It is a complex question that requires tailoring to the organizational setting, but some of our key pointers are:
1. Start with the end in mind
2. Know how to recognise success
3. Speak to your managers
4. Assure workplace application is included in the training
5. Build in personal development to the training programmes
1. Start with the end in mind
What are the business drivers – problems and aspirations – that your organisation hold dear? How would having managers that can coach well support those drivers? If you cannot answer that question then a) give us a call and we can support you in trying to do so or b) save your money and try something else.
Seriously, I am a huge believer in coaching (clearly!) but I would prefer that an organisation that cannot answer that question saves its time, money and manpower and investigates other avenues for achieving their business goals.
Coaching is not just about “delivering soft skills” and whilst companies insist on these programmes being delivered as “a nice to have” then coaching will continue to waste an awful lot of money and to have its reputation tarnished.
When we get really business orientated about it, we will get to make a bigger difference to the way in which people experience work and therefore their lives in general. Once we accept this need to tie in to business drivers, then we can start to see a real breakthrough in the time, money and working hours that companies are prepared to pour into coaching.
2. Know how to recognise success
Once we are clear on what the business drivers are that we wish to impact, then we can start to ask what the specific success indicators will be. For instance, if we know that the business driver is (as with a huge number of companies) reducing the attrition rate, then we can see how a goal of getting 50% of our managers to attend coach training just isn’t enough. We need to be able to demonstrate that we are having an impact on the attrition rate.
Once the success indicators are clear, then we can manage the measurement of the programme and the design of the programme to make sure it is addressing the need we have.
It may sound a lot like teaching granny to suck eggs as the expression goes, but again and again we find this process is missing from the programme as a whole.
3. Speak to your managers
Again, hardly rocket science but in our experience, the design and sponsoring of these programmes tends to be from on high. Your managers will be able to tell you a lot about what would enable them to coach in the workplace; what they perceive might stand in their way; what would need to be in place after the programme for them to be able to coach and so on.
What we see is that the problems that occur after training could easily have been attended to and overcome in advance if only those expected to coach were included in the initial discussions.
4. Assure workplace application is included in the training
To enable coaching programmes to be cost effective (for that read “cheap”) they are generally very short and lack the support and amount of practical application thinking time that is required for managers to take this complex new skillset and apply it in the workplace.
Coaching as a management competency is a very different skill to being an internal coach. Managers need to understand when not to coach and to have the space and support to think through how to apply their skillset in specific situations. Otherwise, in that pressured, busy workplace environment, they will quickly revert to their previous default setting which will appear easier and quicker than does coaching.
5. Build in personal development to the training programmes
In the rush to cram managers full of coaching skills, it can be very easy to miss that there is an ethos to coaching which requires personal development as well as doing things differently. We find that time spent on this in a coaching skills programme pays huge dividends – particularly actually in creating momentum in your change process; managers will ask to attend the programme because they have seen the change in others. Team members will see an actual difference in their manager and will be more open to being coached by them also.
The benefits of coach training for your managers are potentially huge and the potential for wasting money on coaching skills training is just as big:
Do it well and you will reap the rewards.
Do it poorly and coaching will soon be just “an HR initiative that didn’t work”.
If you'd like to discuss these issues in relation to your company, why not call me Lisa Wynn, Director of Coaching at www.CorporatePotential.com on +44 (0)1473 327433 or email her on lisa@corporatepotential.com.
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