The Development Process of Management Staff Through Coaching “People are like flowers: created to grow” Andre Legie

The question posed in the title of the article is one that concerns the paths to effective development of management staff. Nowadays, both HR department heads and representatives of managerial staff in business organizations are asking themselves: how to effectively develop in the current times of dynamic changes in the market environment, increasing competitiveness, technological revolution, economic slowdown, and the market exit of many companies. How to better utilize the potential and competencies of managers.

What often constrains the development of managers is the corset of habits, the knot of routines, and the framework of standards developed, consolidated, and used in the management process. This is accompanied by a feeling of falling into a routine, repeating patterns and schemes that do not work in current team management, as well as discouragement and a sense of fatigue. Managers are also concerned about the decline in the effectiveness of their actions and difficulties in achieving set goals. The solution in this situation is not to send managers to traditional one, two, or three-day training sessions. This does not solve the problem.

Differences and Similarities Between Coaching and Individual Training, Which Largely Includes Mentoring

When using training, consultancy, or mentoring, we acquire knowledge or skills from an external source, such as a trainer, consultant, or mentor, and the content or behaviors they present.

Coaching is about gaining knowledge and skills from an internal source, such as the internal resources of a manager, like awareness, memory, or intuition. To use a comparison, training, consultancy, or mentoring is about providing the organism with a missing element/substance. Coaching, on the other hand, stimulates the organism to independently produce the substance/element needed for life.

The Philosophy of Coaching, What Really Is This „Mythical” Coaching and What Role It Plays in the Development of Managerial Staff
„We learn throughout our lives” is a slogan we often hear, and we can confirm the validity of this statement¹. But do we use this learning purposefully and beneficially, and to what extent? Are the knowledge and skills we acquire in our lives through the entire education process (schools, courses, training, professional experiences) utilized by us to a satisfying degree? Do we not have the feeling that we only use a fraction of our competencies in current people management? To what extent can we independently extract this knowledge and skills from the depths of our consciousness and use them? Coaching allows most of these questions to be answered YES. The fundamental assumption of coaching is the belief that the potential possessed by the coachee (boss, manager) is not fully utilized.

Coaching is about helping people and supporting them in individual learning so that they can maximize their potential, improve skills, enhance actions, and become what they want to be. Coaching unlocks human potential and can direct one’s behavior to achieve desired outcomes.

The most general characterization of coaching is to describe it as a process designed to help people achieve better performance results. A more advanced definition states that it is a planned, bilateral process in which a person develops skills and achieves specific competencies through thorough assessment, targeted practice, and regular constructive feedback from the coach.

The basic instruments used in the coaching process are observation, thorough assessment, well-targeted practice, and systematic feedback on goal achievements, which help the manager achieve specific and planned results. A very important element of coaching is motivating the manager to make changes in their behavior and actions².

The essence of coaching is not for the coach to take responsibility for the coachee’s development. The coachee should take responsibility for their own development. The role of the coach is to create favorable conditions for development, inspiring the coachee to fully utilize their potential.

Coaching, or the method of tapping into one’s own (personal) reservoir of awareness, memory, and intuition

A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who sees
what you don’t want to see — so that you can be who you’ve always
wanted to be. Tom Landry

The method, as we can refer to coaching, is relatively effective and inexpensive. The coach is a guide for the manager they work with, enabling fuller utilization of the potential of people at various management levels within organizations. After a few or several coaching sessions, an improvement in effectiveness and an increase in the coachee manager’s satisfaction is noticeable. Coaching can be applied not only to managers of large corporations or big companies but also shows positive effects for those managing micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (JOSEFIN project, 2007, Poznań, under the Baltic Sea Region Program, see below: Coaching Process Scheme).

Coaching Process Scheme³

Stage 1. Situation Analysis
The coaching process starts with a meeting with the manager aimed at assessing all of their competencies (Opening Balance). In subsequent meetings based on the agreed work schedule, we analyze the situation in the context of developing selected competencies. The coach observes, diagnoses, identifies the causes of the situation, and has a conversation with the manager about it. After this stage, both the coach and the manager understand the causes of the encountered difficulties.

Stage 2. Action Plan – establishing a contract. At this stage, the coach and the manager agree on the goal of coaching, develop appropriate action methods, determine necessary resources, methods of settlement, and define the related consequences.

Stage 3. Execution – at this level, the agreed contract is implemented. Its goal is to achieve what the coach and the coachee agreed upon when concluding the contract. Depending on the available resources, the manager executes it with significant or minimal involvement from the coach.

Stage 4. Evaluation of Results – at this stage, an analysis of what the manager has done takes place. The goal is to assess whether the „training” has brought the expected results. If the coaching goal has been achieved, experiences, effects, and actions are discussed. In the case of unsatisfactory results, there is a return to the previous stages. Otherwise, we return to the previous stages. The coach, together with the manager, creates a corrective plan to return to the path of further systematic development and growth in results.

Source: Coaching Process Instructions JOSEFIN, Poznań, 2007. Compiled by: Zygmunt Dolata.

Coaching focuses on the present and future,

Source: Coaching Process Instructions JOSEFIN, Poznań, 2007. Compiled by: Zygmunt Dolata.

The coach helps their client identify goals, set tasks, devise and apply strategies that help achieve them. Further positive results of coaching for managers include fuller utilization of their experience, creativity, and sense of responsibility for their development. We can assert that coaching is an element of building a learning organization and an important factor in knowledge management within enterprises. What distinguishes coaching from other methods and tools for manager development (training, courses, conferences, consultancy, mentoring) is the joint search (coach and manager) for a solution to the problem. The coach is merely a guide, questioning rather than imposing specific solutions or advising the application of ready-made action patterns.

Condensed benefits of coaching:
1. Precise definition of expectations
2. Awareness of job performance evaluation
3. Knowledge of one’s strengths and areas for development
4. Guidance on improving results
5. Making fewer mistakes
6. Achieving more successes
7. Strengthening the coachee’s self-esteem
8. Achieving higher levels of job satisfaction
9. Adjusting the pace of coaching to a level acceptable for the manager⁴

In times of significant and unpredictable market changes, strong competition, and „austerity” policies involving cost and investment reductions, coaching has the opportunity to popularize the method of manager development at various levels of management in business organizations of different types and sizes.

„All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”
Galileo Galilei

How to Make the Best Choice in the Interest of the Manager and the Organization – So Coaching or Individual Training?

Choosing between these two methods of developing managerial staff requires analysis in terms of the current needs and possibilities of both the managers themselves and the organizations they work for. We well know that „it takes two to tango,” and in the case of both methods, we should consider at what stage of development the manager is, their individual, preferred development path and predispositions, the current level of trust or prejudice (resistance) to one of these methods, and the time or financial possibilities of both the organizations and the manager. Therefore, at this point, I will use the perhaps overused word „depends.” It depends on the internal factors (possibilities and limitations) of the manager themselves, the organization, the availability of competent coaches or mentors, and external factors – the market situation or the „supply” of competent external coaches or mentors.

Coaching or mentoring are among the methods of bridging the competency gap. The coach/mentor, through their belief in the manager’s capabilities, helps reduce internal and external limitations, allowing for the emergence and utilization of new action possibilities.

Author: Zygmunt Dolata, coach and trainer HR Accelerate

Based on the „Coaching Process Instructions,” author: Zygmunt Dolata. JOSEFIN Project. Marshal’s Office in Poznań, Poznań 2007.

¹ Eric Parsloe, Monika Wray, Trainer and Mentor – The Role of Coaching and Mentoring in Improving the Learning Process, Kraków 2002.

² Eric Parsloe, Monika Wray, Trainer and Mentor – The Role of Coaching and Mentoring in Improving the Learning Process, Kraków 2002.

³ Zygmunt Dolata, Coaching Process Instructions JOSEFIN, Marshal’s Office, Poznań 2007.

⁴ Sara Thorpe, Jackie Clifford, The Coaching Handbook – A Knowledge Compendium for Managers and Trainers, Rebis Publishing, Poznań 2004.