Managerial Coaching: When Manager becomes a coach

 

Managerial Coaching has become increasingly popular in organizations during the past two decades. On the one hand, organizations are making significant efforts to build internal capability by training managers to coach. On the other hand, managers, by acting as a coach, are taking more responsibility for helping employees achieve excellent performance.

These patterns are beginning to appear as a trend as more and more organizations are training their managers to be coaches. We are also seeing more Coaching and Human Resource Development organizations discussing the importance of Managerial Coaching (e.g., SHRM, CIPD, AHRD) and its increasing popularity. In fact, the 2012 CIPD Annual Survey Report stated that coaching by line managers is rated the second most effective learning and development practice and nearly three times as effective as coaching by external practitioners.

Corporations and other organizations, while increasingly realizing the benefits of coaching interventions in the workplace, out of necessity must also consider the expense of hiring external coaches to provide these services. These “realizations” are now prompting more companies to look at internal coaching as a means of reducing these external costs. As noted in their report, Rock & Donde found that using internal coaches may cost an organization as little as 10% of what would be paid to external coaches; and the results between the two coaching groups differed only slightly (1).

Yet this is not bad news for coaching organizations who provide coaching services to their clients. Various organizations throughout the world are now offering certificate programs and other training in Managerial Coaching. Coaching organizations can now seize the opportunity to either a) develop Managerial Coaching programs for implementation with their clients, b) develop coaching programs for use as a Coach-the-Coach or Train-the-Trainer model, and/or c) continue to provide coaching for managers across their client base.

Managers Only, Please

There are so many variants of coaching these days that oftentimes people forget about the distinctions between different types of coachee groups. Not only are there different approaches that should be used for peer coaching, team coaching, management coaching, leadership coaching, executive coaching, personal coaching, and managerial coaching; the make-up of the audience and the interventions/techniques/modalities may also be different for each group.

Managerial Coaching is a concept that attempts to provide a fine distinction in terms of who the coachee is, the skills and behaviors of the coach, and what the coachee is receiving as part of the coaching process.

Managerial Coaching has been conceptualized as a supervisor or manager serving as a coach, or facilitator of learning, in which he or she enacts specific behaviors that enable his/her employee (coachee) to learn, develop, and improve his/her performance (Beatti, Ellinger, Bostrom, Hamlin, Talarico). Frequently, the subject of the coaching process is a line manager with direct supervisory responsibility over a team of employees.

Different from mentoring, managerial coaching commonly emphasizes proximal, task relevant improvement through feedback processes and is most often framed as a behavior or set of behaviors (2). In essence, the manager becomes a coaching resource for their employees within their organizations; and an integral aspect of organizational learning and workplace learning.

A Closer Look at Managerial Coaching

There are many catalysts that may arise to form the basis of a managerial coaching engagement. A common catalyst is when a manager observes a gap or discrepancy in performance by an employee (3). Other catalysts may include assigning new projects, a new challenge, a crisis/problem-solving opportunity, poor performance, inappropriate behavior, mistakes, or other discrepancies between actual performance and an employee’s standard of performance.

Unique to the managerial coaching process is its informality. Unlike many other coaching methodologies, Managerial Coaching maintains a rather relaxed structure in terms of the Do’s and Dont’s involving the coaching dyad. Coaching sessions tend to have more of a conversational style to them and often occur in the corridors, lunchrooms, smoking areas, cubicles, and other places where the daily interactions of the line manager and employee are carried out.

It mainly occurs in one-to-one conversations and applies active listening and questioning as well as constructive feedback for improving employee work and organization relevant issues. It involves asking questions to help the subordinate look at his or her work differently, understand what is happening, and learn from what is happening so the learning can be used the next time a similar situation arises.

The manager is also in a position to advocate not only on behalf of the employee, but the organization as well. Whereas external coaches will enter an organization with the intent of assisting in the performance of the employee within his/her workplace, they do not always have the advantage of deep-seated knowledge of the culture, values, history, policies, and other properties that make up the organization. Thus, the manager not only “goes to bat” for the employee during the coaching process, yet also considers the higher objectives of the organization.

A key to this coaching relationship is creating the right environment where trust, respect, and safety are present. When this type of environment is created, along with a more participative style of management, coaching just seems to happen, and the individual may not even be aware they are being coached (4).

Effective Programs

With the emergence of Managerial Coaching comes not only some much needed research on the topic, yet a selection of Evidence-based Human Resource Development (EBHRD) programming to achieve the objectives of managerial coaching interventions. In this respect, cognitive-behavioral approaches have proven effective in improving managers coaching skills, increasing rational beliefs, increasing their general satisfaction towards the teams they were coordinating, as well as the performance of these teams (5).

Process Consultation is another approach managers can take to engage in managerial coaching. In process consultation, a coach observes the team as it works on an organizational problem, and once the team is ready, the coach introduces interventions intended to help with problems and exploit unrecognized opportunities.

As a managerial coach, asking good questions can be difficult because it is hard for a manager not to give advice or solve a problem for the coachee; moverover, a power dynamic might be in place between a manager and employee. Rather, the coach should offer guidance on looking upon their experience in a different light; one with a different perspective, through the process of meaning-making.

Reflection can be an approach that also uses questions but it can also provide a time, often a silent time, for learning to happen. A manager might use a reflection time when the subordinate appears to be heading for difficulty or is “stuck” in some way (6). This “silent time” permits a space for divergent or convergent thinking to occur in an introspective environment where learning will happen.

Final Thoughts

A tremendous amount of discussion and constructive debate has surfaced over the past few decades concerning the definitions and responsibilities of the leader vs. leadership vs. manager (and management). Many of these blurred lines have carried over into the coaching profession, as witnessed by the number of individuals who now label themselves as ‘executive coaches’ and ‘leadership coaches’.

With the evolving notoriety of Managerial Coaching throughout the world (7), and better definitions for each classification of coaching, there exists an opportunity to provide greater distinction to the various types of coaching processes and audiences involved. Today, we better understand the differences that exist between the role and responsibilities of the leadership coach and those of the managerial coach, and other types of coaches. These differences should not only favor the coaching profession, yet the individual coach and coaching organization.

With the appropriate skills, behaviors, and operating environment more coaches will authentically be able to market themselves as not only leadership coaches (and other types), but distributors of managerial coaching programs as well. Opportunities will also exist for external coaches to train company managers on the intricacies of managerial coaching, along with the advent of more supervisory training programs focused on coaching practices. In total, better-defined distinctions across coaching classifications and the continual rise of Managerial Coaching throughout the world should provide even greater credibility, definition, and relevancy to the coaching profession. A good thing for all!

Tamer Elsagheer

Skillinside