Introduction
This
week’s MSLD633 blog is about how coaches help business executives. More
specifically, what value do they provide their clients, and why is coaching
vital to both leadership and strategy. In addition, I will discuss coaching
means to me and my organization.
What Coaching can do for Business Executives
Coaches can help executives in a multitude of ways and
typically coaches are summoned when executives face problems they just cannot
resolve by themselves. They possibly feel overwhelmed or even threatened by the
problem they are facing. Not only will a good coach relieve the executive’s
burden or provide him / her with some security, a good coach will have an significant
impact on climate and performance. (Goleman, 2000, p. 87). Perhaps most
importantly coaching will have a positive impact on the productivity of the the
organization “Coaching taps people’s creativity. It encourages them to be more
flexible and adaptable. That kind of response from employees can have a
substantial effect on the bottom line.” (von Hoffman, 1999, p. 5). In the
context of the executive, it would stand to reason that a more flexible and
adaptable executive would even have a larger effect on the bottom-line.
At times von Hoffman (1999) and Obolensky (2014) tend
to treat coaching and mentoring as one, but the processes themselves are very
distinct “Coaching is a push process and mentoring is a pull process...The
coach is interested in helping the employee achieve corporate objectives; the
mentor is invested in the employee's alignment of strengths and skills for the
best lifetime experience." (Marshall, 2008, p. 1). While the differences may
seem subtle on the surface, they become very noticeable when actually employing
them. Very briefly, courtesy of Management Mentors website, here are the main differences between coaching and mentoring:
#1 Coaching
is task orientated; Mentoring is relationship orientated
#2 Coaching
is short term; Mentoring is always long term
#3 Coaching
is performance driven; Mentoring is development driven
#4 Coaching
does not require design; Mentoring requires a design phase
#5 The coachee's immediate manager
is a critical partner in coaching; In mentoring, the immediate manager is indirectly
involved
It is not uncommon for thought leaders to fail to
distinguish the differences between coaching and mentoring. Only a few authors
I have read since beginning the MSLD program have. Likely because they just
never zoomed in enough to do a critical analysis of the differences. Now that it’s
understood that what is identified as coaching may actually be mentoring, let
us continue.
Zooming in on the effects coaching could have on personal
leadership and strategy, coaching could also have a lasting impact on an
executive in these areas. A coach could target leadership styles growth to help
the executive master one or more of the six leadership styles: Coercive, Authoritative,
affiliate, democratic, pacesetting, and coaching. Of these six styles, only four
have consistently proven to have a positive effect on climate and results. These
styles are: Authoritative, affiliate, democratic, and coaching. (Goleman, 2000,
p. 82). By expanding the repertoire of leadership styles a leader is better equipped
to handle challenges that arise that threaten or provide opportunity by being
flexible to either confront them or capture them. In addition, when considering
Complex Adaptive Leadership (CAL), having the ability to adapt to all six of
the leadership styles is critical to moving followers through the different
stages of goal or people development. (Obolensky, 2014, Chapter 8). In addition,
formulating new strategies also becomes an easier task. By becoming more adaptable
to situations, when the voices of others are needed or teams must be formed,
the leader can shift leadership styles in order to develop new strategies when
needed.
What Coaching can do for My Organization
Recently I administered a survey within my
organization and one of the suggestions on how to improve upward communication
was to understand what our leaders do by being their ‘shadow’ for a day. By
spending an entire day with one of our leaders, coaching would most certainly
take place in some fashion or another and also improve personal relationships
with followers and leaders. These improved personal relationships could in-turn
produce more open communication between followers and leaders.
Coaching could also be used to move followers from the
S1/S2 (Tell-Sell) attractors to the S3/S4 (Involve-Devolve) attractors “On the
one side of the divide (Tell-Sell), the leader acts as the leader. On the other
side of the divide (Involve-Devolve) the leader encourages the follower to take
the lead. Coaching is a good technique to bridge the divide…” (Obolensky, 2014,
p. 179). This technique I personally used in the USAF when training new recruits
(S1/S2), to training them all the way to being supervisors (S3/S4).
References:
Goleman,
D. (2000). Leadership that gets results. Harvard
Business Review, 78(2), 78-90.
Management
Mentors, (2015), [Web log]. The
differences between coaching & mentoring. Retrieved from
http://www.management-mentors.com/resources/coaching-mentoring-differences/.
Marshall,
P. (2008). The differences between coaching and mentoring. Energy Processing Canada, 40(4), 28. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/docview/204678042?accountid=27203.
Obolensky,
N. (2014). Complex adaptive leadership:
Embracing paradox and uncertainty. Burlington, VT: Gower Publishing
Company.
von
Hoffman, C. (1999). Coaching: The ten killer myths. Harvard Management Update, 4(1), 4.
