Managers’ inability to effectively coach is top performance management challenge shows research

Jan Bowen-Nielsen from Quiver Management discusses recent research from Bersin & Associates.
The well respected research company Bersin & Associates (http://www.bersin.com/), recently completed a year-long analysis of performance management involving more than 500 HR leaders from a range of industries, geographies and organisation sizes. The research shows that managers’ inability to effectively coach remains the top performance management challenge.
Coaching is becoming recognised as a core mindset and skill set for a leader in today’s business world. More and more organisations are moving towards a coaching and development philosophy of performance management, with close to ¾ of organisations now applying such an approach.
But most organisations struggle with effective coaching according to the research - senior leaders do not do it frequently and managers do not do it well.

What is going wrong?

The list of issues and barriers that can get in the way is long. Here are just seven of them:

• Senior management not committed
  Without senior management adapting their own style, role modelling coaching and encouraging their managers to coach it is highly unlikely to take hold
• Not linked to strategic objectives
  When coaching is not seen as integral to the organisation achieving its strategic objectives, it will keep getting derailed by priorities which do!
• Not addressing the mindset and culture aspects
  Failing to recognise that coaching is very different from a directive, telling approach is fatal. There is often a lot of un-learning to do about what good leadership is and ingrained habits to change – especially so in cultures which have been more “command and control” orientated. It is not impossible, but it takes efforts.
• Underestimating how much skill and practice is required
  “How difficult can it be?”
  A few hours training is simply not enough to equip managers to coach effectively. Unfortunately this is often what organisations do the first time around. Unsurprisingly the managers then struggle to do it well, get frustrated with lack of progress and revert to their standard approach
• Not linked to incentive programmes and performance measures
  Managers’ appraisal conversations must include an evaluation of their coaching efforts and impact. The old adage also holds true here “What gets measured gets done!”
• Lack of measures/evidence of impact
  To get momentum and sustain the efforts the organisation must demonstrate some early wins and keep reinforcing how coaching is making a real difference
• Not using the “coaching muscles” enough
  Coaching is often seen as an activity done on an infrequent basis in appraisal conversations. When managers only use the coaching style in those infrequent settings, and continue to use a ‘tell’ style everywhere else then
• their “coaching muscles” will not be well trained
• it will appear disingenuous to the team members
• all the daily opportunities to develop and grow the team will be missed and
• the strategic imperative for a coaching style unduly limited.

What to do?

So what can organisations do to get managers to coach effectively?
The answer is fundamentally very simple:

• Provide high quality coaching training of managers
• Provide on-going challenge and support to ensure they use the coaching in their work environment, and
• treat it as a culture change programme!

Changing attitudes and behaviours across organisations is never easy. Creating a coaching culture is no different, but the rewards can be transformational.
Quiver Management offers a comprehensive programme of high quality training and support services to help our clients:

• Build their own internal coaching and mentoring capability and
• Enable leaders to develop coaching and mentoring skills as part of their natural leadership style.

Our clients include HP, Logica, Rockwool, Fujitsu, Tesco and Scottish.

To see more about us please visit www.quivermanagement.com

Please also notice our DUCC member to member offer here

Best regards

Jan Bowen-Nielsen
07732 786 456
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