The Role of Coaching in Improving Performance - Coursework Example

Role of coaching in performance In today’s fast paced work culture, coaching plays a vital role in grooming employees to attain perfection in all the processes they would do as part of organizational functioning. Every employee or even the peak performer in a team or an organization would have had moments of doubts, uncertainties, but what differentiates them from mediocre performers is coaching, at the right time. .A coach is a person who molded them, motivated them, even criticized them but at the same time helped them reach where they are - peak performers in their respective chosen fields. Had it not been for the coaching that they had received at the right time, they would still be struck at one place or the other. International Coach Federation (ICF), the international accrediting body for coaching, the defines coaching as, “ an ongoing partnership that helps [people] produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives and…deepen their learning, improve their performance, and enhance their quality of life”. In Sir John Whitmore’s words, coaching is defined as “unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.” (Whitmore 2002). A coach could be someone to train you in a new skill, encourage and motivate you, give you feedback for improvement and provide you with individual attention. Plants grow in wild; however they cannot match the yield from that of a well-cultured farm. The culturing that creates a well-maintained farm out of an unevenly undulated jungle in what coaching does to an individual. At an organization level, training plays a very significant role. After getting fresh talent into the organization, it is the responsibility of the management, to ensure that they are provided with the right training plus coaching at the right time. Only this will guarantee that they work in alignment to company’s goals and objectives. Coaching at its basic level is ‘observation and feedback’. (Luecke 2004). This simple yet magical definition can turn around organizations and boost-up individual performances to great heights. That is, coaches will normally be experts, who has 360 degree experience in the field, using which they can guide prospective employees on the opportunities and challenges of undergoing coaching. (Sherman and Freas 2004). The corrective measures needed or the area to be focused and worked upon will be obtained through the feedback. Thus coaching can pump in the invaluable component of ‘trigger for change’ into the organization. This is most needed because everywhere there is a resistance for change. Without change or adaptation there can be no healthy growth. Coaching gives the trigger from within. “Coaches are skilled in questioning and listening, at the same time, it is the coach’s role to enable the individual to find answers within themselves” (Training Zone). Hence there is no external force for change and thus lesser-resistance and greater compliance. This continuous process of observation-feedback-change helps the organization to maintain equilibrium, at the same time improve performance. For any performance management strategy to succeed the organization has to ensure that a right coaching pattern is employed. In a book, Third Generation Coaching, the author Stelter stresses on the need for carefully analyzing the changes inside the organization in line with its culture rather than depending on an externally forced temporary solution, which may look glossy but empty from within. (Stelter 2014). In line with this perspective, practices used in coaching must suit well to the organizational culture. One coaching theory or practice that yielded results for a team, might not work for another. Thus, coaching strategies has to be customized and need to be applied at the individual level. (Kottler 2003). Hence it is the role of the senior management to consider all the alternatives and apply the best method of coaching to its employees. Prof. Stephen Palmer, President of the International society for coaching Psychology also praises this theory that it will take coaching to a ‘new level’. (Stelter 2014). The other popular coaching model is the GROW model, developed by Sir John Whitmore in the 1980s. The model highlights the four key points of coaching – “Goal”, “Reality”, “Options”, and “Will”. (Whitmore 2002). As per this model, the first step is to decide upon a goal, with the coach assessing the current position where the employee is in. The next step would be to look at various options available to make the employee reach his/her goal. Finally, the coach will imbibe in the employees the will to succeed, thereby aiding them to proceed upon the chosen path to achieve the goal. In this model, the onus is mainly on the individual and not on the coach. (Cross and Lyle 2002). The coach merely facilitates the employee through the process, and it is the latter who is encouraged to think about his/her goal, his current status and the possible solutions available to him. “Coaching facilitates achieving results through a goal directed process of self-regulated accountability, powerful questioning and active-listening and is only made possible through a process of learning” (Griffiths 2005). Decisions are taken by the employee, and not by the coach on behalf of the employee. People are always more willing to work on plans that they have come up with, instead of the ones forced upon them. This model encourages individuality, and has been found to be successful in both goal setting and problem solving. Tim Gallwey talks about coaching to remove emotional hindrances of people, in his book “The Inner game of Tennis”. He says that inner games are played to overcome self-imposed obstacles that prevent an individual or team from accessing their full potential.(Gallwey 1974). He declares that the potential of a person, minus his emotional interference is his performance. That is any person who does not have any emotional hindrances can perform at his maximum capability. As per this theory, a coach will sit with this coachee to understand “his weaknesses” as seen by him and work on those weaknesses, to overcome it. Another model that is used for performance coaching is the “flow” model, developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist. Here, he talks about being in the state of ‘flow’, where the employee is a confident and relaxed self while facing a challenging task, that he even loses sense of time. (Csikszentmihaly and Jackson 1999). It is a state “when our perceived skills match the perceived challenge of the task that were doing” (Podmoroff). Instead of thrusting a solution upon the coachee, it is better to include him/her in the discussion. This way "result will be stronger and richer because we fostered ownership”, says executive coach Winston Connor. (Heathfield) It is all about asking right questions and not about providing right answers. ‘Results coaching systems’ is a coaching institute that conducts training programs for managers or leaders to be effective coaches, thereby to increase the team’s performance. In June 2010, they conducted such a coaching training program for a group of leaders of Citibank Malaysia. (Results Coaching System). At the start of the training, role plays were conducted, through which it was found that when presented with a challenging situation, most leaders ‘instructed’ their team members on the solution they thought were suitable. Through the training, they were made to understand that instead of giving direct advice, it is always effective when team members are motivated to think of solutions themselves, and then discuss various such solutions, to come up with the best suitable one. This would produce ‘insights’, as ‘Results Coaching’ calls it and the greater number of insights reflect the effectiveness of team involved. At the end of the training, there was a significant increase in the number of insights (more than 300%) that the group came up with, indicating that the coaching that they obtained was a success. (Results Coaching System). The team improved on its thinking ability, and the engagement builds commitment and loyalty to the firms. (Results Coaching System) It is not always necessary to employ external coaching institutes or even external coaches in organizations. The human resource department can act as an intrinsic coach to its employees. Training managers can also be facilitated to become effective coaches as they will be available in-house, which could make the coaching processes and the resultant benefits drilled down to the base of the organizational structure. (Tichy 1996). While coaching, managers have to instill the fact that a team’s success depends upon the collective success of the individuals. This would guarantee the team’s commitment to work harder. It is also the role of a coach to make people ‘stretch’ their limits, but alleviating their fears and uncertainties. Human or employee capabilities are unlimited. With the right coaching, organization could tap the un-tapped abundant human resources, thereby exploiting not only the existing opportunities, but also create new ones for the organizations. As the Zen proverb goes “give a man, a fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for life”. It is all about expanding the human capabilities, thus coaching not just helps benefit organizations but also the human potential at large. References Cross, N and Lyle, J., 2002. The Coaching Process: Principles & practice for Sport, Butterworth & Heinemann, Oxford. Csikszentmihaly, M and Jackson, A. S., 1999. Flow in Sports: The Keys to Optimal Experiences and Performances. Human Kinetics Publishers, Champaign, Illinois. Gallwey, W. T., 1974. The Inner Game of Tennis (1st edition). Random House, New York. Griffiths, K., 2005. Personal Coaching: A Model for Effective Learning, Journal of Learning Design, London. Heathfield, SM. Tips for Effective Coaching. Available from http://humanresources.about.com/od/coachingmentoring/a/coaching.htm(accessed on 2 May 2014) International Coach Federation. What is Coaching? Available from http://www.coachfederation.org/ICF/For+Coaching+Clients/What+is+a+Coach/ Kottler, J., 2003. On Being a Therapist, Josey-Bass, San Francisco. Luecke, R., 2004. Coaching and Mentoring: How to Develop Top Talent and Achieve Stronger Performance. Harvard Business School. Podmoroff, D. The Flow Model: Balancing Challenge and Skills. Available from http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/flow-model.htm(accessed on 2 May 2014) Results Coaching System. Developing Leaders. Available from http://www.resultscoaches.com/files/Citibank-Malaysia-Case-Study.pdf(accessed on 2 May 2014) Sherman, S and Freas, A., 2004. The Wild West of Executive Coaching, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 82, No. 1, pp. 82-90. Stelter, R., 2014. A Guide to Third Generation Coaching. Springer, New York. Whitmore, J., 2002. Coaching for Performance. Nicholas Brealey Publishing, New York. Tichy, N., 1996. Simultaneous Transformation and CEO Succession: Key to Global Competitiveness. Organizational Dynamics, London. Training Zone. Coaching and Mentoring: Understanding the Differences. Available from http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=154289(accessed on 2 May 2014) Read More