Coaching for development

There are many definitions of coaching. One

which I f ind useful i s by the wr i ter Denis

Kinlaw: “Success fu l coaching i s a mutual

conversation between manager and employee

that follows a predictable process and leads to

superior performance, commitment to sustained

improvement, and positive relationships.”

This definition is attractive because it stresses

the two way aspect of coaching. Coaching is a

conversation rather than a monologue. Having

a predictable process allows for repeatability

and training. This is important in organisations

where too often the coaching process is so

informal that there i s no real s t ructure or

follow up.

The aim of coaching is always to have better

per formance and i t i s my be l ie f that the

relationship between manager and employee is

key to effective performance. Recent research by

Gal lup has shown that the key fac tor in

successful performance is the relat ionship

between manager and employee.

The coach facilitates learning and does not

own the problem. The coach helps the person

being coached develop their own thinking and

awareness. Many managers make the mistake of

trying to own their employees’ problems with

the result that they end up taking responsibility

– and learning – away f rom the person.

Coaching , there fore, i s about le t t ing the

employee perform to their full potential.

■ The need for coaching

As we change from an industrial society to a

service and knowledge economy, the need is for

employees who can think for themselves, be

creative and react quickly and appropriately to

different situations. The command and control

model cannot work in this environment, as people

need to be able to think independently. If

employees have to wait for the boss to decide, or if

they let their boss do all the thinking for them,

then it slows down the whole organisation and it

eventually becomes a dinosaur.

There is an expression, “To take the monkey”,

meaning that you end up taking on other people’s

problems and issues. This is extremely common in

management for two reasons. First, the manager

very often thinks that their job is to solve

problems. Second, as a result of hierarchy and

command and control cultures, many employees

have got used to letting someone else do their

thinking for them. At Ashridge, we see in our

workshops many examples of managers whose

default style is to go immediately to giving advice

– the “Why don’t you” style of management.

Coaching for development

Executive coaching is a growth business.The marketplace is increasingly

crowded with messianic motivational coaches. Amid the hype, the real power

and purpose of coaching can be forgotten. Mike Brent brings coaching

back to the basics of learning and development.

Mike Brent is a senior

consultant in Ashridge

Consulting and has trained

and consulted with major

international companies all

over the world, as well as

lecturing at several business

schools. He is interested in

the nature of challenge and

creativity in organisations, in

helping managers develop

their coaching skills, and in

facilitating change.

Email: mike.brent

@ashridge.org.uk

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The Ashridge Journal

Spring 2002Ashridge Business School UK - http://www.ashridge.org.uk

Instead of asking questions, and listening, when

an employee comes to them, many managers feel

obliged to offer their solution. Apart from the fact

that the boss is not always right, this leads to a

mental laziness from the employee, who is not

being forced to think the issues through and come

up with different courses of action.

A further impetus to coaching is the shift from

management to leadership (although

organisations sti l l need both). In this new

leadership paradigm, leaders must be able to

coach. Coaching is essentially about creating and

generating options and alternatives. If your only

style is to tell people what to do, you are not

empowering or enabling them. You are not

growing and developing your most important

resource. And, you are wasting your own

valuable time.

Time is increasingly short because the rate of

change is accelerating and the degree of

complexity encountered by managers increasing

rapidly. Managers are having to deal less with

simple puzzles, and more with complex problems

and dilemmas (see Figure 1). The difference is that

with puzzles, there are answers available, and they

can often be solved by an individual. With

complex problems, they are less evident and are

likely to need input from different sources to

solve them.

And then there are dilemmas which don’t have

any solutions, only options and alternatives. For

example, the question, “What should our strategy

be for the next five years?” has no single correct

answer waiting to be discovered. This is a

dilemma, not a puzzle nor a problem. All

managers can do is to engage in dialogue, listen,

be creative and come up with different options

and alternatives. Then they need to objectively

analyse the alternatives and choose the one that

has a chance of engaging the organisation’s

attention and energy.

If we confuse puzzles with dilemmas, then we

are in danger of simplifying the issue, imposing

dogma instead of looking together for alternatives.

As one manager said: “It’s got to be an extremely

simple question to have an answer.”

Unfortunately, in reality there are no longer that

many simple questions.

■ Abandoning the security of knowing

The question for managers must be: If you’re not

coaching your people how are you managing them? If

coaching can be defined as unlocking potential, if

managers aren’t unlocking it, what are they doing?

Coaching – unlocking potential, developing

people, promoting learning and confidence – is

the key role of the manager. More and more of the

problems the manager faces are human ones

rather than technical ones.

Many managers are excellent at solving technical

issues, but are not so good at dealing with human

ones. One of the key roles of a manager is to

develop his or her people. It is not always an easy

role to play. One manager, talking about the move

from being the expert to being the coach, put it

nicely when he said: “It’s very uncomfortable to

leave the comfort and security of knowing.”

Coaching is about helping people, enabling

them to achieve something they want to achieve,

whether it may be promotion, skills, performance

or self-understanding or better balance. It has to

be client centred and not coach, or even

organisation, centred.

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NEED TO

SHARE

CONFLICT

POTENTIAL

COACHING IN A COMPLEX ENVIRONMENT

COMPLEXITY

UNCE

RTAI

NTY

+

–

+–

Figure 1. Source: Critchley and Casey1

PUZZLES

PROBLEMS

ONS

DILEMMAS


Ashridge Business School UK - http://www.ashridge.org.uk

The argument for coaching in terms of

competitiveness is among the most

straightforward. When products and services are

similar, competitive advantage comes from having

people with ideas, skills, responsibility and

initiative. Learning makes the difference and the

core idea of coaching is to develop others – to

help them learn. Without coaching this cannot be

achieved. Ultimately, as the environment grows

more and more complex, performance will be as a

result of learning. To paraphrase Reg Revans, the

founder of action learning, if the environment

changes faster than your organisation learns,

you’re out of business. This means that managers

cannot wait for the rest of the organisation to

change before they change. We all have to take

individual responsibility for learning.

■ Why don’t managers coach?

There are many reasons why managers do not

actually use coaching in their everyday lives. Some

of the main ones are: organisational culture;

fear; not convinced it works; lack of skill; coaching is

seen as remedial.

Culture. Many of the managers in our workshops

raise objections to the idea of coaching – typical

remarks are – “It won’t work here”, “We don’t have

the time”, “It’s tree hugging”, etc. Few admit to

being afraid or unprepared to coach. We found this

resistance rather surprising initially, and resented

wasting time, as we thought, dealing with this

resistance. What we saw were organisational

cultures that, although paying for coaching

workshops, were in reality paying lip service to the

philosophy behind the concept of coaching – one

in which continuous learning and growth are seen

as important. Although top management were

convinced of the need to have a coaching culture,

not all of the managers actually used coaching as a

way of managing their own employees.

Many participants reported that although they

were keen to coach, they felt that their hierarchical

superiors were not on board, and that it would be

a waste of time to implement coaching in their

own teams. Too often organisations send their

managers on coaching workshops to gain

transactional skills, without linking coaching to

the larger, strategic aim of transformation. If

coaching is seen as the latest fad, it will have no

effect on performance.

Fear. Few managers would admit to being afraid

of coaching, but we often see managers who are

extremely anxious about their ability to coach.

There are a number of skills, attitudes and tools

which need to be mastered if one is to become an

effective coach. Managers need to be supported

and they need training in these techniques.

Not convinced. Sometimes we see managers

who see no value in changing their command and

control style to a coaching one. These managers

tell us that their job is to give advice. If an

employee has an issue or a problem, the manager

doesn’t feel it is right to spend time eliciting the

employee’s own thoughts. They feel it is a waste of

time to coach and that there is nothing to gain by

helping employees develop their own thinking.

Although giving advice or telling employees

what to do is appropriate in some circumstances –

emergencies, for example – it is not a means of

developing employees. In reality, we found that

these managers’ subordinates actually wanted to

be coached.

Coaching as remedial. Many participants come

to coaching workshops with the idea that coaching

is remedial. This is a barrier in the sense that they

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If your only style is to tell people

what to do, you are not empowering

or enabling them.You are not

growing and developing your

most important resource.


don’t think it is something that could be used

every day with all team members, but just as a tool

to be used with poor performers. If they tried a

coaching approach with anyone else, that person

resisted because they felt they were then being

considered as a poor performer.

■ Making coaching work

There are many models which can be used in

training managers to be more effective coaches.

However the real value of the coaching training

lies in the actual practising of coaching, with

participants bringing real issues to the workshop.

In our experience, role playing is not as effective as

working with real issues. After all, when you are

back in the organisation, you don’t have the

option of saying, “This was just a game”.

Making coaching work requires a number of

things:

■ Recognition that coaching is not time

consuming. One of the common objections

to coaching is that it takes too much time. The

opposite is true. Simply telling people what to

do is what actually consumes time. You can

coach in a five minute session simply by

developing the reflex of asking rather than

telling. Too often managers are tempted to

use the “Why don’t you” model, instead of

asking people what their own thoughts and

options are. Almost any interaction can be

done in a coaching style, although we don’t

recommend asking people for their different

options and alternatives in the middle of an

emergency.

■ Coaching needs a supportive organisational

culture. It is vital to have a coaching culture

within the organisation, otherwise it fails. The

coaching culture has to come from a strong

belief that it can add value to both individuals

and the organisation, and is not simply seen

as a sheep dip reflex or fad.

■ Successful coaching is about more than

simply developing skills and techniques. If

the right attitude is not there, no amount of

skills will make you a good coach.

■ Workshops are not enough. If all you do is

organise some coaching workshops for your

managers, but then do not support a coaching

environment, then at best, you are wasting

money. Just paying lip service to the idea of

coaching is counter productive. Many

participants in our workshops fully

understand the importance of developing a

coaching style, but if they go back to a boss

who uses old fashioned command and

control styles, and does not support coaching

in practise, there is a strong possibility that

they will stop using their coaching skills.

■ Top management must communicate the

importance of coaching. It is vital that senior

management support the coaching initiative.

This means that they have to be visible in

supporting it, show up at the workshops to

demonstrate its importance, and also reward

those who use it in practice, and most

importantly, use it themselves and encourage

other senior colleagues to use it. Coaching is

often seen only as transactional when it

should be transformational.

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Coaching needs a supportive

organisational culture. It is vital to

have a coaching culture within the

organisation, otherwise it fails.


■ For coaching to be most effective, it is

important for senior members of the

management team to point out the strategic

importance of coaching to the participants.

A coaching culture will not survive in the

organisation unless it is seen to add value to

the strategy of the organisation and improve

the quality of organisational life. As consultants

and trainers we can remind participants of this,

but it is clearly the responsibility of the

organisation’s leaders to communicate it.

■ Resistances to the idea of managers using a

coaching style must be acknowledged and

brought into the open. Some managers do

resist and it is important to listen to their

concerns.

■ Coaching must not be seen as a fad or only

as remedial. The aim of coaching is to help

people achieve their potential, and everyone,

at all levels, can benefit. No serious

sportsman or woman would consider not

using a coach – why shouldn’t managers?

■ When training managers to be coaches, there

must be practice sessions using real issues as

well as theory. The real learning comes by

doing, and getting feedback.

■ Coaching must take account of cross-cultural

differences – especially when people are being

trained how to coach.

■ Coaching must be linked to strategy. If we only

focus on change at an individual level then the

effort and initiative will be lost. On the other

hand, if we work on strategy but forget

implementation, then we are wasting time.

■ Implementation is always carried out by

individuals and a process is needed to work

through the implementation of the strategy.

Coaching is such a process. ■

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Advice to coaches

Here is a list of tips and advice to help youcoach more effectively.They are not apanacea, but should help you avoid themost common mistakes.

• Don’t over question – it’s not an

interrogation

• Summarise often

• Be aware of double pressure on you – your

preference for giving advice and the

coachee’s request for advice

• Resist giving advice prematurely

• Try to offer reframes and different

perspectives through questioning

• Remember that coaching should lead to

action

• Identify restraints, especially internal ones

• Check whether the issue is a puzzle,

problem or dilemma

• Balance your reality questions with

questions which move the issue on

• Remember to use the naïve question

• Understand the emotions as well as the logic

• Challenge if necessary, but learn how to

challenge elegantly

• Use “what if” questions

• Ask how important the issue is

• Build on what the coachee is actually

saying, rather than inventing new questions

• Pick up on non-verbal communication.

Notice if people get excited, or sad

• Use more open than closed questions.

REFERENCE

1. Critchley, Bill and

Casey, David. (1984).

”Second thoughts on team

building”, Mead.

RESOURCES

Gallwey, Timothy.

(2000). The Inner Game of

Work, Orion.

Kinlaw, Denis. (1989).

Coaching for Commitment,

Pfeiffer.


Leadership & Management

Coaching for development