Coaching and Mentoring Resource Manual

AC 1.1: The Skills, Principles and Practice of Effective Management Coaching and Mentoring

Strategies for developing employee capability are an important part of overall corporate objectives. Competitive organisations retain employees, inspire them, and support them to learn continually. To further these goals, learning and development requires a series of complex decisions relevant to employee needs, and increasingly, coaching and mentoring are seen as essential aspects of effective organisational learning strategies.

The Purpose of Coaching and Mentoring Within an Organisational Context

The business environment for most organisations is fluid, with many experiencing extensive restructuring, radical changes to work roles, and enhanced line-management responsibilities towards employees in particular.

Major factors include:

Globalisation and the need for wider knowledge of global business practice.

Continuing advances in technology and communications.

Social and demographic changes and the movement of labour markets.

If we look back ten years, it is clear that these changes have had a dramatic impact on the role of management.

Current expectations are that workers and managers will deliver higher levels of performance using fewer resources and people.

All employees are expected to demonstrate more knowledge and a wider range of skills, along with self-motivation, initiative and innovation.

Emphasis is placed on teams that work collaboratively and share knowledge, which means managers need to act as instructors, conflict mediators, mentors and coaches.

Job market trends have produced major issues for business.

Shortages being experienced in some occupations are predicted to intensify in coming years as the workforce ages.

Retaining talent is becoming crucial in a competitive marketplace where higher salaries result in staff poaching.

HR staff turnover figures have become a major indicator that informs corporate strategy.

In 2001, Clutterbuck, a British authority on mentoring, observed that employees in the US were 35% inclined to change jobs within that year. Those employees involved in mentoring programs showed a reduced 16% desire to leave their company.

Line Manager responsibilities have changed and now include responsibilities that used to be undertaken by HR.

In a study by CCH Australia, the Australian Human Resources Institute and Melbourne University (Kulik and Bainbridge, 2005), over 70% of respondents reported that the people management responsibilities of line managers had increased over the last five years.

The study found that line managers (rather than HR) had primary responsibility for:

promotions,

coaching,

performance management,

employee disciplinary action,

termination decisions,

career development,

recruitment and selection

knowledge transfer

A 2005 study by Accenture found that over 40% of organisations have no formal processes for passing on the knowledge of retiring employees.

Many line-managers stated they were uncomfortable with many of these responsibilities, having been originally hired for technical or job-specific proficiency.

Learning and Development studies show a dramatic improvement when coaching is combined with training. In 2000, a study published by the International Personnel Management Association, compared outcomes of training against outcomes obtained when training was combined with coaching.

The productivity gains for training alone were 22%, but when coaching was used as well, the gains were 88%.

Teaching and training alone seldom achieves employee competence. Training needs to be followed by practice, coaching and support back in the workplace. If this does not occur, new skills quickly atrophy and competence is never achieved.

People need to be coached and mentored through constructive performance feedback sessions on a one-to-one level with their line-manager.

Coaching and Mentoring qualifications provide vital skills, and the toolkit that today’s managers need in order to effectively gain best performance from staff.

• Exercise:

Discuss/Write/Reflect

How does coaching and mentoring operate in your organisation? Is there a formal structure? Do some employees receive it and others don’t?

How do you think your company would benefit from coaching and mentoring? What are the job market trends affecting the business?

What people management responsibilities are you uncomfortable/comfortable with managing and why?

The Skills, Behaviours, Attitudes, Beliefs and Values of an Effective Coach or Mentor

Definitions of Coaching and Mentoring

How are coaching and mentoring defined, and what are the differences between them?

Coaching

In society the term ‘coaching’ has many meanings. Coaching can refer to programs of sports development, or skills coaching for personal growth and development, such as job search skills.

Executive coaching is another manifestation, where senior executives are assigned a person who can clarify and guide their strengths, weaknesses and goals.

Coaching in the workplace provides an impartial and insightful means of support, designed to assist the career pathway within an organisation for an individual.

Organisations often begin their involvement in coaching with executive coaching. Where the outcomes are positive, the organisation may then decide there is value in extending coaching further down through the management ranks. In most cases, external coaches are engaged for these purposes, and the impact on both individuals and the organisation can be profound. For example, a study by Manchester Consulting (McGovern et al, 2001), found that 77% of executives reported improved working relationships as a result of coaching.

Workplace Coaching

Line-managers who are trained to deliver workplace coaching; defined as the coaching of employees by their managers, with the purpose of improving the worker’s capability and workplace performance; can have a dramatic effect on their organisations.

Unlike executive coaching, where the outcomes enhance leadership and company direction, the workplace coach may encourage the following subjects:

Vocational skills training that suit the employee’s role.

Generic skills associated with working in teams.

Mapping a career development path within the organisation.

The outcomes for employees may include:

Enhanced vocational knowledge and skills.

Enhanced generic skills - communication, working with others in teams, problem-solving, initiative, planning and organising tasks, conflict resolution and self-management.

Greater motivation and morale.

Improved clarity about career direction.

• Exercise:

Discuss/Write/Reflect

Write a definition that explains what coaching is in the workplace.

Have you any personal experience of coaching and how did you benefit as the recipient?

Mentoring

Mentoring is understood as the process by which knowledge is shared between employees in an organisation. An informal understanding would be to say a senior manager showed a junior manager the ropes.

In recent years the mentor role in organisations has become formal, as the concept of knowledge management highlights the importance of ‘informal’ knowledge-sharing between employees.

In order to maintain a productive pool of talent, momentum within the organisation, and profitability, it is crucial that effective use of knowledge in organisations is conditional not so much on technology and databases, as on conversations, where experts share knowledge with others.

So how does Mentoring work?

The assigned mentor, offers assistance, guidance, advice, encouragement and support to another person in order to foster their vocational and professional development.

The mentor works with a person to help them identify areas for improvement and develop positive approaches to professional, organisational, and change issues.

The mentoring process enables the person being mentored to discuss issues that may be controversial and involve risk.

The mentoring relationship is a dynamic one, involving a balance of nurturing and support on the one hand, together with stretch and challenge on the other.

The skilled mentor is able to move smoothly between the two modes.

Coaching and mentoring terminology

The person being coached may be referred to as the coachee the subject, or the protégé. The person being mentored may be referred to as the protégé, mentee, performer, aspirant, or mentoree.

The choice of terminology is a question of what is accepted most easily in the culture of the organisation.

It is useful to identify the similarities and contrasts between coaching and mentoring.

Table 1: Contrasts between coaching and mentoring

It is worth noting that there is often much overlap between coaching and mentoring, particularly if organisations ask managers to perform both roles simultaneously. The key difference is