Proactive coaching can mean the difference between success and mere improvement. The key, as with most things, is timing
Coaching skills are fundamental to a leader’s success and most organisations want to equip all their managers with at least basic coaching skills. Coaching in any organisation has one aim: to help the employee maximise their performance, and, longer term, their potential. However, to create a culture in which people learn from success, rather than failure, companies must learn to coach proactively rather than reactively.
There is a world of difference between proactive coaching (coaching for success) and reactive coaching (coaching for improvement). Each form takes different lengths of time and achieves different results. The key is to catch someone at the right time then the learning comes naturally. The former depends on the coach being adept at spotting opportunities in which to intervene; the latter requires will, and making the time to do it.
This doesn’t mean coaching for improvement is common practice. Many companies find it a continual challenge to ensure that their leaders don’t postpone these, sometimes difficult, discussions. It is, though, a relatively simple matter of acquiring a skill. It also supports the seductive but mistaken idea of managers as problem solvers whose main value is as experts, helping their people extract the positive from mistakes. Proactive coaching, conversely, requires a whole new mindset: the manager as enabler.
Two factors lie at the heart of the shift towards proactive coaching. First, with the current pace of change and competitive pressure, there is less tolerance of trial and error; customers will go elsewhere if their experience isn’t right first time. Second, in times of skills shortages, retention and engagement are critical. If your leader constantly lets you fall just to pick you up again, you will tire of trying, become highly risk-averse or simply develop a dislike of your manager.
Given the rationale for proactive coaching, the issue then becomes how to create both an ‘antenna’ attuned to the need for an intervention as well as judgement in how best to set up an individual for success.
Organisations have to manage poor performance effectively before they can embed coaching for success. One pharmaceutical company has decided to focus its leaders on changing what it calls ‘the epidemic of underperformance’ before building on these skills. In this way, managers see how it could have been avoided with a more proactive coaching style. They also give all newly recruited leaders both sets of coaching tools from the outset.
Proactive coaching starts with three things. First, managers need to be alert to what they know that others don’t, sharing their organisational insight to prepare their people for situations they face. Second, they must take time to learn individuals’ experience and background to uncover their attitude toward new challenges, then use probing questions to spark ideas for solutions. Third, they need to keep a close eye on organisational objectives to help anticipate the business challenges that will necessitate the team’s need to develop new capabilities.
Where organisations have truly embedded proactive coaching, it will often take the form of short, informal conversations ‘corridor coaching’. These focus on: clarifying the opportunity; developing ideas for achieving success agreeing actions and measurements and close with an affirmation of confidence. Coaching for success is a continuous cycle of spotting the right time, focusing on the individual, helping them pave the road for success and keeping one eye on the horizon for future needs. Demanding? Yes, but it beats the socks off the alternative telling someone they got it wrong and then working out how to fix it.
Adrian Starkey is a senior managing consultant at DDI UK. He leads DDI’s European Coaching and Executive Development practice, delivers one-to-one coaching and is responsible for the accreditation and supervision of associates in DDI’s Focus Coaching methodology. Prior to joining DDI, Starkey was a principal consultant for a strategic management development consultancy and facilitated leadership development programmes for the Centre for Creative Leadershi