Coaching Organization

Even Tiger Woods needs a swing coach after a series of world championship. He, of course, plays a lot better than his coach, but he needs a coach to remind him what he neglected from time to time. Manager in an organization needs not be a super sales or expert, but he needs to know how to coach to make his team better. Everyone, just like Tiger, needs a coach to reach greater success.

Coach vs Teach
I carefully choose the word "coach" instead of "teacher", because "Teachers tell, and students just listen and learn.", while "Coach proactively listen, and coachees tell, inspired and learn.". Coach proactively listens by asking open questions to help coachee self-conscious the solution. In my interpretation, teach offers solution while coachees get their solution by their own with coach's help. Students don't like the assignment from teach, but coachee will do what he thinks he should do. For sure, the latter is more powerful and effective.


Coach Culture
to become Better Learning Organization

Most Executives agree their staff is their greatest asset, and wish each one of them can be as good as his manager or even better. "Training" is one general solution to it, but it's always hard to measure the ROI. Let's get back to the basic, you do have one precious asset - the managers, who are the best men to train up your staffs. If you can build up the coach culture in your company, it then becomes most effective learning organization, and cost less.

Some might argue, why not just tell the staffs how to do? Isn't this what we pay for managers?

I myself loved to help my staffs by sharing my experience, and liked to do things "efficiently" even during "coaching" session. I used to jump to the solution after few minutes conversation and help proactively to write down the to-do action list for our next "conversation"...well..."Review" could be the better word here. So staffs are also used to hear and act without too much thinking.

Everyone follows the old steps, then who can come a new trick?

Knowing that I might kill some great ideas, I changed and always asked their proposal or solution first. It did improve a bit, but in many occasions, they just didn't have any clue, then I told them how. Do I make myself a perfect coach now? Not exactly, I realized later that I should guide them to think through what they might be missed to come out a solution "by their own". Process is even more important than your solution.

Coach skill can also improve team communication and collaboration. You will see the positive attitude in your organization. We might need to change our old fashion way:

"You shouldn't do this...You should do that... I need to see your improvement next time." (You might already hurt your staffs' self-esteem, though they will obey reluctantly.)

How about a new "coach" way,

"If you did this again. what would you do differently...What would be different for the result?...How will you do to be better next time?".

Then the communication will be more positive, joyful and more important, acceptable by coachee.

However, from my observation, most Managers didn't do coach at all. One reason is because of time comsuming, the other reason is not knowing how. To build the culture, Executive needs to emphasize the proposition that spending time on coach is evenly important as pushing number to achieve goal. Managers also need to know how to coach, which I'll spend more time in my next post.

Coach Outsourcing

In some occasion, you might need to outsource coach service because there will be "trust" issue due to "interest conflict". Your staff definitely doesn't want to have "record" in company profile. In my 1st job I was broken up with my girl friend after 8 years relationship. You can image how tough it would be for a loving young man. I remember clearly the 1st 3 days life after the separation. I was like a walking corpse sitting in my sad cubic everyday starring at my PC screen, but everything was just blurred and my head was full of paste. I am now still wondering why my boss didn't find out my abnormality and left me unproductive for 3 whole days. Naturally I did not look for my boss's help neither. What if I had a life coach to talk to, so I can let my hard feeling out and maybe took some days off to put myself together again. That would help me to recover sooner and definitely would help the company to have his employee kept in better condition.

Those happen all the time. Your employees might be severely affected by their personal life or relationship with colleague or his boss, or some obstacle they couldn't break through on their job. Either that affects his productivity or he choose to leave the company that both the Company and himself might regret. IBM has a EAP program ( "Employee Assistance Program") that they outsource to coach consultant group to help their employee to get through those tough time, and as a result, they effectively lower the turnover rate.

Summary

"Coach"(bus) brings a bunch of people from one point to another point and usually it's long distance. So Coach usually has a very clear destination or objective and requires continuous coach practice to get to that point. This is exactly what a manager should do to bring your team to the next level, and the executive should do to build the culture. Again, it requires practice and practice, and of course, a coach to help you. Why don't you start with your peer to be coach of each other and enjoy the journey.