Achieving peak performance
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By Lucinda Dean
In recent years, the idea of the ‘manager as coach’ has gained currency within human resources circles – stretching the managerial role to take on the attributes of a coach. In an organisation, the coach works with its team to identify work-oriented goals and helps the team to attain them.
Melbourne Water Corporation has embraced the philosophy of the ‘manager as coach’ and sees it as a key component to the leadership development program it kicked off in July this year. Senior human resources adviser Marg Burge said organisations could achieve better bottom line outcomes through coaching.
“It’s about engaging the people you work with, challenging them, giving them realistic goals and rewarding them when they’ve met those goals,” she said.
The coach is there to help staff develop work skills. They might identify gaps in an employee’s ability to perform a task – either a lack of technical proficiency or a behavioural challenge – and help the emplyee to address the issue.
“It would be no good saying they want to move into a more senior role and not be demonstrating behaviours we see as key, such as the ability to get along with other people, to listen, or to help other people achieve goals," Ms Burge said.
Giving and receiving feedback was the cornerstone of the coaching contract, she said.
Coaches need to be skilful in how they deliver positive and ‘constructive’ feedback, and to be gracious in receiving feedback. As part of its leadership development program, Melbourne Water Corporation is equipping staff with the skills and experience to deal with what it terms ‘calling behaviours’, according to Ms Burge.
“If a staff member sees a colleague behaving in a negative way, it’s about being able to have the conversation that says, ‘well, how could you do it differently next time?’,” she said.
Ms Burge said coaching skills could be taught and there was a lot more skill required to be a manager of that calibre.
The manager must be willing to take on the coaching role, she said. They must be able to listen, be willing to learn from the experience and demonstrate humility. They must also be able to maintain confidentiality and trust, and be very focused on outcomes.
Ms Burge said coaching was different to mentoring. She defined a mentor as usually someone an employee did not directly work with and could discuss life, career or ambitions. A mentor was someone within the same organisation who could help an employee move through life.
“Mentoring benefits an individual’s self-development,” she said.
“An employee who has a mentor may find they are less stressed at work or have less sick days. Because they’re getting some help with their lives, they may be able to have better conversations about what they want to achieve in the workplace if they need that support. A coach on the other hand provides a very targeted, focused business outcome, which assists the business as well as the individual.”
[Tue 18/09/2007 10:07:00]
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