6

Coaching, motivating and developing others

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What you will learn in this chapter

• Why coaching has become both popular and valuable
• Key disciplines of a coaching style of management, and how it can boost team performance over time
• Some tips on motivating others

Coaching has become big business. According to a 2012 report,¹ it defied the recession and continued to grow globally. According to Anne Scoular, author of The FT Guide to Business Coaching,² demand for coaching is caused by ‘cognitive (over)load’: we simply have too much information coming at us, creating too many choices, across much larger spaces, with less time to process, fewer trusted sources to refer to, and the same size of brain to deal with it all. She defines coaching as pulling things out of people rather than pushing them in: ‘Traditional mentoring, or advising, or consulting, puts in advice, content, and information. Coaching ... pulls out the capacity people have within... . It uploads rather than downloads.’³

In this chapter, I talk about how you as a manager can coach your colleagues, and how you can be effectively coached. I also cover how to recognise and use what motivates others and steps you can take to develop those you work with.

The manager as coach

Most companies do not teach their line managers to be coaches, and in fact actively discourage it. When we set our objectives with our boss, there are usually quantitative performance targets like cost reduction, productivity, market share or customer satisfaction. Rarely is it about coaching and developing people. An exception is Procter & Gamble (P&G). Everyone is measured on two things: how they develop the business, and how they develop their people. I am surprised that more businesses do not follow the example.

According to many studies, the leadership style we use least is the coaching style.⁴ This is often because of the cognitive (over)load referred to. Coaching takes time, effort and patience, and when you’re under pressure to deliver these are often the first things to go. It’s much easier to tell someone what to do, or do it for them. But that will lead you both to work harder, not smarter.

So how do you develop coaching skills? Scoular cites four key basic disciplines.⁵ These are echoed by Steven Covey in his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People:

1. Listening.
2. Questioning.
3. Being non-directive.
4. GROW model.

Let’s take a closer look at how each of these can help you to become a better coach.

Listening

How do you listen? By not talking, it’s true; but this is difficult. One individual I know was trying to get his clients, top lawyers, to listen. For five minutes. It proved nigh on impossible. After 30 seconds, the lawyers started interrupting, asking questions, and getting to a situation where they could tell the client what to do. But by listening to people you can get a lot more done. Try the techniques for active listening, such as summarising what’s been said, using good body language and eye contact (see Chapter 4). Try not to interrupt. Listening is also a great influencing technique.

Questioning – and being non-directive

Asking good questions is critical: the trick is to ask short, open-ended questions that cannot be answered yes or no. Here are some examples:

• What would you like to talk about?
• Why do you think that’s important?
• How do you think your colleagues would respond?
• What do you think the best thing to do is?

There are times when you would simply like to tell someone what to do. But remember, if you are always telling people what to do, they won’t learn to think for themselves. Before long they are back at your door, asking you to tell them what to do. I like to run one-to-one sessions with my direct reports. In these, I usually ask, what is on your list? And mentally compare it to what’s on my own list. Most of the time, things overlap by 90 per cent. But by letting my direct report lead the discussion, I am automatically putting them more in control of the session.

Recently, a talented manager came to me with feedback on another colleague’s performance in a meeting where I was not present. The manager said that several other senior managers had sought her out to say that her colleague’s behaviour had negatively impacted them. She felt she should just let me know, and that it was up to me to give the person the feedback, or not. I asked her what she thought I should do. She said, tell the other manager about the negative feedback from colleagues. I asked her how she thought her colleague would react. She said she thought the colleague would feel defensive, and that the colleague would probably not trust her or the other senior managers as the CEO was now giving the colleague negative feedback passed on second hand. I asked her what she could do instead. She said she could talk to those who had given her the feedback and persuade them to take their concerns directly to the individual; giving examples and asking the colleague to do it differently next time.

I never had to say anything to achieve this conclusion. By asking questions, I helped her to figure it out.

Be sincere

When you are sharing things about yourself with direct reports, try to keep it sincere and human, and make sure you also ask about them. Otherwise it can come across as arrogant. I once had a new boss who came in on his first day and handed out a one-pager he described as ‘The idiot’s guide to dealing with xx’, referring to himself in the third person. I am sure he meant it to be helpful, but because it was one-sided and he never asked about anyone else in his team, it came across as self-serving and insincere.

GROW: the coaching session

There is a model that is most used by coaches everywhere in the world. It’s called GROW.

GROW stands for Goal, Reality, Options, Will, and these form a virtuous circle.

• Goal What would you like to get out of the session together? How does that contribute to your objectives? How will you know you’ve succeeded?
• Reality Identify the key facts and their context. It’s where you explore what is going on with the issue, who is involved, what has happened. What else is relevant?
• Options What could you do to resolve this? What would be the impact of that? What else could you do? What are the pluses/minuses of each?
• Will What will you do? What is your plan? What might get in the way? What other help do you need?

This is a great model to use if you are a newly promoted people manager. You will be very tempted to do things yourself rather than encourage others to think for themselves and guide them.

The limits of GROW

A major retailer adopted this model for its entire staff and trained all the managers in it. One day, an area manager on a store visit was using GROW to help a stressed supervisor who couldn’t cope without her manager present when dealing with store staff. The area manager started using the model, only to be interrupted. She said: ‘Please don’t GROW me right now. Please don’t coach me. My mental state can’t handle it.’ Later when he spoke with HR, he learned that several employees had said the same thing. Coaching conversations were becoming too formulaic. They didn’t like being so obviously manipulated, even if the intentions were good. So don’t over coach!

Mentors and sponsors

One reason for networking (see Chapter 5) is to find appropriate mentors and sponsors. Mentors are typically people who are not directly in your organisation or business unit. They might not even be a part of your organisation. They help you with guidance, advice and confidential discussion so that you can become more self aware and develop your potential. The mentor/mentee relationship is usually between someone more senior (mentor) and someone more junior. Most organisations, professional bodies and industry associations sponsor or run mentoring groups.

Sometimes there are official programmes in organisations or across sectors that focus on developing the female pipeline. For example, Peninah Thompson has founded The Mentoring Foundation in which FTSE 100 Chairmen mentor each other’s talented women; now those talented women are starting to mentor others further down the management chain. The Cherie Blair Foundation for Women uses technology to mentor over 1000 women in developing countries by pairing them with women entrepreneurs in the developed world (I’m really proud to be able to say that I helped to set this up). CMI’s Women in Management has a very successful Horizon mentoring programme which links up professional women mentors and mentees all over the UK.

A sponsor, as opposed to a mentor, is a senior person in your organisation who actively helps you become more visible and recognised. Sponsors will invite you to key meetings, have you participate in special courses, and take extra care to ensure you are given the chance to meet the ‘movers and shakers’ in your organisation. They will also champion you when discussing people ‘behind closed doors’ and tap you on the shoulder for crucial opportunities and projects. In this way, they add tremendous value and are vital in furthering your career. According to research by the Center for Talent Innovation, having a sponsor increases your chances of promotion by over 20 per cent, and greater access to sponsors is one of the key recommendations for increasing the percentage of women in the talent pipeline. This rings true for me; I was very fortunate to have a senior sponsor early on in my days at P&G and he played an enormous role in my visibility and development. My advice is to cultivate a relationship with someone far more senior in order to encourage them to be your sponsor.

Motivating others

What motivates others? A simple answer is: power and money. But actually that’s rarely the case, with the exception of a few individuals with psychopathic tendencies, although some studies indicate that very powerful CEOs are more likely than the normal population to display such characteristics.⁷

How you approach your employees will be coloured by what you believe motivates them. And it may be different for different groups. If you think of a group you like, you are likely to think that they are self-motivated, enjoy their work, and can exercise control. If you think about a group you don’t like, you may think they are lazy, looking to slack off at every turn and without coercion will never get the job done. These two theories of motivation are called X and Y. Theory X gives rise to controlling and directive managers, motivating by fear, whereas Theory Y will allow for more coaching and self-direction in setting and achieving objectives. This section is for Theory Y managers. Indeed, over time, it’s been established that Theory Y will produce greater results in the long term.⁸

Things do become more complicated: we are complex beings, motivated by many different things. This is where Maslow comes in. Maslow (see Chapter 22 ‘A guide to the gurus’) defined human needs in terms of basic needs (such as food and security) followed by recognition needs and ultimately by self actualisation or fulfilment. This tallies with daily experience, and with research. I like to use an acronym – people want to smell A RAT: Autonomy, Recognition, Achievement and Trust. Studies show that employees are motivated by the ability to make a difference at work.⁹

So assuming that your folks want to smell A RAT, how can you help them?

Look at simple things:

• Trust them until proven otherwise.
• Don’t micromanage: delegate, and allow people to fail.
• Set challenging but achievable targets; have consequences for failure.
• Recognise them when they achieve them.

The same study showed the opposite was also true. People were much less motivated in companies with bureaucratic, autocratic and controlling leadership styles. These firms had lower productivity, lower growth and levels of engagement.

Twelve secrets of successfully motivating people

Trust and be trusted

Trust is at the heart of motivation. While fear can be a great short-term motivator it is unlikely to bear fruit over time. I will never forget the first day of a new CEO I worked for. He walked in and announced that we were all singing for our supper. The immediate impact was to create an atmosphere of mistrust, which quickly degenerated into people knifing people behind their backs and point scoring; unpleasant, and also unproductive. Start by trusting people. If people lose your trust, make sure they know why and that they need to work to earn it back.

Create meaning

What we really want is to make a difference and to do something meaningful at work. This doesn’t mean saving the world, but if we understand how what we do makes a positive difference in people’s lives, and how our specific task helps to contribute to that, then we will be more motivated.

Delegate

If you want something done, let others do it and accept that they will do it differently than you. But they will learn. You will never be able to be everywhere at once. And if you spend all your time micro-managing people they will be less successful and so will you.

Set achievable targets

Part of delegating means setting challenging but achievable targets, and then letting your managers figure out how to get there. There is nothing better than being surprised at how people respond to challenges.

Set direction and communicate this clearly

Are you all clear on what success looks like? Because if you’re not, it will be very difficult for people to feel motivated. Lack of clear targets is a common reason why people don’t perform according to many leading studies of what makes successful organisations.

Have it their way – speak their language

Once the targets are clear, let them get on with it. How they achieve things should be up to them, not you. As long as it is ethical of course. And it’s best if you adjust your style to match theirs. If they are using negative language, use negative language. If they are positive optimists, be positive and optimistic. It’s surprising how quickly you can build rapport by listening well and tailoring your communication to the style of the person you are coaching.

Give credit for success and make sure you get recognition too

One of the biggest turn-offs for employees is when the boss steals the credit. I know someone who never took their direct report into the board meeting but always used their work. The direct report became very despondent and unmotivated. Similarly, I once had a boss who used to take my team’s results and champion them as his own. There was nothing more dispiriting to us. I even wrote a note to correct his version of the truth. But the main thing is it was a waste of time for all parties. Not that you shouldn’t credit your boss with success – you should, but you should also insist your contributions are recognised. This is even more important for women, who tend to be shy about claiming recognition.

Give freedom to fail but set your expectations about the consequences of repeat failure

Part of challenging people is letting them fail. On average we will fail about one-third to one-half of the time when launching new initiatives. But we will always learn more from failures. Win big, fail cheap is a great mantra. It is also important for people to know that it is not OK to fail with no consequences – even if the consequence is as simple as learning, in which case ask the employee for a one-pager on the lessons learned. If they fail repeatedly it is important to know that there will be consequences. I have seen many organisations and individuals stuck in a cycle of inertia and mediocrity because there is no incentive to succeed, but, equally, no consequence of, or learning from, failure. Always, however, take the rap for the failure of those who work for you up the line, even if it means you will have to fire them. In fact, not getting rid of under-performers is very de-motivating to those who do perform.

Use recognition and rewards that matter

This is perhaps the most often overlooked piece of the puzzle. When people do well, recognise them. You can do this through rewards, but personal thanks are just as important. Finally, if you spawn those who do better than you, be happy. That is the greatest recognition of your achievement. I am very proud to have managed many people who have gone on to bigger roles. It is immensely satisfying when they acknowledge that my coaching helped them to succeed.

Apply peer pressure

Studies have shown that people perform better when they are actually committed to deliver to specific individuals and so don’t want to disappoint the group. That’s why peer commitments have become an increasingly popular tool (see Chapter 9).

Encourage benchmarking

One very good aspect is to encourage learning from others who do something well. If, for example, you need your team to improve lead generation, arrange for them to go out and visit those who are good at it. They will learn more, having undertaken that themselves, than if you send all your old papers their way or spend an hour telling them how to do it. I’ve used this often; people genuinely enjoy it, plus it helps spread best practice. It’s also encouraging your folks to build a peer network. Because maybe there is something they are good at that they can help with in return.

Perform performance management often

Try to have a coaching or motivational outcome to every encounter you have with your direct reports. Make the performance review an ongoing discipline, not a once a year tick box exercise (see Chapter 9). And if you encourage them to do the same, you will be amazed at how quickly you can turn around the performance of an organisation.

To help you track progress, try to agree a plan of action. For example:

• What will success look like?
• How will we know?
• How often will it be discussed?
• Based on that, what will I do to help you achieve your goal?
• What will you do to help you achieve your goal?

Top tips, pitfalls and takeaways

Top tip

• At work, people want to smell A RAT: Achievement, Recognition, Autonomy, and Trust.

Top pitfalls

• Not letting people know where they stand. Not having consequences for poor performance.
• Over-coaching: sometimes you just have to say something, or get something done.
• Managing by fear.

Top takeaways

• Coaching and delegating to your colleagues requires an initial investment of your time, but this gets repaid as they do not need to refer back to you so often.
• Motivation is not just about power and money; people need a sense of achievement and want to have a sense of progress, which is why coaching can be highly effective.

 

¹ http://www.coachfederation.org.uk/

² Scoular, Anne, Business Coaching, FT Guides, Pearson Education Ltd, 2011.

³ Scoular, Business Coaching, pp. 2–7.

⁴ http://www.managers.org.uk/workinglife2012 and Goleman, Daniel, Leadership that Gets Results, cited in Scoular, Business Coaching, p. 13.

⁵ Scoular, Business Coaching, p. 61.

⁶ http://www.myersbriggs.org/

⁷ Forbes, 11 June 2011.

⁸ Theory X and Theory Y: McGregor, Douglas, The Human Side of Enterprise, McGraw-Hill Professional, 2006 [1960].

⁹ http://www.managers.org.uk/workinglife2012