Winning teams need coaches, not trainers

“The talent war is over,” and as well informed people say, “Talent won.” It is a fairly well-settled matter that a company with the right talent enjoys better ability to execute and emerge as market leader. But hiring right talent is only half the equation. Inspiring and engaging them for continued superior performance requires a climate of nurturing and developing. Contrary to popular belief that the bright stars among employees want to be left alone, they actually need a lot of attention. We are not talking here about the alpha male/female, high maintenance egoists! Rather, about normal top performers, who need the well-deserved attention so their career aspirations can be shaped and sculpted, their competencies assessed and honed and their engagement with the task, team and the organisation enhanced.

It’s in the game

Welcome to the world of coaching. High-performing organisations are known for a culture of coaching, a culture where managers have the mindset and skill-sets for coaching their team members. Coaching came from the field of sports and bulk of the credit for extending the application of coaching from sports to business must go to Timothy Gallwey. A celebrated skiing, golf and tennis coach, Gallwey recognised that ace players and sportsmen noticed the “opponent” inside before they fought the “opponent on the other side of the field/net.” He helped his coachees recognise and manage the opponent inside and they witnessed spectacular results.

Gallwey’s formula was simple: Performance = Potential – Interferences. His approach was to recognise the interferences, and systematically address them in order to ensure that people reach their full potential. Whether in sports or in business, this simple understanding brought coaching into prominence. From this school of thought and action emerged a whole new approach to coaching.

Coaching basically improves self-awareness and responsibility for action on the part of the person being coached. A good coach, therefore, does not tell what to do, but facilitates the process of self-discovery, action plan and review on the part of the coachees. This requires handling the issues involved skilfully.Coachees may seek ready solutions for their problems and the ‘homely sage’ in the coach may be all too often tempted to offer this. This increases dependency on the part of the coachees, an outcome that is contrary to the very intent of the coaching process.

Right mindset

“Father-knows-best culture” in most organisations makes it difficult for them to inculcate a culture of coaching and, so, in preparing their managers to become able coaches, the first and foremost task for the learning and development team is to ensure that the right mindset — one where managers do not prescribe but increase reflection and responsibility — is created.

Interestingly, most managers tend to believe that they coach their people a lot. However, their employees believe to the contrary. This gap can be explained easily. Managers prescribe, instruct, review, tell and suggest and, in doing so, believe they are coaching.

Simple and frequent conversations, however well-intentioned, do not tantamount to coaching. Coaching is a systematic process and competence. If we remove the clutter around frameworks and methodologies, coaching involves four simple steps: (1) understanding where the coachee wants to go (purpose/goal/result); (2) where he/she is now (reality/current state); (3) what may come in the way (problems, challenges, hurdles) and (d) an action plan to get there. Along this journey, a competent coach facilitates reflection and self-discovery, challenges coachee’s self-limiting assumptions and unexplored choices and encourages an action plan that is realistic and worthwhile.

Except in extreme situations, a good coach ensures that the coachees preserve their autonomy and determine the course of action that will move them towards their destined goal.

Coaches bring to bear their exceptional listening skills (listening to what is said and not said, and listening to feelings not just words), empathy, respectful challenging skills and asking high-impact questions in order to deliver a purposeful coaching conversation and beneficial outcome.

Preparing managers

In helping managers be better coaches, careful thought must be paid to how we intend to groom and nurture coaching skills in managers. We must balance rigour with pragmatism, process with purpose, and approach with adaptation. We do not need the rigour of certification and credentialing that we advocate for executive coaching certification. In my work as an internal designer and facilitator for ‘manager as a coach’, I have found some approaches deliver results. The first is a well-designed, experiential/discovery-based one-day workshop for managers aimed at equipping them with a simple framework and approach with a few role-play practice sessions. Next, we need to carefully select managers for the initial few batches as they will be your critical mass of internal ambassadors before we roll out organisation-wide.

Third, monthly review sessions, for an hour or maximum two, with the internal coaches must be conducted to check on challenges, if any; for sharing experiences. Further, a micro-session of 30 minutes on a select skill — how to challenge an employee being coached, or how to ask high-impact questions or help coachee to reflect — must be conducted. A quick role-play/demo of this skill would be very effective.

Fourth, creating an internal network of these manager-coaches as a platform for sharing experiences is important.

Last, one could share short, useful articles, particularly by well-known coaching gurus such as Marshall Goldsmith, Timothy Butler and Zenger / Folkman and others, and review them during monthly meetings/calls.

Training our managers to be effective coaches need not be an arduous task. It can be simple and effective. Its payoff is huge for the organisation. After implementing these steps, we did an interim evaluation by bringing in a student from a local B-School to do a study and assess the “coaching quotient” of the company with a simple questionnaire/interview schedule. It revealed that the approach was working well and delivering results alongside many suggestions for improvement as we continued the journey of creating a coaching-competent organisation.

At the end of the day, good managers do not play the role of a coach. They are good coaches!

(The author is an Executive Coach and HR Advisor.)

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