COACHING THAT COUNTS

Accountancy SA, Dec 2007/Jan 2008 by de Beer, Estienne

Coaching is a profound leadership mindset, but you have to believe in it first. Andrew Wood explains the big picture as follows: "Leadership is not a right of passage, or at least it shouldn't be. Leadership is a state of mind. A philosophy. An attitude. Understanding this, you can recognise and develop the key traits that will enhance and improve your personal capacity for leadership". Great leaders touch the lives of their followers through coaching. The key to consistent business success is to understand that people come before spreadsheets. The personal growth and coaching of their employees are put on top of the priority list and soon the results on the spreadsheets will follow.

When you hear the word "coach", what comes first into your mind? Do you picture a sports team with someone shouting out directions? Or perhaps a frowning manager pacing to and fro and calling out the names of the players? Coaching is no longer reserved for sports teams; it is now one of the key concepts in leadership and management. So why has coaching become so popular in the business world?

Coaching levels the playing field

Coaching is one of the six emotional leadership styles proposed by Daniel Goleman. Moreover, it is a behaviour or role that leaders enforce in the context of situational leadership. As a leadership style, coaching is used when the members of a group or team are competent and motivated, but do not have an idea of the long-term goals of an organisation. This involves two levels of coaching: team and individual. Team coaching makes members work together. In a group of individuals, not everyone may have nor share the same level of competence and commitment to a goal. A group may be a mix of highly competent and moderately competent members with varying levels of commitment.

These differences can cause friction among themembers. The coaching leader helps the members level their expectations. Also, the coaching leader manages differing perspectives so that the common goal succeeds over personal goals and interests. In a big organisation, leaders need to align the staffs personal interests and goals with that of the organisation so that long-term direction and strategy can be pursued.

Coaching builds up confidence and competence

To take any company or team to the top, you can't treat employees as digits. That is why the author dislikes the term "human resources" ... it is expendable. But not a "human asset" approach. This means that in both theory and practice, people come before projects. You will never reap the right kind of financial numbers until you truly invest in the coaching of your people. This is the ultimate competitive advantage in the business world. Individual coaching is an example of situational leadership at work. It aims to mentor one-on-one building up the confidence of team members by affirming excellent performance and behaviour during regular feedbacks; and increases competence by helping the individual assess his/her strengths and weaknesses towards career planning and professional development.

Depending on the individual's level of competence and commitment, a leader may exercise more coaching behaviour for the lessexperienced members. Usually, this happens in the case of new employees. The manager gives more defined tasks and holds regular feedbacks for the new staff, and gradually lessens the amount of coaching, directing and supporting roles to favour delegating as competence and confidence increase.

Coaching promotes individual and team excellence.

Excellence is a product of habitual good practice over a period of time. The regularity of meetings and constructive feedback is important in establishing these habits of excellence. Employees catch the habit of constantly assessing themselves for their strengths and areas for improvement. They also assess what knowledge, skills and attitudes they need to acquire to attain team goals. In the process, they attain individual excellence as well. An example is in the case of a musical orchestra: each member plays a different instrument. In order to achieve harmony of music from the different instruments, members will polish their part in the musical piece, aside from practising as an ensemble. Consequently, they improve individually as an instrument player.

Coaching develops high commitment to common goals

A coaching leader balances the attainment of immediate targets with long-term goals towards the vision of an organisation. As mentioned earlier, with the alignment of personal goals with organisational or team goals, personal interests are kept in harmony. By constantly communicating the vision through formal and informal conversations, the members are inspired and motivated. Setting short-term team goals aligned with organisational goals; and making an action plan to attain these goals can help sustain the increased motivation and commitment to common goals of the team.

Coaching produces valuable leaders

Leadership by example is most crucial in coaching. Coaching leaders lose credibility when they cannot practise what they preach. This means that coaching leaders should be well organised, highly competent in their field, communicating openly and encouraging feedback, and having a clear understanding of the organisation's visionmission-goals. By vicarious and purposeful learning, team members catch the same good practices and attitudes from the coaching leader, turning them into coaching leaders themselves. If team members experience good coaching, they are most likely to do the same things when entrusted with formal management roles.