Current Coaching Issues

Published in the Human Resources Association of Calgary: June 2006 Newsletter

Coaching to Motivate: Organizations are investing in coaching to help succession candidates (high potential employees) and leaders to stay motivated. When being coached, leaders and succession candidates are working on their development, which helps them stay in both learning and engaged modes.

Coaching is also utilized to ensure leaders are motivating to work for. Leaders often receive coaching because of their impact within the organization. Studies have shown that close to 60% of the turnover in an organization is due to the lack of effective managerial relationships. Losing employees in the current marketplace may be very critical due to the skills shortage and competition for talent employers are facing.

When you hear employees complaining about money, they are often unhappy about something else. If you ask them what the problem is, you usually hear that they are unhappy with their managers or leaders. In the current marketplace, a leader that is not motivating to work for may cost an organization many thousands of dollars. To retain staff, organizations are investing in coaching to ensure leaders are motivating to work for and are effective in their roles.

Motivation of self or others is important within an organization. Employees need to be engaged in their work and be engaging in their style, if they are leaders.

Strategic Coaching: Are leaders acting strategically? Leaders need to align themselves with the strategy, vision and mission of the organization. Aligning with the critical aspects of the company is important to the sustainability of the organization over the long term.

Leaders need to hear the various perspectives of their stakeholders and garner buy-in from them. This is why coaching skills and emotional intelligence are important to strategic leaders: the abilities to garner engagement and buy-in from the organization's most valuable resource; the employees.

Leaders need to solicit feedback and be agents of change. By demonstrating these types of activities, leaders model open communication, learning and change management within their organizations. Leaders who are not open to feedback contribute to blocking communication and learning within their organizations. These leaders' defensiveness and lack of learning orientation limit the organization they are working within.

Are coaches acting strategically? Many coaches work with their client's personal leadership and they forget about the bigger context of the organization; such as the culture, values, business strategy, customer focus, organizational focus and team dynamics. To be an effective coach one needs to take the bigger view and all of the prior aspects into consideration.

For example, coaches are often asked to work with leaders who hold a very narrow perspective, focused on their own department's success at the expense of the organization's success. The coach in this type of situation, where silos exist, needs to go beyond the personal leadership of the employee and challenge them regarding the necessity of holding a broader organizational focus.

Being strategic as leaders and coaches ensures the success of the organization leading to its viability, relevance and ultimately its sustainability over the long term.

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