Coaching employees
By Rebecca Martin | smh.com.au | 28 July
When Anthea Green entered the workforce, no one really cared what she had to say. Now, as chief executive of Australian Hearing, she encourages every staff member to speak his or her mind.
"When I was a junior I used to tell people what I thought, although nobody asked me to," she says. "Today we go out of our way to get the opinions of staff. The intranet is a great thing - it can be a great sounding board."
Green is a proponent of the coaching management style, a technique now considered best practice by the BI Norwegian School of Management. Instead of issuing direct orders, coaching managers look to engage staff and pass on values, helping them to self-manage and fulfil their potential. Believers use words such as "personal", "empowering", "constructive" and "fulfilling".
"The best parallel for a coaching style is team sports," says Peter Wilson, president of the Australian Human Resources Institute. "You're looking at the skills of the individuals and setting programs that can help them be the best they can be."
A 2005 study of 40,000 HR managers conducted by the institute and the University of Michigan found that 70 per cent of organisations had implemented a coaching style of management.
Wilson says this survey shows the coaching style is here to stay.
"The evidence indicates that it works," he says. "We're not looking for any brave new insights. Most of the techniques of how to manage people have been around for 10 to 15 years. The issue now is about being superb at the execution [of the coaching management style]."
Loretta O'Donnell, change management lecturer at the Australian School of Business, says her students are quick to embrace the coaching technique.
"The trend is that people are looking for an alternative to the military style and I understand that even the military is changing to a more contemporary management style," she says.
Part of this change is acknowledging that management is not a one-size-fits-all category.
"In reality there is a repertoire of management skills available to us," O'Donnell says. "Good management practice considers the coaching style as a subset but with caveats that sometimes the command style will be necessary." She cites a crisis as one occasion a more authoritative management style is required.
"When NAB had its [foreign exchange] scandals, the CEO, John Stewart, wasn't brought in to make everyone feel good - he was brought in to take an authoritarian approach [and fix things]," she says.
Strategy development consultant and author Doug Stace agrees the coaching management style should be kept in check.
"We find a lot of line staff saying, 'Would someone please just make a call and let us get on with it?"' he says. "The coaching style needs to be balanced with external events. When you need to make rapid decisions, sometimes there is no time for the coaching approach and getting everyone on board.
"Leaders need to make tough decisions. [Toll Holdings boss] Paul Little didn't approach the decision-making in a coaching style. He adopted an authoritative style and made the decision to demerge Virgin from Toll Holdings."
But while those at the top need to be able to make their own decisions, Stace says the coaching style of management remains invaluable for middle managers, as they play "a key role when tough decisions are made, [acting] as a conduit between the front line and the execs. That may well involve a coaching and mentoring approach to bring people along [with the decision]."
The coaching style is also useful when navigating change.
IT project manager Lokesh Varma says the coaching style has advantages in an ever-changing environment where success depends on innovation.
"Competitive pressures are everywhere," he says. "Any style of developing people that focuses on them finding the answers - and maybe even making mistakes - is great.
"You need to ask the right questions and engage concepts, instead of the boss knowing all the answers."
Green agrees. Crisis or no crisis, she says coaching people is better than telling them what to do. "If you want to bring about change, and we have a changing environment and economy, everyone's got to be adaptive and be able to change," she says. "Coaching is the only style where we will get some traction on helping people change. [Sometimes] we have to make a quick, urgent decision but you have to prepare the organisation for that and that's where coaching comes [into it].
"There comes a time when the CEO might say, 'Here's the decision.' It might not be a comfortable one but if a range of people can understand the problem and see that we are working on it, then that hard-edged message can be easier to digest."
Coaching management 101
Master this management style with these tips from the BI Norwegian School of Management:
* Role play Call a meeting and run through various scenarios to teach the team to work together to solve problems.
* Focus and energy A coaching manager exudes belief and confidence in the ability to achieve bold goals if everyone helps each other. Generate self-fulfilling prophecies.
* Values Live the coaching values, including altruism, self-discipline and emotional intelligence.
* Management Don't try to control your staff. It is up to the individual to decide what to think and how to act. Employees must become competent in self-managing.
* Story telling Convey messages that can easily be understood. Use metaphors and personal stories.
* Paradoxes Leadership is situational and you might have to make unpopular decisions. You need to know when coaching will work and when to take a more authoritative approach.
First published by Smh.com.au on July 28 2008
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