Coaching and Leadership in Business

As managers, one of the biggest challenges we face on a daily basis is that of actually managing our people. One common challenge we discovered among our group was the difficulty of hiring the right people for the right job. Not only does one have to define the technical skills necessary to perform the job, managers need to determine which type of behavioral skills the new hire must possess in order to fit into the dynamics of the existing team. The latter is much harder to identify. Finding the right personalities that will work well and compliment your existing team is critical. Personnel Decisions International (1999) explains, when hiring people it is important to determine the most important competencies for the organization as well as the position. The involvement of management in articulating the behavioral expectations of the new roles is critical.

In one of the situations in our team discussions, we addressed the behavior of an IT professional that was hired as a contract employee. It seemed that management continued to hire creative individuals and fostered an environment that would allow people to work independently without many spoken behavioral boundaries. Certain behaviors, such as showing up to work on time, and meeting deadlines were not behaviors where this individual excelled. He lacked focus even for interesting research projects. Unfortunately, his behavior was not addressed until his annual review, which was more than a year after he joined the company. Following his review his behavior improved for a period of time; however, it was short-lived. After one month the same patterns reappeared. Failure to provide ongoing coaching, perhaps even on a daily basis, may have helped this individual to improve. Although management was clear on the expected behavior changes, their laissez-faire attitude towards to genuine and obvious problems in the employee's life prevented him from getting the necessary guidance that he needed. Not only is he no longer with the company, but the project the company was working on has also been terminated. As Axelrod, Handfield-Jones, and Michaels (2002) state, overcoming the natural tendency to turn a blind eye to underperforming employees starts with the dual recognition that building a strong talent pool is critical to driving the company's performance and that effectively managing low performers is essential to doing that. In this particular case one might ask, did the company fail this person, or was it simply a case of a C performer needing to be removed from the company? Axelrod, Handfield-Jones and Michaels (2002) claim that the continued presence of C performers discourages the people around them. Maybe it was better that the person left the company if his behavior was having a negative impact on the organization's success.

Behavioral changes are not always easy to change. First, management must realize and address the unwanted behavior and then the individual must agree that they have a problem. Simply agreeing on the problem is not enough. As Waldroop and Butler (1996) point out, behavioral change is possible only when it is voluntary, and willingness to change depends on the individual, who has to be willing to do something about improving their unwanted behavior. This leads into the next common challenge that we all have faced as managers, and that is the necessity for ongoing coaching and behavior modeling.

In one of the situations we discussed, an individual in one of the group member's team had the requisite technical skills; however, they continued to demonstrate poor service in their communication with the department's clients. They have had a number of complaints regarding his tone when speaking with others. He sounds very condescending and patronizing at times and has even been overheard telling another associate "if you don't like it here, you can look for another job". He is selective in how he interacts with clients and talks down to blue-collar employees. He has a "better than thou" attitude and has offended a number of employees and managers. Management has taken the right approach by providing timely and ongoing coaching. Waldroop and Bulter (1996) explain that coaching requires understanding someone's problems behavior in context, deciding whether the problem can be remedied, and encouraging the person to adapt. This employee He has been provided specific examples of when the behavior was demonstrated, how others reacted to it, and the impact his actions have had on creating a negative image for the department. The employee was responsive for a period of time, but eventually reverted back to his old behavior. The coaching was unsuccessful. It's almost as if his behavior is a part of who he is and it's hard for him to change without consciously thinking of his communication and interaction. The decision has been made to escalate things to the next level in the progressive discipline process, this includes a written warning with a performance improvement plan aligned. He will need to make immediate and sustainable improvement in his performance for future success.

One way in which the manager may be able to make coaching more effective would be to use some of the techniques outlined in the "Executive as Coach" article. Since the person seems to have a problem filtering his communication, perhaps using the tape delay method would be useful. This involves waiting a few seconds before reacting to people. Waldroop and Butler (1996) also state that change requires endurance - it may take place over months, not weeks or days. Although coaching is not something that can be successful overnight, a company needs to decide just how long they will put up with inappropriate behavior. Coaching is very time consuming and if one doesn't feel the person will change their behavior, one must ask is it worth investing more time with him/her? This particular company has worked very hard by trying to help the employee improve his behavior; however, maybe this is just how he is and changing him would be an unrealistic expectation.

Finally, another challenge we seem to face as managers is dealing with "non-job" issues: people being upset with someone in their department, not happy working together on teams, or not getting along with each other. One of the discussions we had in our group

...