Coaching for Good

This article is part 4 of a 4-part series on creating a strong and effective team and organizational culture Part 1: “It’s the culture, stupid” Part 2: The Quest for the perfect team begins! Part 3: Learning to Fly

Part 4: Coaching for Good

Last but not least is the Coaching Culture which allows the organization to take the next step towards flourishing. But before we go into the concept of Coaching Culture let’s first delve deeper into the concepts of Coaching in the organization. In its latest survey, the International Coaching Federation (ICF) estimated that the 2015 yearly coaching revenue was 2.356 Billion USD, which represents a 19% increase over the 2011 estimate (2016 ICF Global Coaching Study, 2016). While the ICF’s estimates for 2019 are still being prepared, other organizations (e.g., IBISworld, 2019) estimate that in 2019 the business coaching industry has already topped a whopping 15 Billion USD! This huge increase in revenue is a testament of the massive success and need for coaches today in the industry. But what kind of coaches does the industry really need? When we come to talk about executive coaches, we typically refer to 2 types: Internal coaches; coaches that work in the organization, and normally report to HR, and external coaches; contracted by the organization for a limited time and a specific coaching task/s. While both internal and external coaches are very beneficial for the organization, there is a third type, an old one that is slowly but surely making its way back into the spotlight.

Managerial coaching

In his 1992 book “Coaching for Performance” (Whitmore, 2009) Sir John Whitmore pioneered the field of coaching by introducing what we now call “executive coaching”, Whitmore defined coaching as “unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.” (Whitmore, 2009). However, Sir John Whitmore’s vision was not necessarily about hiring people that specialize in coaching, but to assist leaders in helping their employees reach their full potential. Today, this type of leader-coaching is often referred to as “managerial coaching” where leaders interact with their employees as coaches in multiple occasions, some formal and structured while many other are unstructured and integral to the everyday working environment. The shift towards managerial coaching can be observed in organizations, books, and in the academia (Ibarra & Scoular, 2019; Kampa-Kokesch & Anderson, 2001; Kets De Vries, 2005; Moen & Skaalvik, 2009) Although there is some controversy about the role of the managerial coach (Dahling et al., 2016; Ellinger et al., 2003), many scholars believe that managerial-coaching is the process of ceasing the old command-and-control management model and replacing it by a team-based relationship of openness, empowerment and encouragement to facilitate learning and development (Ellinger et al., 2003; Feldman, 2001). As the managerial coaching trend is on the rise, preliminary research results show that managerial coaching can enhance:

• Motivation
• Employee performance
• Working relationships
• Job satisfaction
• Organizational commitment

This development potential does not go unnoticed and in the latest Learning and Talent Development survey done by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD, 2015), managerial coaching was considered one of the most, if not the most, effective learning and development practice (selected by  40% of the 482 respondents), compare to only 16% for external coaching. When asked which of the following methods will grow or decline in use in your organization over the next two years? 65% selected managerial coaching growth, outranking any other type of learning and development method while only 3% suggested it may decline, whereas external coaches received 26% chance for growth and an almost identical 25% chance for decline. Although much more research is needed to study this learning and developmental intervention, recent research and surveys clearly shows that there are 2 main problems concerning managerial coaching:

• The lack of manager’s skill or ability to coach can impede performance– for example, research shows that while high level coaching can help boost performance in a sales team, frequent coaching by an unskilled manager actually causes a reduction in sales (Dahling et al., 2016)
• The lack of organizational awareness, support and incentives for managerial coaching – as an example, only 11% of respondents to a survey (EFMD,2009) reported that coaching culture is well integrated into the organization, while 23% claimed it was strategical (well supported but not yet embedded), whereas the other 67% reported that in their organization the commitment to coaching is low or absent.

Discussion:

Research in recent years consistently shows that in today’s world, with its ever-changing global economy, constant competition and quick and successive breakthroughs, organizations can flourish if they put more emphasis on the employee and teams and implement a strong culture. Yet the question remains: what are the shared values, ideas and behaviors that would allow organizations, employees, and teams to create such a “strong culture” and flourish in the 21^st century? In this article I presented research-based evidence on the 3 most important ingredients in creating such a cultural shift that focus on the true asset of the organizations; the single employee and the team, by creating a Psychological Safe culture, based on openness to Learning, and non-hierarchical Managerial Coaching. Although the evidence of the efficacy of these ingredients is staggering, many, if not most companies, do not implement them, either for a lack of awareness or lack of a clear step-by step path, and sometimes both. My hope is that this article will address the problem of awareness to the gap between what could be and what is in the current organizational culture and I am currently in the process of writing an article that would lay the foundation to tackle the process of creating a clear step by step process for creating a new culture for the 21^st century. 

References

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