge and power.’
  
• Creativity. Coaching allows people to be more creative. There isn’t much scope for creativity if you are telling people what to do. Your answer may not be as creative or innovative as your colleagues. And creativity and innovation are key differentiators in a VUCA world. Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, both professors in urban design at the University of California in Berkeley, observed as long ago as 1973 that problems could be divided into two types: ‘Tame problems’ and ‘Wicked problems’. Tame problems, although they may be somewhat complex, can...