Both coaching and mentoring are procedures that facilitate together corporate and individual customers to attain their complete prospective. Coaching is… “ A process that enables learning and development to occur and thus performance to improve. To be a successful Coach it requires a understanding and knowledge of progression as well as the diversity of styles, abilities and procedures that are suitable to the framework in which the coaching takes place. Eric Parsloe, The Manager as Coach and Mentor 1999 page 8”
The communal cord tying all kinds of coaching & mentoring is that these facilities offer a vehicle for investigation, consideration and accomplishment that finally allow the consumer to attain success in one more areas of their work or life. Mentoring is…” Off-line benefit by individual person to another in making substantial changes in knowledge, work or thinking. Clutterbuck, D & Megginson, D, Mentoring Executives and Directors 1999 page 3″
Coaching and Mentoring have many features in common that we can outline the similarities that coaches and mentors perform irrespective of the services offered in a paid (professional) or free (philanthropic) role.
Simplify the investigation of desires, inspirations, requests, talents and thought processes to assist the individual in making genuine, lasting change.
Implement interrogative methods to expedite client’s own views in order to classify solutions and actions relatively than takes a wholly directive methodology.
Support the client in setting suitable methods and objectives of evaluating progress related to these goals
Be observant, attentive and ask relevant questions to recognize the client’s position.
Utilize tools and techniques creatively which includes, simplifying, counselling & networking.
Encourage the assurance to development and action of lasting personal change & growth.
Maintain unqualified optimistic respect to the client, that means the coach will be at all times non-judgmental and supportive of the client, their views, aspirations and lifestyle.
Ensure clients have healthy dependencies with coaching and mentoring relationships & develop personal competencies.
Evaluate the consequences of the procedure, using objective procedures where possible to ensure the flourishing relationship and the client is succeeding their personal goals.
Encourage clients to constantly progress capabilities and to improve new progressive pacts where essential to achieve their goals.
Work within their range of particular capability.
Possess recommendations and capability on the areas where skills-transfer coaching is provided.
Administer the correlation to confirm the client accepts the suitable level of facility and there are neither too short, nor too long programmes.
Difference between coaching and mentoring:
We now know there are lots of similarities between Mentoring and Coaching.
Mentoring: An Older or wiser colleague can pass on his experience, knowledge which enables an individual to follow his path to gain good opportunities.
Coaching: Unless it is Client-specific/skill based, coaching may not directly focus on the direct experience of Clients formal occupational role.
Executive Coaching & Mentoring:
Many times people overlap the terms Executive & Business coaching or Mentoring and call themselves Executive/Business Coaches and Mentors in the marketplace.
“ Coaching and mentoring should not just be seen as a luxury’ enjoyed by a few managers in large, well-funded development agencies, but something that has genuine value at all levels and all types of organisation’s.” Hailey 2006: 22
Executive Coaches and Mentors should basically….
– Have a track record in executive & professional roles
– Work with those who are ‘ high-flyers’ or with those who have potential to be one.
– Work on board at CEO level with high profile or ‘ blue-chip’ organizations
– Maintain complete confidentially
– Work with business leaders and potential ‘ captains of industry’
Business coaching & mentoring:
Catalysts that inspire companies to implement Mentoring & Coaching is to provide employees key support through career or role changes, mergers & acquisitions changes and Organizational development changes.
Coaching and Mentoring were mainly done by Senior Managers and company directors. These are now available as professional tool & linked closely with company initiatives to help the staff to adapt changes which is consistent with their personal values and goals.
Ad Coaching & mentoring focus on client, improves morale, motivate individuals to enhance their productivity & reduce staff turnover because it makes individual feel valued & adapt to organizational changes. This role may be taken up by internal coaches, mentors or by any professional coaching agencies.
Skills coaching and mentoring:
Skills’ coaching is similar to one-one training. Coaches and Mentors have a holistic approach to individual’s personal development with the capability to focus on the fundamental skills and requirements of an employee. They should be highly competent and experienced to outperform the skills they mentor or coach.
Today’s job market is changing and traditional training program is often inflexible or generic to deal with this fast pace of change. A one-to-one skills coaching allows much adaptive, flexible and on time’ approach to skills development. We can apply skills training in ‘ live’ environments instead of taking people into a ‘ classroom’ away from the job, where it is less effective to simulate real job environment.
One-to-one skills training is not the similar to ‘ sitting next to Nelly’ approach to ‘ on the job training’. The fundamental difference is that like any good personal or professional development intervention this is based on need assessment related to job roles that generates measurable learning and performance outcomes. This type of Skills training is likely to focus mainly on skills required to perform job function instead of ‘ telling’ or directive style.
Personal coaching & mentoring:
Personal or ‘ life coaching’ is increasing considerably in the UK, Europe and Australia. Personal coaches may work in person along with the email and telephone based relationships. These coaches are mentors work in highly supportive roles to those who desire to make some form of significant change within their lives.
Coaches propose their clients an encouraging and motivating environment to discover what they aspire in life and how they might achieve them to fulfill their needs. By being friendly and committed to action, coaching allows an individual his personal space and helps client to support themselves to grow and develop in their experiences. Coach’s key role is often to help the client maintain the enthusiasm and dedication needed to accomplish their goals
In many scenarios personal coaching is differentiated from completely with the focus and context of the programme. Business coaching is conducted always within the limitations placed on the individual’s context or the organizational group. Personal coaching on the other hand is taken completely from a individual’s perspective.
The objectives, costs and benefits of a coaching scheme being introduced in an organisation:
Between late 1930’s and 1960’s, coaching literature mainly focused on Internal triaining with Supervisors and Managers acting as coaching in the organizations. Paper by Gorby (1937) explains how the senior employees are trained to coach new employees.
Another 1938 Publication by Bigelow discusses the advantages of Sales coaching. Mold in 1958 reported on the benefits of Manager acting as Coach and Maher(1964) identified the difficulties in Managers becoming effective coaches. Gershman in 1967 produced his doctoral research thesis that Supervisors/Managers who were trained as successful coaches helped to improve employees attitude and job performance.
The cost/benefit analysis:
The costs of a fully implemented coaching culture can be high, including some or all of the following:
– Fees of external coaches.
– Training costs of internal coaches and continuing fixed costs.
– Lost chargeable time while individual coaching/mentoring is undertaken.
– Training costs of professionals who wish to coach/ mentor in their management and client roles (both in the cost of training them and in the loss of time given up to coaching).
– Increased time in using coaching as a learning tool (learning is a two-way process and takes longer).
With such easily measured costs there will always be a challenge as to the benefit. This is a significant challenge for many organisations but as “ Bridget Allen, head of coaching at KPMG said: KPMG is a highly successful commercial organisation and does not adopt strategies and actions lightly…while we may not measure the benefits of the coaching culture on a scientific basis…we wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work’.”
How should organisations measure the benefits of a coaching scheme more systematically? The organisation could start with one-to-one coaching and individual performance (or possibly performance of their division/department). Success could be defined as a return on their expectations, which would be to achieve their coaching objectives.
A complementary piece of research was undertaken by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development recently. It asked a number of leading global companies the simple question “ Does coaching really work? (Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (2006))” 96% of respondents thought internal and external coaching were highly effective. Yet again, only 32% suggested that this conclusion could be based on KPI improvements; the remaining respondents agreed their conclusions were more subjective.
Nonetheless, a more systematic way of measuring benefits from coaching programmes is possible and the results are compelling. In 2001, a US entity, “ Manchester Consulting Inc (Manchester Consulting Inc (2001), Coaching – the ROI)” undertook a return on investment exercise (using Fortune 1000 entities), comparing the costs of introducing a coaching programme with the benefits, as measured by increased revenue, cost savings and estimated financial gains from better relationships and improved KPIs. The overall return on cost (ROI) investment was calculated at some 600% as shown in the following table:
It is easier to identify the impact of coaching/mentoring on individuals than it is to observe and assess impact at the organisational level. The learning histories illustrate, however, that changes at the individual level can, and sometimes do, permeate more widely through the organisation through improved styles of leadership, management and communication.
Below are the tangible benefits from organisational changes that arose from a leadership coaching and mentoring:
Time management and planning would be much improved.
Individual staff working on issues such as communication skills and consciousness would rise in separating issues from people, to avoid personal attacks and conflict.
The senior management would increase confidence in their roles and feel motivated by the coaching process.
Awareness would be raised of potential pitfalls in cross-cultural communication.
Efforts would be made to develop and finalise policies, systems and procedures.
Understanding of internal staff politics and how to work effectively across an organisation in a leadership capacity, Influencing and negotiating more effectively.
Investing time and effort in learning through coaching/mentoring helps to encourage a wider learning environment within an organisation and to develop an appreciation of the importance of learning for organisational change and development.
I find, therefore, that while some organisations believe coaching gives a return on investment and measurable benefits, the overwhelming majority believe the benefits are not capable of such precise measure. The perceived benefits of coaching are strongly felt by our global respondents.
Identifying what benchmarks you would use to judge the success of a coaching and mentoring scheme;
Performance coaching derives its theoretical benchmarks and models from business, psychotherapy and sports psychology. It is an on-going process where a coach guides or encourages continuous improvement of the individual’s effectiveness.
Below are some of the industry proven methodologies/processes for benchmarking the success of coaching and mentoring scheme:
GROW Model
STEER
OSKAR Model
The GROW Model of Coaching:
One of the first performance coaching models developed – the GROW model – continues to be the most popular. It is a simple yet powerful framework to guide coaching sessions (Dembkowski and Eldridge 2003). Coaches ask a series of questions relating to the person’s Goal, their Reality, their Options and their Will.
G – Goal. The person’s goal should be as specific and measurable as possible, enabling the coach to ask:
How will you recognize that you have accomplished that goal?
What are the anticipations of others?
Who else needs to recognize about the plan? How will you notify them?
R – Reality. The current situation the person is experiencing needs careful analysis. Sometimes, simply by seeing the situation clearly (rather than what was imagined), the resolution becomes obvious. Coaches can ask:
What has been stopping you reaching your goal?
Do you know anybody who has achieved their goal?
What learning they got from them?
O – Options. Once you know wherever you are and wherever you want to go, the next step is to explore the options you have for getting there. Coaches can question:
What can you do as a step one?
What else could you do?
What would happen if you did nothing?
W – Will. To change and improve performance, motivation is necessary. The anticipated result from this stage is a assurance to action. The following questions can direct coaches:
Where does this goal apt in with your individual significances at the instant?
What complications do you assume to meet? How will you overawed them?
How committed are you to this goal?
What steps are needed to achieve this?
The STEER Model
The STEER model which is (Spot, Tailor, Explain, Encourage and Review), similar to GROW, is duty concerned with and also has its base in the domain of game.
But it varies from GROW model, and from other prototypes, in that it includes the coach signifying how a particular task must be done.
S – Spot training requirements
T – Tailor training content to meet the needs of individuals
E – Explain and determine how the duty would be completed
E – Encourage the individual however he/she is learning
R – Review progress during and on completion of learning.
Solution-focused Coaching: The OSKAR model
As with other models, the OSKAR model is a series of suggested questions to help guide both individual sessions and the overall process. This model makes use of a scale (0-10) so that participants can visualise where they are, where they want to be, and with the support of the coach work out how they could reach where they would like to be on a linear image.
This style of questioning is designed to stimulate the coachee/mentee to analyse their own situation for themselves, and articulate how they can change according to their own experiences.
O- Outcome
What is the objective of this coaching?
What do you want to achieve today?
S – Scaling
On a scale of 0-10, with 0 representing the least it has ever remained and 10 the preferred future, where would you put the situation today?
Describe your position in life now (let’s call it n) – whatever organized you ensure to get this far?
How would you know you had get to a better situation than you are at now (n+1)?
K – Know-how and resources
What helps you perform at the level you are at now (n on the scale), rather than at the worst it has ever been (0 on the scale)?
When does the consequence at present happen for you – even a tiny bit?
What did you do to make that transpire? How did you do that?
A – Affirm and action
What is already going well?
What is the next small step?
You are now at the position you just described (n), what would it take to get to a better situation (n+1)?
R – Review: what’s better?
What did you do that made the change transpire?
What effects have the changes had?
What do you think will change next?
What changes adopting such a system might have on the organisations culture and knowledge management system
CEOs and leadership teams are exciting with the supervision of people in complex organizations. Great leaders construct a philosophy in their businesses that initiatives the effects they want to accomplish. It is the leader of an association who is in the finest position to inspire culture change. No one person, nevertheless, can change an entire culture. Impelling culture involves obtaining the trust and enhancing the capabilities and motivation of those who follow. “ The leader has the potential to create the situation that becomes a powerful source of recognition and commitment for employees (Schein, 1992).”
The assumptions, beliefs and attitudes that monitor a company’s distinguishing way of doing business outline a company’s culture. Organizational culture can be a foremost aspect in a company’s success or failure over time. Cultural individualities and values may be clear or not so clear. Occasionally they are the least understandable to those who are drive in within the company’s way of doing and observing things. Also, culture in great associations has sub-cultures which are complex that activate in diverse parts of the corporation. On an individual level, it is not constantly deceptive to leaders how their own behaviour (or that of their supervisors) teaches, models and emphasises the enterprise culture.
“ A company’s culture affects bottom line financial outcomes and in some scenarios cited as the key factor determining the failure of a merger. In a large-scale survey (Galpin & Herndon, 2000, p. 236)”
57% of enterprises quoted risk of confrontation to change to their mergers success.
73% quoted leadership as being the aim for the accomplishment of their merger and acquisition
35% cited cultural compatibility as actuality the purpose for the victory of their merger and acquisition.
Other facts (Denison, 1990) advises that assured cultural manifestations, such as mission (a meaningful long-term direction), adaptability (responsiveness to the business environment), consistency (values and systems) and involvement (strong capability/ownership) are ominously related to a company’s customer satisfaction, return on investments, sales growth, return on assets and other consequences.
Knowledge Management Coaching and Mentoring:
You know the value of Knowledge Management. You know that if you can introduce a system of knowledge transfer and re-use, you can help your company reduce costs, risk and rework, and deliver secure business success. You need to implement an approach that enables staff facing a new and unfamiliar problem to find valid, tried and tested knowledge based on long experience, which can help provide solutions. You need to implement Knowledge Management.
However implementing Knowledge Management may itself be a new and unfamiliar problem – something you have never done before. Where can you find valid, tried and tested knowledge and solutions? Where can you find sound practical advice, which you know is based on long experience? If Knowledge Management is of real business value, then knowledge about Knowledge Management is of even greater value.
You need to find mentors: people you can trust and from whom you can learn about implementing Knowledge Management. People who can help you reduce costs, risk and rework, and deliver the secure business success of your Knowledge Management program. Finding a mentor in the current Knowledge Management world is not easy. There are a wealth of consultants out there, and it can be difficult to know which ones can really help you. Cost is not a valid guide – you need to look at depth of relevant experience. This experience can be gained through, ongoing coaching and mentoring.
Conclusion
For coaching and mentoring to make a significant contribution to leadership development requires more mentors and coaches. Many capacity-building efforts that include a coaching and mentoring component fail simply because there are too few good quality local coaches on hand to provide follow up. There is a need to invest in the development of local coaches and mentors. The range of experiences of coaching/mentoring within CSOs highlight various issues and considerations. Whereas the overriding principles remain constant, particular considerations relating to context emerged from ur research. From the earliest stages of designing coaching/mentoring processes, practitioners need to bear these considerations in mind to pre-empt particular issues that may arise.
Key Considerations for Coaching and Mentoring:
The person has to be committed to change.
The person should be able to choose their mentor/coach.
All parties should prioritise and plan for coaching/mentoring.
They should be seen as a core activities, rather than an add-on.
The organisation and manager (if applicable) need to provide support for the process.
The organisation needs to allocate sufficient time and funds.
Patience is needed – especially with ‘ difficult’ leaders and in situations of internal conflict: it is a long-term process.
Post-conflict situations throw up particular problems of weak capacity.
While enthusiastic, we must also remain realistic about mentoring and coaching. They cannot solve all problems in organisations and leadership. If the wrong person is in post, mentoring may not help; if the person is not committed to improving their own performance, coaching will not add value; if the person wants technical recommendations from outside, mentoring will be frustrating for all. In short, we first need to understand the context clearly, and then work out with the client the most appropriate capacity-building solution.
