by Nicole Berg
Workplace relations training organisation, Acas, has boosted the number of managers holding quick coaching-style conversations, supporting its large-scale cultural transformation, thanks to partnering with Thrive Partners.
Thrive Partners aims to democratise coaching and mentoring by making it happen easily and quickly – a Lean approach. It supported Acas to adopt a Lean approach on its transformation journey, said Susan Martins, OD and people development lead at Acas. Acas wanted to “modernise performance management” in a context of a changing workplace demographic, a pre-existing coaching culture and a felt sense of not enough time – a challenge to managers trying to hold more one-to-ones.
Thrive Partners trained Acas managers to hold more coaching conversations because each conversation was expected to last only 30 minutes. There was no longer time for a “40-year back story”; instead, managers were taught to ask, “What do you want?” rather than, “Tell me your problem,” said Martins.
She said benefits include ensuring staff experience immediate, continuous, constructive feedback; building capability for both staff and managers to hold good quality future-focused conversations targeting strengths and opportunities for growth; ensuring Acas employees’ voices are heard by collecting thoughts and feelings through line manager upward feedback; ensuring organisational priorities are met and people informed and engaged, and supporting its approach to talent management.
Pam Bateson, co-founder and CEO of Thrive Partners, outlined the ‘Power Half-Hour’ 30-minute coaching session. She said evaluation shows 100% of people using Thrive’s Power Half-Hour report that they apply the learning within the month, 76% within the week.
She outlined Thrive’s foundation framework for coaching: Collaborative, Learning, Equality, Achievements and Reflections (CLEAR). Each session offers situation-specific, solution-focused questions, often beginning with: “What…?”; consulting/mentoring, and a close. Prior to each session, a client responds to three questions:
- What must I achieve for our conversation to be purposeful and helpful?
- What specific aspect of my project or performance do I want to focus on?
- When will I plan to use the insights or learning from this coaching session?