If you are a professional from Human Resources, Leadership Development or corporate L&D function, chances are likely that you'd have come across a situation similar to this. Consider you are leading a organization-wide coaching program. You and the senior executive team members have agreed, at least prima-facie, to the distinct benefits that coaching brings to the organization in the form of better employee performance and engagement. You have had a fanfare of the program-launch with apparent support and visibility of the top leaders.
Cut to the present, after two years of the above launch, you are at best stuttering away with the program's all-round adoption and assimilation into the organization's fabric! You are clueless as to what is dragging down the momentum! You've tried all possible compliance-driven measures be it the leadership review or you name it. It spikes up momentarily and then back to square one! If your situation resembles with the above in one or the other way, you're not an outlier.
Managerial coaching support has long been hailed as an effective & proven way to build organizational capabilities and sustained performance while building talent pipeline. This is the white elephant in the room from the perspective that everyone from the top executive to the front-line manager swears by the coaching's role in team development, however, when it comes to actually living the role of a 'coach' the penny drops! Suddenly you have all sorts of roadblocks that come alive as to why coaching gets less than deserved attention by the line managers and executives. According to one Gartner research 65% of employees polled admitted that their managers were ineffective coaches! My own experience with internal Coaching Pulse Surveys in the past have revealed that managers are mostly devoting time on deal-level coaching (read tactical) , much less on strategic coaching where a manager coaches his team members on career aspiration, growth & development and what the coachee 'could-potentially-be' ! That brings us the brutal truth- 'What ails managerial coaching practices in organizations?'
I would like to deconstruct the above hypothesis and dwell deep on the most compelling reasons behind the state of affair,
Those organizations where the above state of coaching affair exists are most likely the ones where executive sponsors themselves are detached from the coaching practices. These executives might be knowledgeable enough to write a book on executive coaching but their practices differ from their preaching!
Executives walking the talk & talking the walk: If line managers and senior executive fundamentally believe in coaching as a philosophy they would most likely embody themselves as coaches. Furthermore, they'd encourage an enterprise-wide conversation around coaching what I call 'talking the walk''
- Formalized accountability: As a natural outgrowth of the above philosophy, those organizations where above state of coaching exist are likely not to have a formalized accountability of their managers towards coaching. Though I am personally a big fan of informal setting around coaching but if you want to drive a coaching framework (let's not even talk of coaching culture at this point!) in organizations, a certain degree of formalized requirement towards coaching mandates will help. I know of a large business unit within one of the major healthcare companies of the world where managers have 60% of their time allocation in coaching engagements thereby vastly improving the coaching climate and outcome. Senior leaders have access to regular updates through various dashboards. At least, in the initial days you'll do well to include certain KPIs around coaching responsibilities from the managers (# of coaching hours/ days, # coaching feedback submission etc.)
- Focus on short-term commercial goals: If you happen to be an organization which is hyper-competitive but have monochromatic lenses towards the commercial goals (MS, Gr% , over-obsessed with external customers even at the expense of internal customers etc.) then chances are ripe for ignoring time-consuming, slow-turning-wheel yet strategic choice called coaching climate.
You still want to drive the coaching framework leading up to the holy grail of 'Coaching Culture', you better focus on the following. I want to spend sometime here talking of coaching culture vis-a-vis coaching framework. As a puritan on organizational coaching, I fundamentally believe that coaching culture is all pervasive and independent of individuals. This means, coaching is a way of life in the organization for everyone- from the shop-floor worker to the C-suite executive! These individuals asks more questions than they give answers. They listen deeply to each other to provide relevant feedback. Obviously, the coaching maturity model won't allow this status in a year or two or even five years. So you need to build it brick-by-brick- staying invested in the process, no matter people at all levels coming in or going out of the door- it's kind of organizational philosophy! To reach this holy-grail of coaching, you define short-term coaching goals starting with basic training and support on coaching for all in the organization. Even individual contributors coach their peers. Coaching is more informal. Periodic reviews of coaching health such as Coaching Pulse Surveys, executive reviews and external benchmarking can help one to graduate to the ultimate coaching culture.
- Make leaders accountable to be more visible to coaching engagements as much they are seen for other business activities such as business reviews.
- Educate your managers to be 'connectors' who act as conduits between team members and relevant resources in the organization for their specific developmental needs. According to a Gartner research such managers are the most effective in developing their people (26% versus other three types)
- Inspire leaders to be great teachers. When they teach, mentor and hold candid conversations around growth & development real magic happens- the seeds of trust are sown.
- Nudge your managers & leaders to be more 'social' meaning they should be more accessible and transparent to rest of the organizations. Modern 'social' tools and networks are quite effective in facilitating such climate. Gone are the days when 'leaders' use to come over to the balcony to wave at their people during ceremonies, these days the authentic leaders are the one who are part of the crowd and be with them- in good or bad times!
Leadership, as they say, is a practicing art and your leaders are no exception. They must grind themselves through the rigor and move beyond just paying lip service to coaching and developing people. They must apportion dedicated time for such interactions where conversations are celebrated and long cherished by the teams.
I would encourage you to drop in your comments below as to what have been your 'Baptism-by-fire experience' in creating a robust coaching framework. Coaching culture, well, will have to wait!
Disclaimer: This article is inspired by the HBR (May-June2018) article 'Managers Can't Be Great Coaches All By Themselves'