The last few years have seen a steady rise in the popularity of training managers in coaching skills. While executive coaching by external coaches has consolidated and remains the preferred development option for executives at the top of their organisations, the growth in internal coaches has brought about a significant shift in the role of the manager. The popularity of coaching as a means of increasing performance and personal effectiveness seems to be on an unstoppable upwards trajectory, as more and more organisations invest in their own people – notably managers – to develop the necessary skills. The CIPD reports that 88% of organisations surveyed use coaching by line managers and that this figure is growing. 74% of organisations responding indicated they intend to increase their use of manager-coaches in the next few years.*
One of the biggest drivers of this change is the realisation that coaches can benefit a much wider spectrum of employees. Organisations also benefit further as internal capability has to be developed in order to deliver large-sale coaching, thereby creating the opportunity to build up knowledge and expertise about how coaching works within the organisation. Moreover, if coaching is to become a central plank of an organisation’s Learning and Development strategy, then it makes sense to invest in developing these skills internally.
At an organisational level, coaching is being used as a vehicle for bringing about a change in organisational culture. The VT Group, for example, is developing its senior and middle managers as coaches to encourage a shift in culture, away from ‘command and control’ towards a performance culture where individuals take responsibility for their own learning and ongoing development. VT Group CEO Paul Lester’s agenda for growth and increased productivity is supported by the target of improving performance in every individual by, as he says, ‘one or two notches.’ Coaching by managers is the means by which the organisation intends to achieve this, by realising individual potential and moving good performance into great performance wherever possible.
Coaching by managers can help implement change initiatives that might otherwise struggle. In this sense coaching supports organisational change efforts and helps individuals to work through the emotional transition of change. ‘Knowing what you need to change’ is not enough in itself to bring about actual changes in work style or habit. A manager with coaching skills can facilitate these changes, by building on coaching’s change orientation and its ethos of goals, flexibility and ongoing development. This approach encourages a sense of self-responsibility and ownership of the issue and the actions that need to take place to make personal change or development stick.
To get to this position however, requires investment in training managers as coaches, something that is not a quick-fix option. Gaining results from a manager-coach programme requires a lot of organisational effort and investment in time. Going through a programme is not enough in itself. Managers require ongoing support and supervision to become effective coaches, not least to make sure that they are making time to deliver coaching alongside their numerous other activities and demands. Even getting the programme up and running and finding managers who believe that coaching is not a waste of their time can be a challenge in itself!
HR Learning and Development Manager Michael Staunton comments, “A programme in itself is just the start of the process. HR and L&D practitioners need to be aware of the add-ons that make a coaching programme truly successful,such as ongoing supervision by more senior coaches in the organisation and the opportunity to set up ‘trial’ coaching sessions with volunteer coaches.” A potential block to a manager’s success in this role is the tension between a manager’s needs, team targets and juggling of limited resources with the coachee’s needs and wants, personal work style and goals. Maintaining the role of impartial and non-judgemental coach becomes a challenge in these circumstances. This is where being very clear about boundaries in the coaching relationship become crucial. Agreeing expectations and ways of working right from the start of the process is a must.
From my experience of working with manager-coaches, often a big concern is about the ability to use performance management in a coaching context. Exploring different coaching approaches, along a spectrum from non-directive to directive, is a helpful reassurance about the appropriateness of coaching and extends the situations in which managers feel it is useful to coach. While most coaching focuses on helping people fulfil their potential, in a manager’s everyday reality there will always be circumstances where remedial coaching or moving people from low to average performance plays an important role.
There are clear benefits to organisations and its people of developing the manager-coach, not least because it is an enjoyable social interaction that is open and satisfying for both coach and coachee, with the result that the quality or relationships in organisations are improved. Being clear about the purpose of developing managers in this way and integrating any training programme into the organisation; helping managers to understand the importance of boundaries and of raised self-awareness are all important factors for consideration in creating an effective approach to develop the manager-coach.
* CIPD, 2005
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