Paul B. Bryan, Guest Writer
Usain Bolt
In recent weeks, Jamaicans and track fans around the world have been singing the praises of Usain Bolt.
His 9.76 seconds clocking in the 100 metres ranks as second best of all times - indeed a remarkable achievement.
In the background of all of this is his coach, Glen Mills. What role did Mills play in Usain's 9.76 seconds? What can individuals of all disciplines, and particularly business leaders, learn from the coach?
If you look at it closely, not only is a coach required to take you to the top of your game, they are even more relevant at keeping you there.
Decades ago, astute business owners recognised that they could transfer the core skills and essence of the sports coach to the business place and create outstanding business athletes.
Now, there is not a fortune 500 CEO who does not have at least one personal business/life coach, and many have several coaches.
PERFORMANCE COACHING
One of the biggest advocates of coaching in the business environment is Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric (GE), who, in a 20-year period grew GE from a US$13 billion to a U$500-billion company.
His coaching philosophy is captured in this quote: "People who are coaches will be the norm. Other people won't get promoted."
Over the last 10 to 15 years, the art of business-performance coaching has been fine-tuned by organisations such as Corporate Coach University, Coachville, and the business faculties of many universities, particularly in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. The results have been interesting.
One study on the impact of executive coaching done by Manchester Inc in 2001, surveyed 100 executives, half of whom held positions of vice-president or higher, and concluded that the coaching programmes delivered a return on investment of six times the cost of coaching.
That is a 600 per cent return on investment.
Among the benefits to the companies were improvements in productivity (53 per cent), retaining executives (32 per cent), and bottom-line profitability (22 per cent).
Benefits to executives
Benefits to the executives included improved working relationships with direct reports (77 per cent), working relationships with immediate supervisors (71 per cent), and organisational commitment (44 per cent).
The fact that these results happened anywhere means that they can also happen here, in Jamaica, and the Caribbean. I could make a strong case that Bank of Nova Scotia and Jamaica Money Market Brokers owe their positions in no small measure to the fact that they have embraced coaching as a strategic imperative.
Yet, in spite of these kinds of results, very few companies in Jamaica have embraced coaching as a strategic imperative and even fewer have succeeded at their attempts to introduce coaching.
key mistakes
In conversations with managers and executives, and from my own observations, I have identified three key mistakes that thwart the effectiveness of the coaching intervention. Avoiding these will give you a head start in this game.
Mistake No 1: Treating coaching as another quick fix.
For coaching to be most effective, it requires more than the rubber-stamped approval from the head of the organisation.
If you want to waste money, simply instruct human resources to go ahead with a coach-training programme for ineffective managers/team leaders only.
Instead, view the coaching programme as a strategic shift in the way leaders relate to the team and themselves. Relate to it as important. Have members of all levels of leadership engage in the coach-training process concurrently and have a commitment to put all leaders through a well-thought-out and executed programme.
A culture of coaching is a culture in which learning and growth thrive.
Mistake No 2: Mixing up coaching with other disciplines.
If you expect that your car will one day fly you from Kingston to New York, you will end up cursing the car as worthless and a waste of your money and time.
A similar thing happens when leaders/managers mistake counselling, mentoring, training and consulting for coaching.
All of these methods of helping people are useful and have their place. There are fundamental differences between all of them. Suffice it to say coaching increases the effectiveness of counselling, mentoring, training and consulting.
If you are going to coach somebody, do not counsel them and expect the results that coaching provides.
Mistake No 3: Treating the theory of coaching as coach training.
Business coaching as a discipline has grown tremendously over the last decade. People may think it is a science, but in my experience, it is more an art, and the most important thing to achieve effectiveness in this art is practice.
Treating it otherwise is similar to reading a manual to your child about riding a bicycle and then expecting him or her to jump on the bicycle and ride. It just does not happen.
Most coach-training programmes are similarly constructed.
rigorous training
The trainer comes in, or you send your managers to a rigorous one- or two-day training programme. They review the fundamentals, go through the skills, do a few case studies, and then return to the office with the manuals.
After two weeks, 80 per cent of what they learn is gone. The coaching-training programme you institute will pay off when it is structured to allow for supervised practice sessions over a period of two to four months and incorporates on-the-job challenges and opportunities.
THE GEMS WITHIN
In many respects, organisations fail to really engage the talent, passion and intellect of their staff. You can put an end to that in your organisation. Look at coaching strategically and treat it as a major investment.
Paul Bryan is a director of Knowledge Works Consulting, official distributor for Harvard Business Schools Publishing in the Caribbean. Email: pbryan@kworksconsulting.com
