If manager do not become skilled at coaching their team, it is doubtful that they will be able to attain the long term results not only for themselves but also their organizations. If a manager wants to be a leader, he or she must develop the ability to coach others. Coaching is an essential skill required by every successful manager in this new business era. Command or control leadership of managing team have gone long ago.
Coaching demands skill and time. Or I can say Knowledge and patience. Before playing a coach role managers must understand the purpose of coaching.
Let’s refer a quotation on leadership “Leader is not a person who can perform better than his team but the person who inspires his team to perform better than he can". This can be achieved exactly by good coaching. The objective of coaching is the same. In simple words, coaching is the act of helping his team to perform better.
Through coaching we can either target to develop entirely new skills or helping to improve the performance of a non performer or enhancement of existing skills. However, good coaching by managers will surely speed up the progress of employees and take their organizations a head high in the competition.
The question here is "why all the managers will not become coaches?" I see the below reasons.
1. They don’t understand the value of coaching.
2. Lack of skills.
3. Due to work pressure they may not get time.
How to overcome these barriers is the question. Here are the solutions.
- Apply the rules on self: You cannot force the managers coaching responsibilities those whose attitudes always see "what is in it for me?" So showcase them the success stories of managers or business man in their organization to seize the opportunity to learn how to become an effective coach. Once they understand "something in it for me" then they achieve stronger results through the efforts, they will understand results can be yield not from commanding the employees but from coaching others.
- Coaching is compulsory: Tell the managers very clearly to take coaching as a basic responsibility to create a coaching organization. As I described, coaching required time and skill. So provide them to the managers.
- Train the managers on coaching skills and make them to practice.
- Assign a coach to every manager: I suggest organizations to assign a coach to every new manager on day one of his joining, as a part of induction. Practical course is more effective than class room training. He will experience the benefits of coaching and become more committed to the practice. If you don’t have coaches, hire external coaches to work with your managers.
- Reward the best coaches: Managers who are top performers are obviously best coaches. Encourage them by providing challenging roles and reward them. Message goes to entire organization.
I am not a coach but stood as a successful manager and honoured with titles including leadership excellence award from President HR when I was working with Reliance Communication as a Head HR for Andhra Pradesh. Please leave your comments.
Regards
Ram
ADR Group
Services: Infra & Fire Fighting| Property | Education | Product Promotion
9 comments:
Often, managers find it difficult to make the transition between management and leadership, believing that their contribution to the business is best on a transactional basis. Your thoughts aptly describes where management in leadership roles ought to be; transformational leadership to a team that performs beyond its best.
Often, this is hindered by culture; may it be corporate, society or environmental. Nevertheless, it's a topic I agree with and am passionate about.
Posted by Rahul in LinkedIn:
Ram , with the contributing employees (on boarding to significant contribution) and conversion(offer to on boarding ) statistics still a concern for majority of Organizations , getting a coach associated early on is a matter of time . Innovative Organizations would do it sooner than later. Having shared this idea with both the recruiting firms and parent Organizations , this is just a matter of time.
Posted by Kevin in Harvard Business Review forum in LinkedIn:
Good article. What about coaching upwards?
Posted by Mr.Raymond in LinkedIn:
Often, managers find it difficult to make the transition between management and leadership, believing that their contribution to the business is best on a transactional basis. Your thoughts aptly describes where management in leadership roles ought to be; transformational leadership to a team that performs beyond its best.
Often, this is hindered by culture; may it be corporate, society or environmental. Nevertheless, it's a topic I agree with and am passionate about.
Posted by Kevin in Harvard Business Review forum, LinkedIn:
How about,
“A leader is not a person whose roll is not to out-perform their team but to be the person who inspires their team to perform better than they thought possible individually and collectively"
Posted by Paolo in Founder & CEO group, LinkedIn:
Task of a leader is to manage his own collaborators' creativity successfully.
Posted by Chad in Harvard Business Review forum:
Hi Ram
Great article! Thank you for sharing—very helpful and insightful. I’ll pass it on!
C. R. Stewart, bestselling author of The Five Great Principles for Life
Posted by Muralikrishna in Hyderabad HR forum:
Definitely. He must be able to lead the team, and he must also be able to extract results from the team. For this, he should have theoritical and practical knowledge as well as good communication skills. He should be a teacher without a class room, and a practical guide without "lab".
Posted by Prerna in HR Guru forum,LinkedIn:
Hello Ram, Thanks for sharing the nice stuff. I agree with the contents and believe that leader should react and act like teacher to make the team grow, learn and achieve their desired targets.
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