Leadership and Management Development - Coursework Example

Leadership and Management Development Name Professor Institution Course Date Leadership and Management Development Introduction In this new information age, the most crucial change confronting the senior managers in international organizations is creating a new generation of managers or leaders who can continue and broaden strategic reach of their organizations (Dytham-Ward 2009, p.226). All these leaders can be argued to exist in each generation as baby boomers, millennials and generation X. Every generation comes with a different thing, but which is significant to the organization (Greif 2007, p.222). It is also important to note each generation requires leadership development because challenges are different. The contemporarily and tomorrow’s leaders have been collaborative, flexible, able to leverage focus expertise, and keen to continue learning. Greif (2007, p.231) claims that learning organizations have to be capable of supporting leaders so as to develop such characteristics. To achieve all these the organizations have to hire leaders with coaching skill who can help train and develop employees to become leaders of tomorrow. In this way, they will create ‘built to last’ scenario. Based on the analysis, this paper will discuss the role of coaching in developing the leaders of tomorrow. It will also discuss the benefits and potential challenges for organizations choosing coaching as a method for developing their leaders. The role of coaching in developing the leaders of tomorrow According to Greif (2007, p.222), coaching is defined as a development process or training in which a person is supported and encouraged while receiving a particular professional and personal skill result or objective. Coaching is normally conducted by a person who has expertise and experience and provides guidance and advice by means of a learning process. Coaching activities consist of skills assessments, competency modeling, action planning, goal-setting, open-ended discussions, structured learning, encouragement, personality dynamics analysis and creative problem-solving among others (Laura 2008). One of the features of career success within an organization is the capability of a recently promoted or new employee to effectively transition into an expanded or new leadership position. Some find it tough hard to adopt leading to failure of operations. McCarthy & Milner (2013, p.679), contend that the basis for the failures may not be lack of skills or experience and intelligence but because the incapability of these managers to integrate effectively into the new role or new cultures and create the needed "mindset shift" with the fundamental changes they go through in their roles. In the real sense the role of coaching in developing the leaders of tomorrow is to impact leadership skills, traits and styles and team excellence (Connor & Pokora 2007). Benefits for organizations choosing coaching as a method for developing their leaders Coaching impact leadership skills The collection of activities a leader or a manager takes changes with time and cannot just be improved with observation alone. Therefore, to be successful, a tomorrow’s leader needs variety of skills impacted through coaching to be effective and create an impact. In fact, any skill acquired through coaching can to some extent be of good use on any leadership stage. The most effective leader of tomorrow must have four skill sets including interpersonal skills, technical skills, conceptual skills and system skills (Greif 2007, p.234). Ellinger, Beattie & Hamlin (2010) posit that tomorrow’s leader needs leaders who can influence, engage employees and involve employees on decisions of the organization. Some of these interpersonal skills may appear simple, but not every today’s leader posses them, and this can be seen through high employee turnover. As such, interpersonal skills can be impacted through learning. Interpersonal skills mostly involve communication skills and how a manager relates with his employees (Dytham-Ward 2009, p.229). Bluckert (2005, p.339) argues that normally, coaches themselves have strong communication skills, a factor which they influence of somebody who can use it later to influence and rally others to support certain decisions. Managerial coaches work their employees towards particular professional goals like professional and interpersonal communication (Cavanagh & Grant 2010). It is true that the capability to communicate effectively is a great area for improvement. Most of employee think that they are good at communication while does not openly their weaknesses. However, what they fail to understand is that great leaders posses good a broad communicative repertoire. Good coaches will tell you that to become an effective communicator, you logically need to put content and context into consideration. Being in a position to relate with people is important for successful leaders of tomorrow (Renton 2009). Through coaching leaders learn some active listening, conflict resolution management and counseling (Greif 2007, p.235). In reality, these are lasting skills which will bear long-term benefit both for the organization and leaders. Coaching help control inner emotions which can affect how the message is delivered. Conceptual skill entails the creation of ideas. Employing a well formulated set of conceptual skill, top level managers of tomorrow requires being in a position to perceive their company as a whole unit, which have interrelationships between departments, and understand how the organization fits into and influences its general environment (Connor & Pokora 2007). Without proper coaching and mentorship from those who have been in that company for several years and have experience in a managerial role, one may not able to be an effective manager in future. It also involves planning and organizing so as to solve organizational challenges. It must also be noted that coaching can enhance the technical skills of a leader. Technical skills involve the ability of a leader to perform the certain job. It entails using different tools and machines and systems. Technology keeps on changing, enhance learn makes employees updated on which tools and machines is efficient and increase the rate of production and delivery (Connor & Pokora 2007). Normally people get employed in an organization which has different system and tools; therefore to understand the new system and be part of it needs coaching from the manager. Coaching impacts leadership traits, styles and team excellence To develop a style of leadership style needs blend of traits, skills and behavior which are impacted through interaction between people (McCarthy & Milner 2013, p.771). Outstanding leaders of today touch and improve the lives and behavior of their followers who are in this case employees by means of coaching. Renton (2009) he major important thing to consistent organization success is to comprehend that people should be considered as an asset before demanding results. The individual growth and coaching of the staff should remain the top agenda so as to create better leaders of tomorrow. Coaching is considered as an emotional leadership style. Additionally, it is a role or behavior which leaders implement in the perspective of the situational leadership (Ellinger, Beattie & Hamlin 2010). As a style of leadership, coaching is employed when the group or team members are motivated and competent, but has no idea of long-term objectives of the organization. This entails two coaching levels; individual and group or team. Team coaching enables members of the team to work together. In a team, not everybody has the same degree of commitment and competence to an objective (Ellinger, Beattie & Hamlin 2010). These disparities can result to friction amongst the team members. As such, the coaching manages conflicting perspectives in order that the common goal prevails over personal interests or goals. In that view, it can be argued that coaching impacts transformational Leadership style. Laura (2008) claims that coaching builds up personality or traits such as confidence, agreeableness and openness to experience. This is the final competitive edged in the world of business. Coaching of an individual employee is an instance of situational leadership in the organization. It aspires to mentor and building confidence of that person to create a positive feedback in future (Dytham-Ward 2009, p.227). It also develops competence by assisting an employee evaluate his or her strength and weakness towards professional development and career planning. Potential challenges for organizations choosing coaching as a method for developing their leaders Even though there is a great need for coaching and developing of managers of tomorrow, today’s managers could be skeptical because of several challenges such as change, cultural diversity, and technological changes as well as personal challenges like listening, relationship (McCarthy & Milner 2013, p.672) Change In an organization, managers are charged with much responsibility and get praised when performance improves and similarly he is criticized on equal measure (Dytham-Ward 2009). However, one thing to note that if the manager post bad results after having good results in the previous years, even better results are forgotten and get sacked. Taking into consideration that McGregor’s theory claims that individual naturally like work, people find it had to accept coaching more so when it is about leadership (McCarthy & Milner 2013, p.675). Employees fear change that comes into their when they are in leadership. First, they fear failure that sometimes comes with change. Some fear the workload and responsibilities which a manager is held, hence the fear of being coached (Dytham-Ward 2009, p.229). Cultural diversity With globalization happening rapidly and company scrambles for foreign markets, employees have been forced to work outside their country (Bluckert 2005, p.339). The aspect of just being outside your country is itself a challenge. In foreign country employees face cultural and language which affects their relationship with people. Coaching and mentorship is very difficult, especially when language and culture are conflicting (Cavanagh & Grant 2010). At first, the manager coaching an employee has to create strong rapport with the individual employee before starting the coaching activities. Sometimes when a foreigner is included in the team setting and the coach is providing team coaching, he or she is not deeply coached because the manager feels the foreigner is an “outsider” and will not use the knowledge to improve their company (Bluckert 2005). Some of these situations are encouraged by parochial attitude where some people view others as culturally inferior and should not be coached to match their culture. Managers mostly from the US or UK frequently tend to demonstrate a strong parochial attitude mainly due to the fact that individuals with whom they associate on a daily basis speak proper English and dress up in suits or western clothes as them (McCarthy & Milner 2013, p. 773). In some circumstances, the manager is a woman who offers coaching to male foreign employees, but because their country is highly masculine, the employee will not take coaching exercise as an important activity. In fact the employee will still have the stereotype that women have lower statues in the society compared to men (McCarthy & Milner 2013, p. 770). Technological Changes Technological changes have created both positive and negative effects on business environment. It has created an easy way of communication, decision making, production and marketing (Cavanagh & Grant 2010). It has made information available to both employees and managers as never before. Some now argue that people do most need to be close to their managers to talk to them. However, there are things which cannot be communicated through technological gadgets like phones. One such element is coaching. Laura (2008) claims that coaching involves interpersonal communication where the coach and the one being coached see each other one-on-one so as to feel the emotions with which words come out. Technology has made people communicate without seeing another other; employees can now just brief their bosses and post report without having to meet them (Greif 2007, p.245). Even though this is the trend, it has created a workforce who feels less that nobody understands their plight. Personal challenges According to Bluckert (2005, p.340), Coaching should promote learning, encouraging and reflection and for employees to assume ownership and develop the organization in which they are employed. However, sometimes coaching is faced with personal channels like language barrier and ineffective relationship which results to poor listening and poor feedback (McCarthy & Milner 2013, p.769). Managers may think that every employee that they coach would grasp everything and use it positively to become an outstanding leader of tomorrow. At times, it turns not to be since poor listening skills become a barrier during learning leading to poor feedback. Tensional relationship between managers often becomes a hurdle to coaching. When an employee fears the manager instead of seeing him as a friend and a mentor, he will not be able to learn (Renton 2009). Conclusion In these changing times, leadership development can be a very complex issue. Coaching is becoming and plays a role as a toolkit of a manager. Through routine coaching, the manager can have significantly influenced on developing trust, responsibility, learning and awareness of the future. In circumstance where learning is encouraged, people become experienced and assume responsibility of before becoming leaders. For that matter, organizations ought to support coaching and shun poaching. Poaching usually solves problems for a moment but the coaching resolves organizational problems permanently. It improves employee commitment and encourages staff loyalty. However, managers must expect challenges during coaching and should be prepared to solve them through experience. References Bluckert, P 2005, Critical factors in executive coaching – the coaching relationship", Industrial and Commercial Training, 37, 336-340. Cavanagh, M.J & Grant, A.M 2010, The solution-focused approach to coaching, in Cox, E., Bachkirova, T., Clutterbuck, D. (Eds), Complete Handbook of Coaching, Sage, London Connor, M & Pokora, J 2007, Coaching and Mentoring at Work: Developing Effective Practice, Open University Press, Maidenhead. Dytham-Ward, M 2009, Developing the leaders of tomorrow in Abbey, part of the Santander Group, Industrial and Commercial Training, 41, 226 – 231. Ellinger, A.D, Beattie, R.S & Hamlin, R.G 2010, The ‘manager as coach’, in Cox, E., Bachkirova, T., Clutterbuck, D. (Eds), The Complete Handbook of Coaching, Sage, London, Greif, S 2007, Advances in Research on Coaching Outcomes, International Coaching Psychology Review, 2(3), 222–49. Laura, L 2008, Executive Coaching – Worth the Money? The Wall Street Journal. McCarthy, G & Milner, J 2013, Managerial coaching: challenges, opportunities and training, Journal of Management Development, 7, 768-779. Renton, J 2009, Coaching and Mentoring: What They Are and How to Make the Most of Them, The Economist Newspaper, 8 & 27. Read More