Topic 5.3: Coaching as a leadership practice

Coaching has emerged over some years as a powerful way of applying theory about motivating and supporting growth and development. In the context of QUT and the Graduate School of Business, we are more concerned with coaching as a methodology available to leaders and managers to create a positive work environment and support people to perform and thrive.

The shift to a coaching approach can be uncomfortable for managers who have primarily relied on instructing, directing, telling, and fixing problems for their people. A different mindset is required that is more guided by inquiry, curiosity and positive support – while at the same time keeping a focus on the strategic and operational objectives of the team and the organisation. We propose that a ‘coaching mindset’ will be of value all of the time – even though your leadership behaviours might vary from questioning and listening through to directing and telling when the situation requires it. The challenge we often confront is that this shift in mindset is difficult to sustain if the leadership and organisational cultures and systems are not in tune with a coaching approach.  Many environments maintain ongoing patterns of ‘telling’ not ‘asking’ and this can be challenging for creating a high performance environment – not least because it is so reliant on the knowledge and experience of the formal leader.

So what is workplace coaching?

Here are some descriptions of coaching (see if you can identify some themes):

“Coaching leaders help employees identify their unique strengths and weaknesses and tie them to their personal and career aspirations. They encourage employees to establish long-term development goals and help them conceptualize a plan for attaining them. They make agreements with their employees about their role and responsibilities in enacting development plans, and they give plentiful instruction and feedback”( Goleman, 2000, p87).^[1]

In The Extraordinary Coach (2010) Zenger & Stennet describe coaching as “Conversations that help people to expand awareness, discover new possibilities and shift the stories we hold about ourselves and others; to create new possibilities and new approaches”.^[2]

John Whitmore, who was a pioneer of executive coaching and developed the GROW model of coaching (Goal, Reality, Option, Way forward) says that “Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their performance. It is helping them learn rather than teaching them” (Whitmore, 2010, p8)^[3].

And Anthony Grant and Jane Green summarise coaching as “a collaborative solution-focused, results-oriented and systematic process in which the coach facilitates the enhancement of work performance … self-directed learning … of individuals. It is a methodology for creating purposeful, positive change” (Grant & Green, 2003, pxii)^[4].

We might summarise coaching as being:

• Primarily about asking not telling
• Encouraging others to create solutions
• Pragmatic
• Based on adult action learning principles
• An iterative process of: Action – Reflection – Planning – New Action

We suggest that coaching is an essential element of leadership in the environment that managers now inhabit, and that organisational cultures and systems need to support and be supported by coaching approaches.