The research firm Bersin & Associates, recently completed a year-long analysis of performance management involving more than 500 HR leaders from a range of industries, geographies and organisation sizes. The research shows that managers inability to effectively coach remains the top performance management challenge.

More and more organisations are moving towards a coaching and development philosophy of performance management, with close to ¾ of organisations now applying such an approach.

But most organisations struggle with effective coaching according to the research – senior leaders do not do it frequently and managers do not do it well.

The research was coming from a performance management angle and focused on HR leaders view, however the findings resonate with what we hear from organisations calling us in to help.

What is going wrong?

The list of issues and barriers that can get in the way is long. Here are just seven of them:

1. Senior management not committed
   Without senior management adapting their own style, role modelling coaching and encouraging their managers to coach it is highly unlikely to take hold
2. Not linked to strategic objectives
   When coaching is not seen as integral to the organisation achieving its strategic objectives, it will keep getting derailed by priorities which are!
3. Not addressing the mindset and culture aspects
   Failing to recognise that coaching is very different from a directive, telling approach is fatal. There is often a lot of un-learning to do about what good leadership is and some deeply ingrained habits to change especially so in cultures which have been more command and control orientated. It is not impossible, but it takes efforts.
4. Underestimating how much skill and practice is required
   How difficult can it be?
   A few hours training is simply not enough to equip managers to coach effectively! Unfortunately this is often what organisations do the first time around. Unsurprisingly, the managers then struggle to do it well, get frustrated with lack of progress and revert to their standard approach
5. Not linked to incentive programmes and performance measures
   Managers appraisal conversations must include an evaluation of their coaching
   efforts and impact. The old adage also holds true here What gets measured gets
   done!
6. Lack of measures/evidence of impact
   To get momentum and sustain the efforts the organisation must demonstrate some early wins and keep reinforcing how coaching is making a real difference
7. Not using the coaching muscles enough
   Coaching is often seen as an activity done on an infrequent basis in appraisal
   conversations. When managers only use the coaching style in those infrequent settings, and continue to use a tell style everywhere else then
   – their coaching muscles will not be well trained
   – it will appear disingenuous to the team members
   – all the daily opportunities to develop and grow the team will be missed and
   – the strategic imperative for a coaching style unduly limited.

What to do?

So what can organisations do to get managers to coach effectively?

The answer is fundamentally very simple: Treat it as a culture change programme!

On a personal note, this feels a bit like a deja vu for me i.e. our coaching and coaching training programmes now linking neatly back to my change leadership consultancy experience at JBBI (my previous consultancy business) and my executive career 🙂

Changing attitudes and behaviours across organisations is never easy. Creating a coaching culture is no different, but the rewards can be transformational.

I will address some of the strategies for helping manager coach effectively in future blogs, so stay tuned.

Call to action:

Have you experienced other barriers or reasons for managers not effectively coaching? If so, please share your experiences and I will try to address these in my future blogs.