MANAGEMENT AND A PROFESSIONAL EXECUTIVE COACH

Management coaching for performance

Management Performance Coaching is a more directive form of Coaching in which the coach plays a greater role in guiding or leading individuals to greater organisational contribution and success.  This role is often taken up by the line manager who acts as an internal coach in identifying overall performance targets, giving advice, offering guidance, giving feedback, making suggestions etc.

Nearly nine out 10 firms expect their managers and supervisors to deliver Performance based coaching as part of their day-to-day work, according to a survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in the UK.

The vast majority of employers believe coaching can deliver tangible benefits to both individuals and organisations, said the Institute. The majority of employers planned to increase the use of coaching over the next few years but not necessarily update the training of their 'Managers/Leaders as Coach', it added. The research also found that performance coaching provided by a manager or supervisor is becoming increasingly popular as the value of sustainable on the job learning is recognised in the workplace. However, research also suggests that if coaching is to deliver these significant benefits, employers need to ensure that their line managers are provided with updated, cutting-edge training as the 'Manager as Coach' to be able to deliver the results.

The professional business management coach

In business, or in any organisation, in the same way as sport, professional business management coaching is fundamentally concerned with helping people to learn to develop themselves. The process usually involves the individual being coached in identifying areas for improvement and then developing skills or competencies on the job, undertaking informal or formal “training” sessions or even taking on higher education.

Good professional coaching is therefore not about developing other people, but focusing them on their own development goals and helping them to achieve them. 

Coaches need to be able to work at three levels:

1. Working closely with people “one on one”, giving feedback, setting goals and tasks which will “stretch” them and supporting them through difficulties
2. Setting up a climate or environment which encourages people to take the risk to do things differently and to learn from their experience. This can involve getting people to reflect on their experiences and getting them to draw learning out of those experiences, to find ways of learning from others, to challenge themselves and to find opportunities to learn new things.
3. Actively setting up learning opportunities for individuals by giving them the chance to work with different people, by linking them to others who can help their development, by providing new and challenging work experiences and by giving them access to people and situations that they would not be able to access easily on their own.

Mentor and management performance

In most organisations, the CEO or Board of Directors knows that the quality of mentoring that is available to managers at all levels is highly correlated with the performance of the management group as a whole. As such, in order to be effective, a mentoring program cannot simple “assign” mentors and then hope that quality relationships, effective and valuable learning, and significant performance improvement will just come about. The most effective programs create structures and strategies to ensure their desired results will happen.

The fundamental truth is that effective mentoring is a mutual learning situation. At the foundation of all effective mentoring, is the core requirement that each individual is being mentored but at the same time is Mentoring the other person.
Mentors must be established so as to be able to offer their own experience and the wisdom that comes from such experience. It is the access to that wisdom and experience which accelerates the mentee’s learning and development.

Coaching and sales management

Sales has traditionally been a fairly harsh, direct and “take no nonsense” kind of a culture in which firm sales management (often meaning control) is good and soft sales coaching (often meaning gentle empowerment) is bad. Sales management has therefore been much in evidence, while sales coaching much less so. But this trend is set to change with many organisations finding that managers with an effective coaching style are getting better results. And these results are not just in the more tangible areas of transferring knowledge about sales tactics and methods but also about how to bring about better customer relationships, work successfully within the overall supply chain and developing a whole range of collaborative relationships.

Other coaching subject areas for sales people include:

1. Developing emotional intelligence
2. Utilising critical listening skills
3. Building Rapport, Trust, and Credibility with Your Clients
4. Selling Value Over Price through better relationships
5. Uncovering the Less Obvious Needs of Your Customer
6. How to Present Compelling, Customer-Focused Solutions
7. How to Sell From Your Buyer’s Perspective (develop empathy)
8. Utilising customer friendly and respectful closing techniques

Management consultation versus coaching

Although there are plenty of areas of overlap, we can readily distinguish management consultation versus coaching. A management consultant considers a client’s issue or challenge, develops an overall approach to take and recommends a procedure to implement.  A consultant therefore provides professional advice and service that he or she (and perhaps a wider team) develops. Consulting is often narrowly focused on specific issues and methods of solving a given problem.

Coaching, on the other hand, typically seeks to encompass the broader scope of the clients' situation and goals.  A coach therefore communicates in a broadly-based information seeking way with the client and together, as partners, they define the forward path. Through the coaching alliance and the process of client focused self discovery, coach and client discover appropriate solutions and activities.

Through coaching a given client “owns” the solution, because it is through his or her own  process of self discovery that the problem resolution is discovered.  The end result is usually positive forward action. This occurs because of the clients own reasoning assisted by the coach’s' insightful questioning and guidance. 

Stress and management coaching

A recent study found that almost half of the adult workforce in the UK ( 44%) report losing one hour or more per day in productivity due to stress. Another 35% report losing 15-30 minutes per day in productivity due to stress.

Employees continue to be asked to do more with less. When members of the organisation leave, they are often not replaced immediately, and in some cases not at all. This means an additional workload for the rest of the team. The impact of this reality extends past the workplace. Employees get in their cars and sit in traffic. Many cannot transition to the additional stress of their home lives. The problem is that stress isn't left at work; it follows them home.

One solution is to use one-to-one coaching to help people to cope more effectively with the stress that they are feeling. A coach will take a tailored approach in most circumstances. However, the areas in which they may focus most attention are as follows:

1. Help individuals to identify the stress source. This can help pre-empt it the next time it happens.
2. Decide if the stress is real or anticipated. Real stress can be dealt with in the moment; anticipated stress is living in the future.
3. Assist to choose “a perspective” on the stress. Just how bad is this stressor? Consider the source and ask whether the individual is seeing this realistically or through a fogged, biased or anticipatory lens. Is there another view the person can take of this situation?
4. Work with an individual to build a support network. This may include family, friends and colleagues (as well as the coach) to help monitor and deal with on-going stress/stressors.