Coaching Development for Managers, by Richard Nelson.

From Issue Eight of our newsletter.

The increase in the use of external coaches in organisations, especially for executives, has perhaps obscured the value of developing managers to be effective coaches. Coaching is a critical element of the managerial role. More precisely, it is a practical demonstration of leadership. Leadership involves engaging the commitment of people, inspiring the emotions as well as providing clear performance expectations.

Likewise, coaching is as much about building confidence in people as it is about developing their knowledge and skills. In developing managers as coaches, we recommend that coaching be positioned in relation to their purpose as a manager, as described below.

The role of the manager is ‘to obtain results through the efforts of others’. This involves setting standards and objectives, i.e. ‘communicating the results expected’. It follows that managers who want to make a difference in the way they manage will recognise the value of coaching, ‘enabling high performance and developing potential’. So what would a practical Workshop on coaching for managers consider?

Any initial session needs to define coaching as a relevant management practice and place it in the context of the managerial role. This session also needs to address the benefits that effective coaching can deliver to the individual being coached, the manager undertaking the coaching, and the organisation. It is useful to examine situations that require coaching and those outside its scope, in order to establish realistic expectations of what coaching can accomplish. Addressing attitudinal barriers and personal inhibitions can also be important.

At Nelson Consulting we frequently design a Coaching Workshop around real cases that participating managers bring with them. Role-plays can be used as substitutes. However, we believe that the environment of a Workshop provides a special opportunity for managers to address development opportunities suitable for coaching. It increases the value to focus on a real issue.

Providing managers with a coaching model that illustrates the main activities involved and structures the integrity of the process is a critical part of the Workshop. This should define the steps the manager will work through, including agreeing desired performance outcomes, the learning activities to be undertaken and how the coachee will be supported.

We find that developing managers to use more than one coaching style is critical in developing their confidence and their willingness to practice coaching. Many managers know intuitively that the style which is best for people new to the organisation is usually inappropriate for the more experienced. We encourage managers to build an assessment of their coachee’s capability in relation to the tasks that need coaching as part of their initial diagnosis. This will focus the style of their approach.