Manager must be a coach to help improve performance of his team

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Train the managers on coaching skills and make them to practice.
4. 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.
5. 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

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Why incentive programs in organizations frequently fail??

Have your past incentive programs been a disappointment to both you and your salespeople?  

Sales incentive programs under perform or fail as a result if elements of the technique are executed improperly. Often, incentive programs fail miserably because of innate complexities either in their recording and reporting systems or in how rewards are won. If you put the salesperson in a position where he or she is forced to assess "To get this, I first have to sell this, plus these and not these and they must include these," you are creating a recipe for confusion, sales frustration and failure. In the end, the incentive program becomes a disincentive!

The monetary values of incentives are often not the critical factor in motivating salespeople to succeed. In my view, the money and the goodies were not primary motivation and not all salespeople are motivated the same way. Consequently, not all incentive programs work. Why is that?

The remedy? There can be no ambiguity. Anything less will result in a lack of interest, as well as a waste of time and money that can sometimes spill over into other departments whose task it is to administer and account.

From my experience, I'll make the following observations:

1) The 70-30 Rule: Thirty percent of the salespeople make seventy percent of the sales and profits. Too often, sales incentives - perhaps in an effort to be fair - are geared to the entire sales force. Enlightened marketing strategists know that the top thirty percent are already motivated. Simply put, a strategy that's geared to light a fire under the next thirty percent - the next logical group - doubles the business in a more cost efficient manner.

2) Salespeople by nature are like electricity. They naturally take the path of least resistance. That's not to say they are lazy or untoward. In fact, it's just the opposite. Good salespeople look to simplicity to make things happen.

3) Edison may have invented the light bulb, but it never went anywhere until a salesperson understood its benefits and made the first sale… and probably sold a lamp to go with it! Incentive programs don't just sell themselves. Too often, expensive motivational programs are overlooked in the field because representatives either don't understand their value and/or are unsure how to sell them. Many times, good incentive programs are written off as having missed the target, when in reality, they just weren't rolled out and managed properly.

4) Reward: Any reward-value can become an unmotivated, anticlimactic activity if the time span between winning and getting is too long. Successful incentive programs reward immediately! As a rule, the faster the reward is delivered, the greater the enthusiasm for the incentive program.

Although on some levels, salespeople are a complex breed, when it comes to incentives, they are - for the most part - quite predictable. Their nature is to react to excitement or challenge faster than most, and then move on. One way to maximize their natural bent and ensure greater program success is simply to cater to their natural motivators. "Get them their stuff QUICKLY!"

I have noticed huge attrition in the sales division in one of my previous organizations though attractive incentive policies were placed just because of this reason.

5) Recognition: At the risk of making salespeople appear shallow or monolithic (they are not), recognition amongst their peers is still the typical motivator, whether there's an incentive program or not. The rule again, is, there is no such thing as too much recognition! Salespeople by nature gravitate to the limelight much like other performers, and so there should be no shortage of achievement and overachievement recognitions that find their way - in a timely manner - to the public's eye.

Another fact that is frequently overlooked is that recognition, whether part of an incentive or not, is the least expensive means of motivation. In many cases, it's free! Often, shaking the hand of the president in front of the company is all it takes to galvanize the need to overachieve.

The Bottom Line: Manufacturers and Distributors must take greater care when designing motivational incentive programs. Find out what they want, then, give it to them. But make sure to keep it simple, keep it clear, promote it properly, reward immediately, don't try to target everybody, and, recognize, recognize… RECOGNIZE!

Regards

Ram

ADR Group

Services: Infra & Fire Fighting| Property | Education | Product Promotion

Enquire on ram.k.reddy@adrgroup.in for any kind of support on the above services.