This essay will help you in understanding coaching role in leadership and management development.

1. Developing leaders and managers via Coaching
Leadership and management development is significant to organisation success.
Organizations invest a lot on training and development of the leaders and managers
as part of talent management and succession planning for many reasons such as
retention and promotion. Some organizations hire new leaders; this will be discussed
separately in detail in recruitment, whereas some develop their own using various
methods. Furthermore, organizations use different methods and tools for the
development of leaders and managers, coaching is one of the key methods used by
organisations. Therefore, developing leaders and managers via coaching will be
specifically discussed in this blog.
It is important to understand coaching, and it will be appropriate to start with some
definitions of coaching first. Lloyd (2005: pg. 133) define “coaching as the art of
facilitating the unleashing of people’s potential to reach meaningful, important
objectives”. Others state that “It is a relationship between the coach and the
coachee, focusing on developmental discussions and on current and future
performance or behaviour” (Boyatzis and Akrivou, 2006 as cited in Rezania and
Lingham, 2009: pg. 578). Furthermore, Kilburg (1996) as cited in Rider (2002: pg.
233) define coaching as “helping relationship between a client (who has managerial
authority and responsibility) and coach who uses a wide variety of behavioural
techniques and methods to help the client achieve a mutually identified set of goals
to improve his or her professional performance and personal satisfaction and
consequently to improve the effectiveness of the client’s organisation within a
formally defined coaching agreement”. CIPD (2013) states that “Coaching and
mentoring are development techniques based on the use of one-to-one discussions
to enhance an individual’s skills, knowledge or work performance”. Thus, coaching is
one of the key methods used for leadership and management development because
of its various advantages, so it essential to know the importance of coaching in
leadership and management development.
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2. Developing leaders and managers via Coaching
Day (2001) as cited in Vardiman et al, (2006) suggests that there are plenty of
popular organisational practices such as coaching, mentoring, action learning and
360- degree feedback which are used for leadership development and human
capitol. Effective coaching is one of the main core elements for developing leaders
and managers (Gold et al, 2010). Furthermore, Toit (2007) suggests that coaching
environment provide opportunity to offer valuable feed back from those in the
leadership position. Mullins (2010) suggests that the role of existing line managers
play crucial role in developing leadership skills by sharing their tacit knowledge,
unwritten knowledge learnt practically on the job, with potential individuals. IRS
(2003) as cited in Marchington (2011) suggests that coaching has various
advantages, such as it helps in identification of personal learning and development
needs, provide feedback on strength and weaknesses and a developmental tool for
effective learning. This means that coaching can help in identification of
weaknesses, and as a result leaders and managers can be further developed or
those with high potential can be coached for leadership and managerial role.
In addition, Toit (2007) argues coaching is based on active experimentation learning
not on a passive methodology, and coaching as tool play a bigger role in
development of senior management and most importantly when it comes to skills
related to managing employees effectively. Conlon (2004) suggests that coaching is
also a type of informal learning where employees with high potential can learn from
various perspectives, in other words facilitating and encouraging individuals to focus
their attention for further development. However, in the constant shifting world,
workforce should take initiative themselves to develop their skills for effective
leadership (Dalakoura, 2009). In other words, this comes from inside of individual
which is called intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, Clutterbuck (2005) proposed that by
polishing existing skills via coaching, talented individual can jump into next step of
professional ladder. Therefore, Coaching has great importance in leadership and
management development, if proper coaching methods are used, not only
individuals can flourish but also organisations can obtain competitive advantage over
its competitors in terms of saving cost related to recruitment and retention. So, after
learning the importance of coaching, the next significant and critical part is to learn
and understand various types of coaching.
Ulrich (2008) suggests some types of coaching: behavioural coaching and result
coaching. Behavioural coaching facilitates managers to identify and build up their
approach, whereas result coaching facilitates leaders on focusing and the delivery of
required results (ibid). The outcomes come out from behavioural and results
coaching build up the individual leadership brand (ibid). In addition, developing
middle or top level managers, external coaches in majority of the firms around the
globe today use one to one coaching technique which play fundamental role in the
development of leadership skills (Wilson, 2011). In other words, organisations can
effectively develop middle and top level managers with the help of external coaches.
In contrast, Rock and Ruth (2008) argues that study shows that external coaches
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3. Developing leaders and managers via Coaching
had powerful influence over developing leadership skills, and bringing external
coaches will dramatically increase the cost per person being coached at higher level.
Internal executives and middle managers if used in coaching role can help in
reducing down the massive cost (ibid). Therefore, organisations should develop their
middle level managers in order to do effective coaching, that will not only reduce
their cost and bring organisational change but will also develop effective leadership.
Moreover, Bloch (1995) claims that plenty of firms believed that one-to-one coaching
is one of the main dominant methods which is used in developing the “soft skill”, and
survey conducted by Career management consultancy revealed that almost half of
the respondents agreed that coaching can be used as important method in the
development of future leaders. Case and Kleiner (1993) proposed that there are
plenty of useful coaching techniques, and cautioned that top management should
choose according to the needs of their subordinates. And keep in mind that people
are individuals, and management should make sure that certain coaching technique
works on one might not works on other (ibid). This means that to achieve sustainable
result, management should be careful in applying coaching technique and must
place proper measurement system.
Styhre (2008) suggests that executive coaching is an instituted social exercise which
facilitates more organized and productive self-reflection leading. Jones et al (2006)
argues that executive coaching is a personalised type of learning support, helps in
construction of individual’s strengths and identifying and removing the weaknesses.
Furthermore, face-to-face discussion held on regular bases between coach and the
coachee help not only help in observing the behaviour, but also bringing new forms
of communication and information (Styhre, 2008). Furthermore, Jones et al, (2006)
emphasise executive coaching technique that it could have a positive impact on
leadership development, such as developing new skills, which could assist
executives to accomplish tasks.
Paese (ND) argues that coach must be third party who holds no internal favouritism
or organisational agenda. In addition, great coaches have following roles (ibid):
Catalyst: initiating action that could not have been taken by someone else.
Listener: great listener and acting as a collaborator in understanding difficult issue.
Facilitator: facilitating a “simple and repeatable process” for setting up a focus.
Integrator: connecting ideas, people and theme.
Independent in Perspective: sharing unbiased feedback, opinion and reflection in
order to bring positive outcome.
Honest and accurate: collecting objective and accurate information.
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4. Developing leaders and managers via Coaching
Moreover, Xavier (2007) argues that one to one coaching is a precious tool in
developing important skills, and senior leaders should coach potential employees in
order to advance to the next level of leadership. Bowles et al (2007) suggest that
coaching can facilitate individuals by encouraging them to exercise new leadership
skills together with continuous feedback during coaching. Likewise, another
important advantage of coaching is that it helps managers to stay on track or in other
words to keep their focus in right direction when encountering difficult situation on
the job (Landale, 2005). Therefore, the above discussion concludes that coaching is
an important tool in developing leadership skills, such as senior managers can be of
assistance to existing and emerging leaders by continuous feedback on the job.
Rock and Donde (2008) argue that managers can be developed to coaching role by
training that cannot only boost their skills but also knowledge as well, and
consequently the newly developed coaches can then further develop new talent.
However, managerial development depends upon the organisational culture, if
learning environment inside organisation is conducive than such development can
take place (ibid). Wilkins (2006) suggests that building effective teams are critical to
business success, and leaders can be facilitated by coaching to build up high
performing team as one leader commented that “with the support of the coach, he
developed techniques to create high performing team”. An alternative approach in
the development of new leaders is that executives generally like coaching, and
senior executives can empower the potential people by sharing their workload with
them to develop themselves (Rock and Donde, 2008). Similarly, Ideus (2005)
proposed that executive leaders can be developed to gain coaching skills which will
bring constructive change as they can than easily develop other senior managers on
one to one coaching.
Features of coaching: (Chapman, 2010)
Usually coaching contains some or all of these features:
1. one-to-one - involving a coach (teacher, trainer, mentor, coach) and learner
(student, trainee, sometimes called the 'coachee')
2. on-going and regular - coaching is commonly a continuing arrangement
3. personalised - by the coach for the individual learner
4. enabling - rather than prescriptive or imposed
5. adapted and adaptable - to the changing needs of the learner
6. planned - the coach normally works to a plan or structure
7. model-based - coaching tends to be based on a structured 'proven' tested
concept or methodology
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5. Developing leaders and managers via Coaching
8. focused on aims - coaching normally works towards achieving agreed
measurable outcomes or targets
9. measured and recorded - by the coach, and/or the learner
10. time-based - coaching sessions, schedules, and outcomes normally are timebound
To sum up the above discussion, coaching is one of the key methods used for
leadership and management development. Coaching helps in identification of
weaknesses, if proper coaching methods are used, not only individuals can flourish
but also organisations can obtain competitive advantage over its competitors in
terms of saving cost related to recruitment and retention. Furthermore, Organisations
and management should be careful in applying coaching technique and must place
proper measurement system.
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