the 20 minute course in coaching

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Fastlane

The 20 minute course in... coaching

If the daily task of managing people at work is starting to feel like Groundhog

Day, it is probably a good time to add coaching to your repertoire of business

management skills

Managing staff in the traditional way means your team are bound to come to you

with the same old problems, inevitably taking up a lot of your time and energy.

Managing staff using coaching enables your team to take ownership of their own

problems and to reach their full potential in doing so, leaving you free of those

Groundhog Day conversations, says Mike Amos, head of coaching at HR

consultancy Chiumento.

Sound too good to be true? Its not, insists Amos. Thats why coaching is

becoming prevalent across all types of business.

Why coaching

The watershed moment usually comes when managers have formal coaching

sessions themselves, says Amos. Typically, when high-level people are offered

their own coach often from outside the business they like it so much that they

decide to put it into action for the people that work for them.

The alternative is when companies such as Chiumento come in and provide

coaching training programmes for managers. The aim of these courses is not to

turn managers into coaches, but to allow them to use coaching as one of their

many management tools.

Theres a third way too reading articles like this. It doesnt have to cost theearth to start using coaching, says David Heath, managing director of McCanns

Human Resource Consultants. Some people simply read about how to do it and

get on with it.

But before you pour yourself a drink, put your feet up and read on in the hope of

a life-changing moment, be warned that coaching isnt easy to define and is even

harder to practise.

At its most basic, business coaching is about helping individuals to achieve their

goals by accessing and developing their own abilities, says Simon Foster, senior

client director at the Centre for High Performance Development. We all talk

about improving things getting fitter, losing weight, working less. We also knowthat, however much we talk about these things, they only become a reality if we

set ourselves targets to map the way to our goals. The same is true with

coaching.

Its up to the coach to help the individual identify these goals and targets and its

also up to them to encourage the individual to find ways to achieve them. Thats

not easy for todays managers, who are paid to get results and so typically do a

lot of telling and instructing. In coaching, you need to take a step back and allow

the coachee to learn from their own mistakes and to find their own answers.

What youre doing is allowing them to develop and display their individual talents.

The theory is that in the end, although you may have invested a good deal of

time with them upfront, the net result is far superior.

Adrian King, an executive coach at Praesta Executive Coaching and author of

Business Coaching, likens the process to giving someone a fishing rod instead of

a fish. If you always give people the answers yourself, the business will only

ever grow as big as you. With coaching, you can take the business to new

Dos and donts

Do be consistent.

Coaching needs to be

made part of your

management style on a

daily basis, rather than

switching on and off.

Do get supervision.

Check in with a coaching

expert to find ways to

improve your coaching

style.

Do stay neutral and

objective. Observe, listen

and ask questions to

understand the

coachees situation.

Do think of coaching likeraising children. If you

tell them what to do,

theyll do it adequately,

but if you let them learn

for themselves, theyre

more likely to excel.

Do be afraid to use

specific coaching

models. Theres plenty to

choose from, ranging

from the GROW modelto neuro-linguistic

programming, but get to

grips with the basics

first.

Don't break

confidentiality. Coaching

must be based on 100

per cent trust.

Don't expect coaching to

solve every problem.

Coaching is a very

useful tool, but its not

the answer to everything

and there are occasions

when it isnt appropriate

20 minute course in... coaching - The Marketer magazine http://www.themarketer.co.uk/articles/professional-development/fast-la...

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levels, he says.

Not surprisingly, people dont always like being coached at first. Being given a

fishing rod would take many of us out of our comfort zone. But once theyve

landed that first catch, youve usually got them hooked.

The marketing environment

Coaching is essentially about bringing out the best in each and every person.

Marketing is about bringing out the best in a brand. In terms of alignment, thatsnot a bad start.

There are other reasons why coaching works for marketers. Standards in the

industry are increasingly high, with leaders always on the lookout for ways to

improve. Marketing is often the first area to be cut in a budget, leaving

marketers under pressure to achieve results with fewer people. Moving away

from a problem-solving culture to one in which people find their own answers is

understandably popular.

Marketers, however, may find coaching particularly challenging. Stuart Duff,

partner and head of development at the business psychologists Pearn Kandola,

explains: The marketing environment naturally attracts people who are intuitiveand instinctive and so make quick decisions and give quick instructions. Coaching

encourages them to slow down on their assumptions and genuinely listen. Thats

not easy. Interestingly, we have the opposite problem when we train people in

coaching at organisations like PricewaterhouseCoopers, where they can get too

involved in the detail and arent able to stand back and see the bigger picture.

Outcomes

Alexia Leachman, global marketing manager at the tanning company St Tropez,

says that in the past, when she gave a member of her team a new challenge,

theyd often try to get out of it. They wouldnt say outright that they couldnt do

it, but theyd create excuses. I tended to be directional, telling them what to do.That was quite time consuming because I needed to be heavily involved. But now

I use coaching by asking them questions to help them find the answers

questions like What do you want to achieve with this project?, What do you

think are the steps you should take to get there?, Which one do you want to

start with? and What could you do if you come up against a problem?.

Because Leachmans coachees come up with their own solutions, they own

them and are far less likely to approach her for help. They are also far more

likely to relish a new challenge, she says.

Like many managers, Leachman doesnt tell her team that shes coaching them.

Theres a lot of cynicism around business coaching, as well as a lot of

misunderstanding for example, that its the same as mentoring. I just dont thinkits necessary or even helpful to explain every technique you use as a manager

to your team.

Leachman says that as a result of coaching each member of her team for at

least one hour a week, they now feel they have the authority and confidence to

run with each project independently.

She has no doubt that coaching impacts the bottom line, but is there proof that

coaching really does accelerate capability? Experts admit that this is still very

much a matter for debate. There are a variety of measurement tools, but some

are quite complex. You may do better to simply look back to the goals set up in

the initial coaching sessions and assess whether theyve been reached, thenevaluate their relationship with the wider business goals. You could also take a

look at the retention and progression rates since coaching was introduced.

David Heath of McCanns Human Resource Consultants adds that an interesting

for example if the

market has taken a

sudden dive, says Lisa

Cann, a chartered

marketer and coach for

Lane4, the global

performance

development

consultancy.

Don't coach if youre not

up to it. Some

personalities are simply

not suited to coaching.

Tips from the top

Stuart Duff, head of

development at the

business psychology

consulting company

Pearn Kandola, advises

on what makes coaching

work

Think about

motivation. Motivation

underpins pretty much


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thing happens when managers crack coaching. They dont just see other

peoples motivation rise their own motivation increases, too. After all, its

incredibly satisfying to help people develop and to have more time to yourself.

What makes a good coach?

If youre not a good listener, forget coaching, says Rebekah Fensome, a

business coach within the marketing sector. Giving full attention to what the

other person is saying is the cornerstone of good coaching. That requires a lot of

patience, as well as the ability to cast aside your own assumptions so that youcan take on board the other persons agenda. Youll need to leave your

judgmental head at the door.

Youll need to be energising, encouraging and empathetic, as well as able to

build a rapport with others and to give unconditional regard to a persons

development, she adds. With your face, cues, body language and words, youll

need to show that you have 100 per cent confidence in them. If they sense fear

in you, they will never believe in themselves. Thats crucial because coaching is

ultimately a confidence building exercise.

Youll need to encourage the coachee to leave their comfort zone and stretch

themselves and, once you get to know their objectives, youll need to work onchampioning these through your coaching. Remember that the best coaches are

people who can do some very creative lateral thinking its about opening up

options so that peoples horizons are broadened.

Coaching is certainly not for control freaks. The whole ethos behind coaching is

that people must learn through their own mistakes, so be prepared for a few

hiccoughs in the short term. But rest assured that it will pay off in the end.

Common mistakes

A big mistake is trying to give the coachee answers rather than supporting them

to find their own solutions, says Jonathan Perks, head of leadershipdevelopment at Penna.

A coach may feel they need to be an expert in the subject they are discussing

when in fact this is not necessary. Once an individual knows the structure of a

coaching conversation, they can help the coachee to talk through any issue and

provide options where necessary.

Carla Cotterell, European key accounts director at Advertising.com, adds:

Coaches often spend too much time providing examples from their own career.

While personal anecdotes can help build rapport, it is important that the coach

remains focused on the needs of the member of staff they are working with.

But cut yourself some slack. Just as coaching means allowing your team to learn

by their mistakes, allow yourself to get it wrong sometimes too. Fear not if youdont feel like the worlds best coach within a couple of weeks, says Stuart Duff.

While many people take to it instinctively, Ive had others tell me it takes them a

good couple of years before they get out of telling mode when coaching.

Are you ready to coach your team?

When showing members of your team how to approach a new area of

work, you:

a) Tell them how you would do it;

b) Talk them through some potential challenges and options to overcome them;

c) Ask them open-ended questions about how they might play to their strengths

and overcome their weaknesses.

every aspect of our

behaviour at work.

Consider why this person

is here and what they

want to achieve each

day.

Ask open questions.

Under pressure to be

the expert managersoften ask closed

questions or look for

confirmation of their own

views. This can hinder

their teams creativity,

ownership and

accountability. Open

questions give them

more latitude to find their

own answers.

Know yourself. Beingaware of your own

personality preferences

gives you

more scope to develop

tactics and adapt your

approach to suit the

personalities of the

people you are

coaching.

Have a framework in

mind. Coaching is all

about asking the right

questions at the right

time. Keeping the

structure of the

discussion simple will

help the manager to stay

on track and keep an

eye on progress.

It can take minutes,

not hours. Coaching is

a fluid, practical way to

get others to makebetter choices and take

more responsibility a

skilled manager will use

coaching as and when

opportunities arise.


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If a member of your team comes to you with a work-related problem, you:

a) Offer a solution;

b) Invite them to come up with a solution and then guide them through achieving

it;

c) Ask them what they think the best end result would be and help them work

out the steps they would take to achieve it, bearing in mind their individual

personality and working style.

A member of your team makes a mistake. You:

a) Tell them you never made any such mistakes and to buck their ideas up;

b) Give them some options on how to rectify the situation;

c) Invite them to work out what caused the error and what they have learned

from it, reassuring them that it was probably a good learning curve.

Your team has been achieving good results with very little management

input. You:

a) Decide to let them get on with it. If it aint broke, why fix it?;

b) Reassure them that youre happy with what theyre doing and that they can

come to you if they have any queries;

c) Think about ways you can help them to stay at the top or do even better such

as learning how each individual in the team operates or by ensuring they dont

become victims of their own success and burning out too quickly.

If you answer:

Mostly (a) Coaching is nowhere to be seen in your management toolbox. If you

want to embrace coaching, go on a comprehensive course, but even then

recognise if its not for you.

Mostly (b) Youre halfway there, with some coaching techniques beginning to

rear their heads.

Mostly (c) Youre obviously a natural. Coaching already helps you to unleash

peoples potential.

Kate Hilpern writes on coaching and management for Coaching at Work


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