August O5 Newlsetter
Firstly I would like to welcome our new readers from Singapore's HR Summit, where I recently spoke on 'Reading People'.
My team and I had many conversations at our expo booth, on how to develop leaders at all levels of an organisation. It is to address this question that I write this month's newsletter.
Jack Welch, Former CEO of General Electric said, "In the future, people who are not coaches will not be promoted. Managers who are coaches will be the norm."
This statement by a leader of industry, clearly endorses coaching as a methodology for people management. If you accept this premise, then the next questions to ask are, "What is coaching?" and "how to do it effectively?"
"Coaching is facilitating the mobilisation of internal and external resources to an agreed outcome to unleash untapped potential."- Duval and Hall
"Coaching is a conversation, a dialogue, whereby a coach and coachee interact in a dynamic exchange to achieve goals, enhance performance and move the coachee forward to greater success." - Zeus and Skiffington
Traditional management and leadership styles promote 'telling' rather than 'asking'. Telling is only effective when instructions are clearly communicated. However, you only know you have communicated when you ask the person being communicated to for their level of understanding. Asking is effective because, it gives the employee a sense of empowerment and the ability to contribute to the outcome. In coaching, a question can be a thousand times more powerful than a statement.
In their book Execution, Bossidy, Charan and Burck make the following observation;
"First you tell people clearly what results you are looking for. Then you discuss how to get those results, as a key element in the coaching process. Then you reward people for producing the results. If they come up short, you provide additional coaching, with-draw rewards, give them other jobs, or let them go. When you do these things, you create a culture of getting things done."
What is common to effective leadership, management and coaching is great communication. Great communication involves, building rapport, asking precision questions and asking questions that cause the listener to get in touch with what they believe and value.
If you or members of your organisation are interested in learning these skills then we would love to help you through coaching or training.