More and more organisations are training managers and leaders in coaching skills. But manager-coaching isn’t simply cheap coaching, there must be alignment with the business plus training and support, says Georgina Fuller
Eight out of ten (83 per cent) organisations use line managers to coach staff, according to a report published in June by the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM). Chief executive Penny de Valk believes developing managers’ coaching skills is the single most cost-effective investment a business can make.
Coaching, along with driving and managing change, is a key skill for the future, according to talent management firm DDI’s 6th Global Leadership Forecast survey. Yet leaders are still largely ineffective as coaches, says the survey of more than 12,000 leaders and 1,800 HR professionals from 74 countries.
Organisations with effective leadership development programmes tend to be those using four methods more often and more effectively: formal workshops plus manager, internal and external coaching (see Coaching at Work, vol 6, issue 4: www.coaching-at-work.com/2011/06/26/leaders-largely-ineffective-as-coaches-ddi/).
Coaching on a budget
Carol Wilson, managing director of Performance Coach Training, which offers an open programme and customised manager-coach training programmes, says:
“The trend towards training managers in coaching skills for use in their everyday work started with the recession two years ago, when a lot of big external coach programmes were cut. But this is not to say that external coaches are not being hired – they are, all over the world. It’s more that whereas the trend was moving towards every manager having a coach, it’s now moving away from that.”
Jackie Keddy of Keddy Consultants and co-author of Managing Coaching at Work, agrees:
“Lots of companies are trying to implement a coaching culture on a shoestring. They’re only really using external coaches for top on management level and above.”
Growing numbers of businesses are also training internal coaches. For manager-coach interventions to work, they have to be taken seriously, with adequate training of managers and leaders.
A third (34 per cent) of organisations offer no training or support to their internal coaches. They are selected on the grounds that they are line managers (53 per cent), senior staff members (46 per cent) or a member of HR (43 per cent), according to the ILM’s report, Creating a Coaching Culture.
Micro-coaching
There has been growth in manager-coach training programmes, however. Earlier this year, Roffey Park launched its postgraduate certificate in coaching, validated by the University of Sussex, aimed at experienced organisational development leaders, HR and L&D practitioners, plus line managers aiming to adopt a coaching style.
In 2009, Starr Consulting launched the UK’s first accredited development programme for managers who coach, the Starr Certificate in Coaching for Managers, equivalent to NVQ level 3 and accredited by the European Mentoring and Coaching Council and joint partner, The OCM.
Most managers are too busy to set aside an hour or two for “pure coaching”, hence the continued growth in what Keddy calls
“micro-coaching”. This involves breaking down key themes into brief five-minute sessions, often informed by a hybrid of coaching methods. Micro-coaching is increasingly used by managers in conflict mediation.
“Our JAM – Just a Minute – micro-coaching programme has been very well received. Managers want more micro-coaching tools to bring into everyday management, adopting a coaching managerial/leadership style on the hoof.”
Keddy, who formerly championed coaching at London’s Metropolitan Police, trained project leaders working with ex-offenders and shared her micro-coaching approach with Russell Waterman, resettlement development manager for the Minerva Project. The latter targets the 60 per cent of Hull’s prison population with sentences of less than 12 months, a voluntary 12-week care and community plan. Through coaching, the project has dramatically reduced the “revolving door” of re-offending from 62 per cent to 13 per cent in 20 months.
Waterman says he uses a range of coaching techniques, including JAM and the GROW and OSCAR (Outcome, Solution, Choices and Consequences, Actions and Review) models, to help offenders think for themselves. “I work with some of the harder edged people who have usually had pretty chaotic lives. We use coaching tools to help them understand that they can make the change themselves and equip them with the insight they need,” Waterman says.
Keddy runs refresher coaching courses every three to six months for leaders. The project is now being piloted by the Working Families work-life balance organisation and across various councils.
Good managers
Frances Rehal, development manager at Millmead Children’s Centre, Kent, recently completed the ILM recognised Certificate in Performance Coaching for Leadership through Kent County Council, which has more than 160 qualified coaches from public, private and voluntary sector organisations. Rehal uses many elements of the six-month course in her day-to-day role.
“The coaching model of listening, participating and making people feel valued is something which you can transfer to other areas of work. It supports distributive leadership, achieving goals and a more reflective approach,” she says.
John McGurk, CIPD adviser on learning and talent development, points out that organisations are not expecting line managers to become coaches; they are simply providing them with basic coaching skills to make them better at their jobs. “Organisations are now recognising that having basic coaching skills is part of being a good manager,” he says.
However, there is still some confusion in some organisations around managers adopting a coaching style. Wilson notes: “One common scenario is that an organisation will decide it can afford to have managers trained in basic coaching skills, say on a two-day course, but does not want to invest in internal coaches, which would require more in-depth training.
“But some of the managers develop such an enthusiasm for coaching that they start delivering internal coaching sessions anyway, without sufficient training or support.”
Balanced response
Is it possible for a manager to be impartial? Wilson believes it all depends on trust. “If there is a very high level of trust, normal coaching sessions might take place. However, it’s inescapable that there is a third agenda present, because the manager holds a degree of control over the future career of the report.”
David Pardey, head of policy and research at ILM, says that organisations also quite often take a relatively casual approach to selecting internal coaches and manager-coaches internally. “There appears to be more attention paid to the selection of external coaches, where experience, past performance and qualifications are all likely to be considered when making selection decisions.”
Practice makes perfect
So how are employers making sure managers don’t just go on a short course then forget about it? It is a real sticking point, says Keddy.
“The period following training is a critical time as managers endeavour to put their new-found skills into practice, sometimes with difficulty, and often finding the temptation to familiar ways of working too strong to resist.”
Review days, master classes, coaching champions and buddy coaching are all effective methods of maintaining support. Setting up coaching networks and co-coaching schemes with managers from other organisations can also be very useful when consolidating learning and development.
Ruth Spellman, chief executive of the Chartered Management Institute, says that there has also been a major surge in the use of new media as a coaching tool.
“This is primarily because employers are beginning to recognise that capturing knowledge is just as important as sharing it. Through technology, not only can individuals receive coaching and mentoring support, they can also refer to the support they receive online at a time and place that suits them best.”
Ultimately, however, many organisations are still not getting a decent return on investment. So says Ed Parsloe, managing director at The OCM consultancy. “Although most organisations recognise the potential for coaching to be a powerful part of their managers’ style, and many are investing in training and development, many are not getting the value from their investment they could or should.
“This is partly because it’s not strategically linked and partly because the implementation is not properly integrated into the organisation’s talent development and HR practices. All too often coach training is a standalone initiative or optional course for middle managers; it becomes a ‘nice to have’, rather than a key part of what makes you successful as a manager and enabling the organisation to achieve its strategic goals.”
Employers must align manager-coaching with business strategy and give managers and leaders support, guidance and follow-up. Otherwise manager-coaching is likely to be a ‘nice to have’ at best.
Jackie Keddy will lead a workshop based on work at the Metropolitan Police and Russell Waterman will speak about coaching through the Minerva project at the Coaching and Mentoring at Work Beyond Frontiers conference on 23 November:
www.coaching-at-work.com/coaching-and-mentoring-at-work-beyond-frontiers/
For articles on managers coaching, see: www.coaching-at-work.com/category/manager-as-coach/
Coaching at Work, Volume 6, Issue 5