by Estienne de Beer
www.leader2leaders.com
© 2007
Coaching is a profound leadership mindset, but
you have to believe in it first. Andrew Wood explains the big
picture as follows: "Leadership is not a right of passage,
or at least it shouldn't be. Leadership is a state of mind. A
philosophy. An attitude. Understanding this, you can recognize
and develop the key traits that will enhance and improve your
personal capacity for leadership." Great leaders touch the
lives of their followers through coaching. The key to consistent
business success is to understand that people come before spreadsheets.
The personal growth and coaching of their employees is put on
top of the priority list and soon the results on the spreadsheets
will follow.
When you hear the word "coach", what
comes first into your mind? Do you picture a sports team with
someone shouting out directions? Or perhaps a frowning manager
pacing to and fro and calling out the names of the players? Coaching
is no longer reserved for sports teams; it is now one of the key
concepts in leadership and management. So why has coaching become
so popular in the business world?
Coaching levels the playing field.
Coaching is one of the six emotional leadership
styles proposed by Daniel Goleman. Moreover, it is a behaviour
or role that leaders enforce in the context of situational leadership.
As a leadership style, coaching is used when the members of a
group or team are competent and motivated, but do not have an
idea of the long-term goals of an organization. This involves
two levels of coaching: team and individual. Team coaching makes
members work together. In a group of individuals, not everyone
may have nor share the same level of competence and commitment
to a goal. A group may be a mix of highly competent and moderately
competent members with varying levels of commitment. These differences
can cause friction among the members. The coaching leader helps
the members level their expectations. Also, the coaching leader
manages differing perspectives so that the common goal succeeds
over personal goals and interests. In a big organization, leaders
need to align the staffs' personal interests and goals with that
of the organization so that long-term direction and strategy can
be pursued.
Coaching builds up confidence and competence.
To take any company or team to the top, you can't
treat employees as digits. That is why I dislike the term "human
resources" ... it is expendable. But not a "human asset"
approach. This means that in both theory and practice, people
come before projects. You will never reap the right kind of financial
numbers until you truly invest in the coaching of your people.
This is the ultimate competitive advantage in the business world.
Individual coaching is an example of situational leadership at
work. It aims to mentor one-on-one building up the confidence
of team members by affirming excellent performance and behaviour
during regular feedbacks; and increase competence by helping the
individual assess his/her strengths and weaknesses towards career
planning and professional development. Depending on the individual's
level of competence and commitment, a leader may exercise more
coaching behaviour for the less-experienced members. Usually,
this happens in the case of new employees. The manager gives more
defined tasks and holds regular feedbacks for the new staff, and
gradually lessens the amount of coaching, directing, and supporting
roles to favour delegating as competence and confidence increase.
Coaching promotes individual and team excellence.
Excellence is a product of habitual good practice
over a period of time. The regularity of meetings and constructive
feedback is important in establishing these habits of excellence.
Employees catch the habit of constantly assessing themselves for
their strengths and areas for improvement that they themselves
perceive what knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to acquire
to attain team goals. In the process, they attain individual excellence
as well. An example is in the case of a musical orchestra: each
member plays a different instrument. In order to achieve harmony
of music from the different instruments, members will polish their
part in the musical piece, aside from practicing as an ensemble.
Consequently, they improve individually as an instrument player.
Coaching develops high commitment to common goals.
A coaching leader balances the attainment of
immediate targets with long-term goals towards the vision of an
organization. As mentioned earlier, with the alignment of personal
goals with organizational or team goals, personal interests are
kept in harmony. By constantly communicating the vision through
formal and informal conversations, the members are inspired and
motivated. Setting short-term team goals aligned with organizational
goals; and making an action plan to attain these goals can help
sustain the increased motivation and commitment to common goals
of the team.
Coaching produces valuable leaders.
Leadership by example is most crucial in coaching.
Coaching leaders lose credibility when they cannot practice what
they preach. This means that coaching leaders should be well organized,
highly competent in their field, communicates openly and encourages
feedback, and has a clear understanding of the organization's
vision-mission-goals. By vicarious and purposeful learning, team
members catch the same good practices and attitudes from the coaching
leader, turning them into coaching leaders themselves. If team
members experience good coaching, they are most likely to do the
same things when entrusted with formal management roles.
Some words of caution though: coaching is just
one of the styles of leadership. It can be done in combination
with the other five emotional leadership styles depending on the
profile of the emerging team. Moreover, coaching as a leadership
style requires that you are physically, emotionally, and mentally
fit most of the time since it involves two levels of coaching:
the individual and the team. Your team members expect you to be
the last one to give up or bail out in any situation especially
during times of crises. A leader must be conscious that coaching
entails investing time on each individual, and on the whole team.
Moreover, that the responsibilities are greater since while you
are coaching members, you are also developing future leaders as
well.
Copyright 2007 by Estienne de Beer. All rights
reserved.
